Resetting Amazon: A new blueprint for the tech giant

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4.4 • 116 Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2022

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

Amazon is resetting its business. Is it doing enough to change its mindset?

In an analysis published this week, advisor, speaker, author, and former Amazon executive John Rossman presents a blueprint for turning the company around — advocating a "zero-based mindset" in which every initiative needs to be justified from scratch, and a "brutal rationalization of capital expenses," among other steps.

"I honestly think that Jeff's biggest concern about Amazon was always that it would become a bureaucracy," says Rossman, referring to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. "This is the opportunity to change the forward-looking narrative on Amazon: are they going to go into the slow bureaucratic mindset, or are they going to return to their roots as a scrappy, small-team oriented, highly accountable organization?"

Rossman joins GeekWire's Todd Bishop on this episode to discuss Amazon's path forward.

Rossman is the founder of Rossman Partners, a management consulting team, he worked previously at turnaround consulting firm Alvarez and Marsal. During his tenure at Amazon, from 2002-2005, helped to launch and build Amazon Marketplace before leading the company’s Enterprise Services business.

He has authored three books, including The Amazon Way, and he writes the weekly Digital Leader Newsletter, found at Substack.

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Transcript

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0:17.9	I honestly think that Jeff's biggest concern about Amazon was always that it would become a bureaucracy and I think this is the opportunity to change the forward looking narrative on Amazon is are they going to go into kind of the the slow bureaucratic mindset or are they going to return to the roots as a scrappy small team oriented highly
0:26.3	accountable organization. John Rossman is an advisor, keynote speaker, author, and the founder of Rossman Partners, a management consulting team.
0:40.0	He's a former Amazon executive who helped to lead the launch of the Amazon Marketplace business in 2002.
0:46.0	He's authored three books including the Amazon Way, and he's also the author of a weekly newsletter called The Digital Leader newsletter found at Substack, where this
0:56.5	week he proposes a turnaround plan for Amazon, which we're going to be talking about on this week's show.
1:03.5	John Rossman, it's great to talk with you again.
1:05.4	Great to be back.
1:06.3	Nice to see, Todd.
1:07.5	The backdrop for your piece is a reset inside Amazon in recent weeks. The company has started the process of
1:14.9	laying off around 10,000 employees or perhaps even twice that many by one report.
1:19.8	It's also scaling back and exiting or eliminating a long list of products and services based on reports that we've seen and things that we've found out from inside the company.
1:30.0	Let's just start with your informed outside assessment of what's been going on. I mean this seems to be unprecedented doesn't it?
1:37.0	Yeah, you know a friend and one of the readers by newsletter suggested like,
1:42.0	Hey John, I'd love to hear your analysis
1:44.4	of what's going on Amazon.
1:46.8	And as I got more and more into it,
1:49.8	it was fascinating me, like how many initiatives and companies and that they had
1:56.2	going on that I really didn't have visibility to and going in my my thesis wasn't really like anything other than like, yeah, there's probably, you know, some tightening up that we need to do, you know, a little belt tightening or whatnot but after going through it I come away with a
2:15.5	different perspective and I was a partner at a turnaround and restructuring firm for 12 years after I left
2:21.2	Amazon and I came away with it going oh you for 12 years after I left Amazon.
2:22.6	And I came away with it going,
2:24.3	oh, you need to take a very serious rationalization
	...

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