S10-Ep33: Innovation Insights: Amazon Executives Share How They Deliver the Future

Guests: Amazon Vice-Presidents Udit Madan (Worldwide Operations), Jamil Ghani (Worldwide Prime), & Sarah Rhoads (Workplace Health & Safety)

Answer honestly: can you innovate? Most organizations can – but their leaders won’t. Fear of change is often cited, but the reality is they don’t know how.

Amazon’s success is predicated on constant innovation, so leaders there have deeply embedded it into their business culture. In this episode, we hear from three high-level Amazon executives, each one encouraging innovative mindsets in different ways. They reveal their teams’ latest innovations, and their own leadership philosophies that keep their teams on the cutting edge.

Here's what Udit, Jamil, Sarah and host Maureen Metcalf cover:

1. The secret sauce behind all Amazon initiatives: constant customer-back thinking;
2. How Prime uses AI to make shopping easier for those customers; and
3. The Six Pillars that fuel the goal of making Amazon the safest place to work on the planet.

Do a deeper dive on Amazon leadership with these interviews:

• To Err Is to Innovate with Beryl Tomay, Amazon VP of Last Mile Delivery & Technology
• Four Key Lessons on Trust & Safety from Amazon’s Head of Family Trust with Catherine Teitelbaum
• Putting People First with AI with Dave Levy, VP of Amazon Web Services WWPS
• How Moonshots & Robots Put Packages on Your Porch with Steve Armato, VP of Middle Mile & Tech at Amazon

For daily wisdom from our guests, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn. We’re onTikTok, Threads, and Twitter, too!

RESOURCES:  

Our host Maureen Metcalf posts a newsletter every week on LinkedIn. You can subscribe here. 

Maureen’s latest book is Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI. You’ll find details about it at https://bit.ly/LeaderInAI, or check out the Kindle version at https://amzn.to/44buVz8 . The audiobook version is now available at  https://amzn.to/4dTCleZ.

Her other 10 books are available on Amazon here. 

Books we’re reading for fun or personal development right now include:

• Take Back Your Power: 10 New Rules for Women at Work by Ancestry CEO Deb Liu, on how to overcome the obstacles women still face in the workplace – especially in tech. It’s in hardback at https://amzn.to/47OUO9E, and audio at https://amzn.to/3Y6EmOQ.
• Covert Cows and Chick-fil-A by Steve Robinson; it’s available in hardback at https://amzn.to/460LnmQ, on Kindle at https://amzn.to/3RVXhZs, and as an audiobook at https://amzn.to/3xPjBgn.
• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Paperback =