When “Scrappy” Becomes Sloppy: What Amazon’s Culture Overhaul Gets Wrong
A friend of mine once described working at Amazon as “building a rocket ship while being pushed off a cliff.” Back then, the company’s obsession with innovation made that intensity feel exciting. But today, Amazon’s attempt to reignite that startup energy feels less like culture transformation and more like corporate confusion. CEO Andy Jassy is making big moves. He’s mandating five days a week in the office. He’s cutting 15% of management. He’s warning against “fiefdoms” and telling employees to be scrappy and act like owners. And he’s saying—explicitly—that Amazon is a meritocracy now. “It’s not how charismatic you are,” Jassy told employees in a recent internal meeting. “It’s what we...
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CEO Empathy Gyms at KKR: A Conversation with Pete Stavros
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The Surrendered Leader
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Vision 2030: Because Odd Numbers Just Don’t Hit
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Who Owns Tariffs At Your Company? The New Rules of Leadership in 2025
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From Fear to FOMO: The AI Whiplash in the Workplace
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Outrage Is Easy. Accountability Is Hard.
Everyone gets selective about their outrage. We see it in politics, in business, in culture—everywhere. But what separates outrage that leads to...
Fear is Having Faith in Something You Don’t Want to Happen
Fear is persuasive. It takes over your thoughts, convincing you to fixate on worst-case scenarios. But fear is not just an emotional response—it is...
Where Have All the Middle Managers Gone?
Not long ago, the middle manager was the linchpin of the corporate world. They juggled project management, performance tracking, and resource...
Why Most People Suck At Power
I was listening to Joe Rogan this weekend when I was struck by one of his comments. I’m not a Rogan fan per se but he shared one line that I loved:...
My New Year’s resolution is to raise the stakes
For the past year, I’ve been wrestling with a nagging feeling that the stakes in my life aren’t high enough. It’s not that things are bad. They’re...
A Culture for All Generations
Disrupting the way we think about generations to attract, engage, and retain all employees
There’s a real benefit in dismantling the perceptions behind Gen Z or X, or whatever the next trendy label is! Citing extensive academic research from her book, Unfairly Labeled, Jessica provides a refreshingly enlightening and data-driven perspective on how multi-generational organizations can strip away stereotypes and and biases that hinder performance and prevent progress toward a common purpose.
