One of the common themes since Steve Jobs passed away a couple of years back is that for companies to become ridiculously successful today, they need to have a tyrannical genius at the top. A new book, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone of Bloomberg Businessweek, reinforces that narrative.
According to Mr. Stone, Mr. Bezos thrives on confrontation and puts employees through "fire drills" when addressing an issue raised by a customer in which he has taken a personal interest. All it takes is a question mark in the subject line of an e-mail forwarded by Mr. Bezos for all heck to break loose.
Mr. Stone writes that Mr. Bezos is not dissimilar to other technology executives, including Mr. Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Andy Grove, when it comes to making work difficult for employees. Mr. Bezos, Amazon employees say, sometimes explodes into what they call "nutters."
Most of his outbursts are a direct result of his total commitment to improving customer service and, in turn, his company's performance. That doesn't make them any less blistering. Here are a few of Mr. Bezos' greatest hits:
"Are you lazy or just incompetent?"
"We need to apply some human intelligence to this problem."
"This document was clearly written by the B team. Can someone get me the A team document? I don't want to waste my time with the B team document."