The technology behind the creation of the internet allowed Amazon to grow from an online bookseller to the go-to shopping spot for thousands of items. But that technology was available to a lot of companies in the 1990s. Amazon emerged as the company that made the right moves to leverage that technology into business success.

“Working backwards” helped achieve that goal. Amazon uses the term to describe the process of setting an objective based on a desired customer experience and then working backwards through the process to make that happen. They used the same approach when developing a new product, even going as far as writing the press release about the product’s release before they even started developing it.

Success at Amazon has involved always keeping the customer in mind.

That philosophy has helped Amazon grow from 600 employees in 1997 to about 1.3 million. The company reached $386 billion in sales in 2020, a 37% increase from 2019.

The working backwards approach mirrors the teachings of Lean Six Sigma, which focuses on understanding customers’ needs and then meeting them. It’s also the focus of a new book from insiders about how Amazon leaders built the company for success.

A Focus on Deficit Reduction and Execution

One of the main selling points of the new book, called “Working Backwards: Insights, Stories and Secrets From Inside Amazon,” is that it offers insight into a company that is often secretive about how it conducts business.

But Amazon’s use of Lean Six Sigma philosophy and tools is not a surprise. Company founder Jeff Bezos himself made it clear in a 2007 Harvard Business Review interview where he mentioned Six Sigma.

He told HBR, “Something we haven’t talked about, but that is super important in our culture, is the focus on defect reduction and execution. It’s one of the reasons that we have been successful for customers. That is something I had to learn about.”

Bezos further explained: “Well, by “learn” I mean I literally learned a bunch of techniques, like Six Sigma and lean manufacturing and other incredibly useful approaches. I’m very detail-oriented by nature, so I have the right instincts to be an acceptable operator, but I didn’t have the tools to create repeatable processes and to know where those processes made sense.”

The creation of those types of tools and determining where best to apply them is the focus of both Lean and Six Sigma.

The Book Offers Details On Amazon’s Business Philosophy

In addition to the comments from Bezos, everything about how Amazon operates shows its commitment to serving customers. Understanding the Voice of the Customer and keeping the end-user in mind in every step of a process is fundamental to the successful use of Lean.

The new book, written by former Amazon employees Bill Carr and Colin Bryar, looks deeper into the idea of putting customers first.

Carr, as a vice president at Amazon, oversaw the launch of the company’s digital music and video businesses, including Amazon Music, Prime Video and Amazon Studios. Bryar worked as Bezos’ technical assistant during the launch of Amazon Prime and Amazon Web Services.

Much of the book focuses on the Amazon “Invention Machine,” which leverages the company’s 14 leadership principles and five scalable, repeatable processes. The first of those principles is an obsession with customers, not competitors. The five processes include streamlined, efficient approaches to hiring, conducting meetings, developing new products, organizing teams and tracking metrics.

In an interview with Yahoo! Finance, the two authors said that these elements established a foundation that allowed the company to try new products and test new processes, all with the customer in mind. Carr said he expects Amazon’s processes will one day be viewed as innovative as the company’s products.

“I firmly believe that one of the biggest legacies of the company is likely to be their contribution to management science,” Carr said. “Colin and I were hoping to codify that, simplify that, and pass it along to the world so that the next generation of business leaders can learn and grow from it.”