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Working Backwards

Insights, Stories and Secrets from Inside Amazon

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Working Backwards

By: Colin Bryar, Bill Carr
Narrated by: Bill Carr, Colin Bryar, Robert Petkoff
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About this listen

Working Backwards gives an insider's account of Amazon's approach to culture, leadership, and best practices from two long-time, top-level Amazon executives.

In 2018 Amazon became the world’s second trillion dollar company after Apple: a remarkable success story for a company launched out of a garage in 1994. How did they achieve this? And how can others learn from this extraordinary success and replicate it?

Colin started at Amazon in 1998; Bill joined in 1999. Their time at Amazon covered a period of unmatched innovation that brought products and services including Kindle, Amazon Prime, Amazon Echo and Alexa, and Amazon Web Services to life. Through the story of these innovations they reveal and codify the principles and practices that have driven the success of one of the most extraordinary companies the world has ever known, from the famous 14-leadership principles, the bar raiser hiring process, and Amazon’s founding characteristics: customer obsession, long-term thinking, eagerness to invent, and operational excellence.

Through their wealth of experience they offer unprecedented access to the Amazon way as it was refined, articulated and proven to be repeatable, scalable and adaptable. Working Backwards shows how success is not achieved by the genius of any single leader, but rather through commitment to and execution of a set of well-defined, rigorously executed principles and practices that you can apply at your own company, no matter the size.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2021 Colin Bryar and Bill Carr (P)2021 Macmillan Audio
Economics Workplace Culture Business Inspiring Innovation

Critic Reviews

"Essential for any leader in any industry." (Kim Scott, best-selling author of Radical Candor)

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A must for all business owners

Fantastic listening. Provides clear doable advice for improving business culture and processes. Highly recommended to people running businesses of all sizes.

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Interesting anecdotes, but often frustrating

The performance and narration was superb!

But the lessons learned are sometimes so frustrating, we don’t allow direct reports to conduct interviews, and the reason why was a bad manager!

Interesting insight, and some great takeaways.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Simple but brilliant

Well worth a read. Secrets of success put simply but comprehensively. Clear, easy to understand, practical and actionable

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

interesting if self aggrandizing

origin stories of Amazon products and management practices.

aws info was very basic. much bugger focus on the digital business

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