[Complete Guide] What Are Amazon’s Leadership Principles? — A Practical Implementation Guide Covering All 16 Behaviors, PR/FAQ (Working Backwards), and Bar Raiser Operations

Key Takeaways (Summary)

• Amazon’s Leadership Principles (LPs) are 16 behavioral guidelines that underpin daily decisions, hiring, performance reviews, and product building. They are not slogans; they serve as concrete decision criteria in meetings and reviews.
• The current 16 principles include “Customer Obsession,” “Ownership,” and “Invent and Simplify,” plus two added in 2021—“Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer” and “Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility”—which make employment and social responsibility explicit.
• The operating mechanism runs on three pillars: ① PR/FAQ (press release & FAQ) to work backwards from the customer, ② Two-Pizza Teams to test small and fast, and ③ Bar Raisers who objectively evaluate LP fit in hiring.
• Who benefits: Product & business development, CS & store operations, G&A (HR/Legal/Finance), and even service design in nonprofits and government. “When in doubt, return to the LPs” lowers cognitive load and improves repeatability.
• Accessibility angle: LPs align well with “Earn Trust,” “Highest Standards,” and “Diversity & Inclusion.” You can translate them into practices like screen-reader-friendly docs, asynchronous reviews, and non-color-dependent UIs, building an organization everyone can participate in.

Introduction — LPs Are the “Owner’s Manual” of Culture and the Ruler for Decisions

Amazon describes its culture as “peculiar” in that teams continuously reference the LPs in daily meetings, development, and customer support. In other words, the LPs are not wall art; they are tools used on the ground—which is why they permeate interview question design and performance criteria.

The company also summarizes its overall philosophy as four overarching principles: Customer Obsession, Passion for Invention, Operational Excellence, and Long-Term Thinking. LPs translate this upper-level philosophy into daily behaviors.

1. The 16 Leadership Principles, Explained Simply (Short Definitions + On-the-Ground Images)

How to use them: Principles may conflict (e.g., speed vs. depth). Prioritizing when they clash is a leader’s job.

1. Customer Obsession
   Start with the customer. End with the customer. Look at the customer, not competitors. Example: In a spec meeting, start with “**What is the customer’s pain right now?””

2. Ownership
   Go beyond your lane and do what’s best for the whole company. Example: You don’t say “That’s not my job.”

3. Invent and Simplify
   Create new ways and keep them simple. Example: Compress a complex application flow from 3 screens → 1 screen.

4. Are Right, A Lot
   Raise the quality and frequency of correct judgments. Reduce bias with diverse viewpoints. Example: Collect dissenting opinions before deciding.

5. Learn and Be Curious
   Make learning a habit. Example: Do weekly customer interviews without fail.

6. Hire and Develop the Best
   Hiring is a chance to raise tomorrow’s bar. Development means entrusting people and letting them grow.

7. Insist on the Highest Standards
   Refuse to lower the bar on quality. Example: Make a screen-reader pass part of pre-ship checks.

8. Think Big
   Aim for 10× ideas over 10% improvements. Example: Design to expand a local win to many regions.

9. Bias for Action
   Speed is value. Make reversible decisions quickly and test them.

10. Frugality
    Constraints fuel creativity. Example: Start with a tiny two-person team.

11. Earn Trust
    Keep promises, speak plainly, and listen. Example: Share incident reports factually and without blame, plus learnings.

12. Dive Deep
    Inspect the raw data behind KPIs yourself. Example: Review every open-ended NPS comment.

13. Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit
    Disagree candidly when it matters. Once decided, commit fully.

14. Deliver Results
    Hit dates and quality. Get it done despite obstacles.

15. Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer
    Safety, diversity, fairness, and growth opportunities. Leaders create a workplace where people can work positively.

16. Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility
    As you scale, societal and environmental impact grows. Own long-term responsibility.

Inside Amazon, LPs are criteria for hiring (interviews) and performance, directly connecting values and behaviors to daily operations.

2. The Systems That Make LPs Move — PR/FAQ, Two-Pizza, Bar Raiser

2-1. PR/FAQ (Working Backwards)

• What is it? For any new idea, write a hypothetical press release and FAQ first. In customer-facing language, spell out value, experience, price, differentiation, and risks to validate “Do they truly want this?” up front.
• LP linkage: It sits at the intersection of Customer Obsession, Invent and Simplify, and Highest Standards. Investment decisions presume a strong PR/FAQ.

