Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once had what he considered a “brilliant” idea to salvage the company’s early productivity. One employee turned out to be in a much better situation.
Speaking at the 2001 Achievement Academy Summit, Bezos looked back to 1995, when Amazon was operating out of a 2,000-square-foot basement warehouse in Seattle.
There are 10 employees. The ceiling is very low. The floor is concrete. During the day, the team handles programming and client emails. From afternoon to evening they kept books on their hands and knees.
When the company was founded, demand overwhelmed them. “We actually had orders from all 50 states and 45 different countries in the first 30 days, but from an operational standpoint, we were completely unprepared to handle that volume,” Bezos said.
The orders kept coming. The team kept kneeling.
One night, exhausted, Bezos turned to the person next to him.
“I remember just trying to show you how stupid I was,” he said. “My only defense is that it’s too late.”
He then described what he told the employee.
“This luggage is killing me, you know my back hurts, it makes my knees hurt on the hard concrete floor,” Bezos said.
Trend: Most founders struggle with the wrong hires. Check out 5 startup roles that can really make the difference between a company scaling or stagnating.
Then there’s what he calls “remarkable insight.”
“You know what we need. That’s a great insight from me,” he said. “We need knee pads.”
He means it.
The reaction occurs immediately. “This person looked at me like I was the stupidest person they had ever met,” Bezos said.
This employee offered a simpler idea.
“What we need are packing tables.”
Bezos said the shift was immediate. “I think it’s the smartest idea I’ve ever heard,” he said. “The next day, we got the packing table and I think we doubled our productivity.”
The repair didn’t make the pain any less painful. It’s eliminating problems.
Looking back, Bezos said Amazon’s culture was shaped by its chaotic early days.
“We were unprepared for the early days of Amazon.com, and it was probably one of the luckiest things that ever happened to us because it created a culture of customer service in every department of the company,” he said.
Everyone packed their orders, he added. No one is isolated from this work.
“Everyone in the company has to work closely with customers to make sure orders are fulfilled. That really builds a culture that works for us. That’s our goal – to be the most customer-centric company on the planet.”
