MTP

Leadership Case study about Amazon founder, CEO Jeff Bezos

By Satyatej Kammili By Grump Old Lady

Roll NO 19 Roll No 46
Section A Section A
Case

CEOs must not cling to business models and systems that worked in the past,
because what worked in the past and present might not work in the future.
Amazon founder and CEO Jeffrey Preston Bezos (Jeff Bezos) long has avoided
maintaining the status quo. He is a visionary leader with clarity in his approach
to business. He turned selling books online into a multibillion-dollar business
that has changed the trend of retailing forever. Let us look at how Jeff Bezos
stayed away from the status quo to take Amazon to great heights globally.
Jeff Bezos is an engineer and entrepreneur who left his lucrative job as a vice
president at a high-level placement firm on Wall Street to pursue his passion for
entrepreneurship. He started Amazon from the garage of his Seattle suburban
house when the Internet was growing globally. He is a dreamer and doer. Right
from childhood, he was interested in computers. He entered into the e-commerce
business, which was considered a risky move in those days. Discusses
Leadership qualities of Jeff Bezos

Introduction:

Jeffrey Preston Bezo s an American technology entrepreneur, investor, and

charity donor[5]. He is the founder, CEO, and president of Amazon.com, Inc.
Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and raised in Houston, Texas. He
graduated from Princeton University in 1986 with degrees in electrical
engineering and computer science. He worked on Wall Street in a variety of
related fields from 1986 to early 1994. He founded Amazon in late 1994 on a
cross-country road trip from New York City to Seattle. The company began as an
online bookstore and has since expanded to a wide variety of other e-
commerce products and services, including video and audio streaming, cloud
computing, and artificial intelligence. It is currently the world's largest online
sales company, the largest internet company by revenue, as well as the world's
largest provider of AI assistance[citation needed] and cloud infrastructure
services via its Amazon Web Services arm.

Characteristics of Bezos leadership:

Be a risk taker, Jeff took risks and learned lessons from both successes and
failures.

Be a trendsetter, Never follow the conventional path. Create unconventional

ideas and follow them ruthlessly. Jeff is a trendsetter, not a trend follower.

Build a strong team, Jeff has a strong team of experts who advise him
constantly about developments. He takes their views into consideration and
makes decisions. It minimizes mistakes and maximizes effectiveness.
Be an explorer, not a conqueror. Jeff believes more in exploring and
experimenting than taking on his competitors. He rightly remarked, “What’s
dangerous is not to evolve.”

Emphasize customer satisfaction, not money. Jeff believes in adding value to

customers and keeping them happy because happy customers bring more
customers through word of mouth. It ultimately improves organizational bottom
lines. He once remarked, “The best customer service is if the customer doesn’t
need to call you, doesn’t need to talk to you. It just works.”

Strive for excellence. Jeff Bezos emphasizes excellence and delivers real value
and a great customer experience regardless of the business he is in.

Emphasize efforts, not outcome. Jeff invests his efforts consistently and
experiments with various products and services. He finishes what he starts. He
doesn’t mind when something goes wrong as all decisions might not go well.
When things go wrong, he learns lessons and explores and experiments further.
Persevere. When Jeff Bezos wanted to start Amazon, many people did not clearly
understand the importance of the Internet. He struggled to raise $1 million to get
Amazon off the ground.

Analysics of Jeff Bezos Leadership Style:

Jeff Bezos is an amazing international entrepreneur. But he did not get the
adequate attention he deserves globally for his achievements. In contrast, less
successful CEOs got more attention than him. The global media highlights
inspiring stories on Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson,
and other CEOs. I feel that Jeff Bezos is an underrated CEO in the world despite
contributing his best. It seems he did not concentrate on building his leadership
brand globally. People are still under the impression that he runs a retail store
only. Additionally, many CEOs are busy with their business growth and
expansion and don’t find time to focus on their brand building. That might be
another reason for not getting attention. It might take some more time to build
his brand as Jeff only founded Amazon in 1994. With the death of Steve Jobs,
there is a leadership vacuum in technology. Hence, it is a great opportunity for
Jeff Bezos to fill the vacuum by stepping into his shoes to build his leadership
brand globally.

Transformational leadership is a popular leadership style is followed by a vision

of a charismatic, powerful CEO like Jeff Bezos leading Amazon to new heights.
The transformational leadership style involves a committed relationship
between the leader and his followers. Unlike, the transactional leadership, the
“give and take”, the transformational leaders has the ability to transform others
with his words. The effectiveness of a transformational leader is the ability to
create big shifts in their followers’ thinking which creates big shifts in their
behaviors which motivates them to achieve extraordinary results. What makes a
transformational leader? What are the prime qualities that define
transformational leadership and how can those qualities be infused into any
leadership style.