2-2. Two-Pizza Team (Smaller Is Faster)

• Idea: Use teams small enough to feed with two pizzas to prototype and validate quickly. Start with 1–2 people and minimal resources; scale after conviction.
• LP linkage: Balances Frugality, Bias for Action, and Think Big.

2-3. Bar Raiser (Objective Interviewer)

• Role: A trained interviewer outside the team joins hiring loops to ensure LP fit and bar quality—asking whether the candidate is “better than our top half today.”
• Meaning: LPs become concrete from day one in hiring, reproducing culture through talent selection.

3. Adoption Roadmap (30/60/90 Days) — Read → Use → Measure

Day 1–30: Understand & Translate

• Create your organization’s crib notes for the 16 LPs (2–3 lines each), using plain local language + glossary notes.
• Prepare a one-page PR/FAQ template (A4). Use an inverted pyramid (summary → body → appendix) and specify the screen-reader order.
• Add a meeting opener: “Which LPs does this topic relate to?”

Day 31–60: Practice & Record

• Hold a weekly PR/FAQ review (30 minutes × multiple items). Check customer value summary → anticipated questions → counterpoints in that order.
• Set up two Two-Pizza experiments and start with reversible decisions.
• Add LP behavioral questions to hiring (STAR: Situation/Task/Action/Result). Record audio + summarize.

Day 61–90: Evaluate & Expand

• Build an LPs dashboard (KPIs below). Track reuse of learnings.
• Pilot one Bar Raiser-like third party (experienced member from another org) in a hiring loop or a critical review.
• Decide continue / stop / expand at the quarterly review.

At this point, LPs shift from words to operations, becoming a shared ruler across the org.

4. Where LPs Shine — Concrete Scenarios

4-1. Product Development (B2C App)

• Background: Notification open rates are stalled.
• LP applications:
  • Customer Obsession: Validate qualitative feedback that “notifications are intrusive.”
  • Dive Deep: Inspect raw logs by time, copy, and segment.
  • Bias for Action: Launch reversible A/B this week.
  • Insist on the Highest Standards: Experiment only with UIs that pass focus visibility and reading order accessibility.
• Outcome: Opens up in a month with unsubscribes flat. Next, Think Big to multilingual rollout.

4-2. Customer Service (Contact Center)

• Background: First contact resolution (FCR) plateaued.
• LP applications:
  • Earn Trust: Rewrite knowledge base in clear plain language.
  • Invent and Simplify: Prototype voice → text summary → guidance automation.
  • Learn and Be Curious: Standardize weekly “voice of customer” reviews.
• Result: FCR improves and AHT decreases. Reuse a deep-dive template for complaints.

4-3. Back Office (HR)

• Background: Job postings are hard to read; few applicants.
• LP applications:
  • Hire and Develop the Best: Redesign postings with bullets + screen-reader care.
  • Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility: Audit bias in hiring comms (gender/age phrasing).
  • Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer: State flexible work and reasonable accommodations explicitly.
• Result: Greater applicant diversity and lower interview no-show rate.

5. LPs in Hiring & Review — Lightweight “Bar Raiser Thinking”

• Hiring: Prepare an LPs question library (e.g., “Tell us about a recent decision you opposed — Have Backbone”; “What customer pain sparked an improvement? — Customer Obsession”). Include one cross-org interviewer to hold the bar.
• Performance: Alongside KPIs, add LP behavior indices (e.g., “Dive Deep: number of times you checked source data yourself”; “Earn Trust: speed of postmortem sharing”).
• Development: Run a monthly LPs showcase (5 minutes × multiple speakers) to share learnings. Provide recordings and transcripts for asynchronous access.

Recent reports note stronger coupling of reviews with LPs, further linking behavior and culture. Design operations with fairness and transparency in mind.

6. LPs × Accessibility — Systematize “Participation for All”

• Inverted-pyramid documents (summary → body → appendix) so screen readers surface key points in one minute.
• Specify reading order: In PR/FAQ, minutes, and specs, use clear heading levels and reading order notes.
• Don’t rely on color: Express states with color + labels + icons.
• Equal async access: Default to live captions + recording + summary.
• Gentle forms: Hiring and contact forms must be keyboard-complete, with textual error messages.
• LP alignment: Highest Standards (7), Earn Trust (11), and Best Employer (15) justify accessibility as a must-have.

