Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos Says Employees Hated This Change

Amazon is a force to be reckoned with right now and Jeff Bezos, its CEO, just catapulted to the 2nd. spot on the richest people in the world list.

The billionaire CEO and the online retail giant have had some hurdles getting to the point they are at now though.

In a letter to shareholders Wednesday, Bezos revealed what was one of the major disputes inside the Amazon company.

That dispute was whether Amazon should invite third-party sellers to directly compete with the online retailer through its product detail pages.

“Many smart, well-intentioned Amazonians were simply not at all aligned with the direction,” Bezos explained.

Today, you see third party sellers all over Amazon selling merchandise in competition with Amazon. Many who were in disagreement over allowing it, questioned how it would impact the company’s profits and the user experience in whole.

“‘You’ve worn me down’ is an awful decision-making process,” Bezos said. “It’s slow and de-energizing. Go for quick escalation instead – it’s better.”

Bezos said Amazon has streamlined decision-making processes by immediately escalating issues between intransigent teams to senior-level leaders.

“Sometimes teams have different objectives and fundamentally different views,” Bezos explained in his letter to shareholders. “They are not aligned. No amount of discussion, no number of meetings will resolve that deep misalignment.

Without escalation, the default dispute resolution mechanism for this scenario is exhaustion. Whoever has more stamina carries the decision.”

Disclaimer: We have no position in Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) and have not been compensated for this article.