Bernard M. Bass, one of the theorist of transformational leadership defined the

style as follows: “leaders broaden and elevate the interests of their employees,
when they generate awareness and acceptance of the purposes and mission of
the group, and when they stir their employees to look beyond their own self-
interest for the good of the group”. Transformational leadership like servant
leadership focuses on the needs of the others rather than the leader. The main
difference between the two is that transformational leadership focuses on the
organizational objective whereas the servant leadership focuses on the
followers. Furthermore, the difference between transformational and
transactional leadership is that the former’s objective is to change the
organization’s culture to drive performance while the latter works within the
existing organizational culture.

There are four main qualities of a transformational leader. The underlying

concept of transformational leadership is charisma. The need for charisma
originates from the belief that employees are “overmanaged but underled”. It is
an old concept that takes new meaning when applied to this leadership style. At
its core is the belief that leaders should act as role models exhibiting a charisma
that would influence others to want to be like the leader. This idealized leader is
a risk-taker who leads by a set of values and ethical convictions. Through this
idealized influence the leader builds trust with his followers. The followers
develop confidence in the leader.

The transformational leader inspires confidence, motivation, and a sense of

purpose in his followers. The leader must convey a commitment to the goals and
articulate a vision for the future. Transformational leadership requires an
abundance of optimism, enthusiasm, and positive. The leader must have
excellent communication skills in order to convey inspirational messages with
clarity and authority.

The transformational leader encourages autonomy and creativity in his

followers. A culture of creativity and innovation pervades around this leadership
style where employees are encouraged to participate in the decision making
process. The skillful, transformational leader challenges assumptions and guides
employees to see solutions without criticism. He is adept at painting the big
picture and encouraging the success of employees.
Employees are encouraged to grow and develop under transformational
leadership. Whether through observation or discussion, the transformational
leader figures out what motivates each employee. The leadership conducts one-
on-one coaching or mentoring to cater to individual employee development.
Therefore, the qualities of charisma, inspirational motivation, intellectual
stimulation, and individualized consideration are what make up a
transformational leader.

While there are innate qualities that transformational leaders share, every
leadership style can learn a thing or two from this inspirational approach. Here
are a few suggestions to tap into the inner transformational leader: focus on the
heart, be playful, and storytelling. The true foundation of transformational
leadership is being strengthened by human vulnerability. The key to accessing
leadership skills that transform an audience is disengaging from the intellect.
Many leaders lead with the head and do not get in touch with their feelings. True
leadership consists of many more aspects other than intellect, intuition and heart
come to mind.

A sense of play is essential to succeed at transformational leadership. Leaders

are constantly asking themselves and the people around them questions. What
do I want? How can we do things differently? What does it cost us to maintain
the status quo? The ability to play is crucial to seeing the world in a new and
different perspective. It is almost like seeing the world through the eyes of a
child. Whether on the bike or trampoline, play time is time well spent.
Effective storytelling is the medium of a transformational leader. These leaders
tells stories which take their employees on a journey. These stories have the
potential to move the employee, causing an instant shift, and a permanent
change to their actions. The stories that give no importance to what happened
before or what happened after, the only thing that mattered is what happened in
the moment. These are transformational stories. This underlines the true power
of a transformational leader: the ability to bring out lasting, meaningful change in
employees.

Conclusion:

Transformational leadership is a catalyst for change in the organization. There

are many resources and ways for leaders to improve their leadership styles.
While, there are differences between the servant, transactional, and
transformational leadership styles. The transformational leadership style is
appropriate when the goal of the organization is to change the culture. Charisma
dominates the transformational leadership style. This is an idealized leader that
inspires his followers to find a purpose and meaning in executing a common goal.
The leader is not short of inspiration, bringing enthusiasm and positivity to his
superb communication style. There is an element of intellectual stimulation. The
transformational leader encourages creativity and innovation as well as problem
solving by employees. Finally, the transformational leader is one who gives
individualized attention to the motivations and development of each employee.
There are positive attributes of transformational leadership that can apply to any
leadership style. Primarily, this leadership style is about dropping from the head
down to the heart. It is getting in touch with intuition and feelings to best
understand the vulnerabilities of the followers. A leader who has a sense of play
and a command of storytelling is one who is capable of transforming employees
and the organization to their best.