7. KPI Design — Track “Outcomes, Speed, Learning, Culture” Together

Outcomes (lagging)

• CSAT/NPS, retention, revenue/gross margin
  Speed (process)
• Days from PR/FAQ → experiment; decision lead time
  Learning (reuse)
• PR/FAQ reuse count, recording plays, summary views
  Culture (LP behaviors)

• of Disagree → Commit cases

• Dive Deep “source-data checks” rate
• Earn Trust “post-share within 24h” ratio
  Hiring (density)
• Bar Raiser participation rate, 90-day retention, diversity (region/experience/attributes)

Never rely on color alone—attach text summaries for screen-reader support. That also satisfies Highest Standards.

8. Common Misconceptions and Gentle Fixes

• Myth 1: “LPs are pretty words.”
  • Fix: Embed them in PR/FAQ, hiring, and reviews. The more usage contexts, the more tangible they become.
• Myth 2: “Speed kills quality.”
  • Fix: Treat Bias for Action and Highest Standards as a pair. Go fast on reversible, be cautious on irreversible decisions.
• Myth 3: “Frugality = stingy.”
  • Fix: Define it as constraints to start small (Two-Pizza). After validation, fund decisively.
• Myth 4: “Dissent is disliked.”
  • Fix: Have Backbone is a public rule; after decision, Commit and execute.
• Myth 5: “Accessibility can wait.”
  • Fix: Tie it to Highest Standards and Earn Trust and make it a ship criterion.

9. Templates (Copy-Paste, Screen-Reader Friendly)

A. PR/FAQ (A4, inverted pyramid, reading order)

1. Press-release headline (3-line summary): Whose pain, what pain, and how is it solved?
2. Body (customer voice → solution → differentiation → price → launch timing)
3. FAQ (5–10 anticipated Qs / risks & mitigations / accessibility)
4. Next action: Small experiment plan (audience, metrics, duration, reversibility)

Note: Specify heading levels and alt text.

B. Meeting Opening Script (5 min)

• 1 min: Reconfirm customer problem (Customer Obsession)
• 1 min: Classify reversible vs. irreversible (Bias for Action)
• 2 min: Harvest dissent (Have Backbone / Are Right, A Lot)
• 1 min: Commitment statement after decision (Disagree and Commit)

C. LP Behavior Review Sheet (HR/Performance)

• Purpose: Evaluate results × LP behaviors
• Format: For each LP, log specific behaviors (facts) / impact / learning / next step
• Accessibility: Recording allowed, transcripts, keyboard-complete

Note: Tying LPs into hiring and performance is emphasized in recent operational updates.

10. What Resonates by Function/Role (With Concrete Images)

• PdM / BizDev: PR/FAQ for frictionless hypothesis → experiment flow; Think Big for local → multi-country expansion design.
• Engineering / Data: Use Dive Deep to formalize data definitions; treat irreversible schema changes with stricter reviews.
• Design / Research: Ground Earn Trust and Highest Standards to make accessibility non-negotiable; fix reading order and contrast at design time.
• CS / Stores: Customer Obsession + Invent and Simplify to simplify ops; use phrasing templates for consistent quality.
• HR / Recruiting: Hire and Develop the Best + Bar Raiser to guard the hiring bar; Best Employer to institutionalize psychological safety and reasonable accommodations.
• Corporate Planning: Success and Scale… to quantify societal impact (environment, local economies, supply chains).

11. Conversational Patterns That Foster LPs

• Facts → Interpretation → Impact → Proposal (avoid accusatory language)
• Split topics by reversible / irreversible (decision speed differs)
• Welcome dissent and commit after decision (record briefly in minutes)
• Read at least one verbatim customer quote (Dive Deep)
• Run small executions weekly (Bias for Action / Two-Pizza)

12. Conclusion — Make “Return to the LPs When in Doubt” a Reflex

Amazon’s Leadership Principles convert customer-centric, long-term thinking into 16 daily behaviors. You work backwards with PR/FAQ, experiment small and fast with Two-Pizza teams, and maintain talent density and values with Bar Raisers. This systematization makes day-to-day calls less ambiguous. Accessibility also ties in naturally through Highest Standards and Earn Trust. Starting today, introduce a one-page PR/FAQ, a meeting-opening script, and an LP behavior review sheet—and gently grow the habit of “speaking in LPs” on your team. I’m cheering you on!

Primary Sources (Reflected in the Text)

• Official: LP texts and operations (the 16 principles and everyday usage).
• 2021 announcement of the two new principles (employment & social responsibility).
• The company’s four overarching principles (philosophy).
• PR/FAQ and Two-Pizza practices (Day 1 mechanism; investment gate).
• Bar Raiser (objective interviews in hiring).
• Recent reporting on tying performance reviews to LPs.