Leadership Characteristics of Jeff Bezos: Manager or Leader?

This report highlights the characteristics of Jeff Bezos as a leader and manager. It evaluates his leadership and management roles in perspective of the future operations of the company. It also suggests that leaders like Jeff Bezos are required by the organisation in the future as the business environment is going to become more complex.

Leading Change

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Executive Summary
Leadership plays a highly critical role in the success of the organisation. Leadership style
suggests the way in which leader and their followers are going to process and has a
significant impact on the strategies made by the organisation. This report will highlight the
characteristics of Jeff Bezos where it was found that Jeff Bezos is both manager and a
leader. He is a transformational leader while an active manager who knows how to utilise
available resources. This report also illustrates about Jeff’s characteristics where it was
found that he is a big thinker, he is strategically patient while tactically impatient and also
believes in regret minimisation. These characteristics have taken company to new heights.
This report also illustrates that taking his leadership style can have major consequences if
not managed properly as he imparts risky decisions in his business. In the last section of the
report it is suggested that in the future as the business environment is going to become more
complex hence leaders like Jeff Bezos is required by the organisation.

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Contents
Introduction............................................................................................................................ 1
Manager or leader.................................................................................................................. 1
Characteristics that helped him driving Amazon forward........................................................3
Consequences of taking his style too far................................................................................5
Jeff Bezos in the future...........................................................................................................6
Conclusion............................................................................................................................. 6
References............................................................................................................................. 7

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Introduction
In today’s time, leadership is playing a critical role in the success of the organisation. It is the
strategic leadership of any firm that gives them competitive advantage over the rivals. It’s the
leadership style that sets the direction for organisation and motivates people to do anything.
A leader in today’s time is a good manager (Lunenburg, 2012). This is an essential
requirement of achieving the long and short goals. Global leading firms have gained
competitive advantage in terms of the fact that leader that are able to improve the ways in
which they are dealing with the situation are better able to apply the strategic management.
The success story of the Amazon is also because the company has a leadership like Jeff
Bezos. Jeff Bezos is known for changing the Amazon from just book, video or music stores
to everything store.
This report is going to highlight different aspects of Jeff Bezos as leader as well as manager.
It is also going to evaluate his leadership and management in roles in perspective of the
future operations of the company.
Manager or leader
Jeff Bezos is known for his leadership skills but he is an able manager too. The success of
his company is attributed to the leadership style he follows and the leadership approach he
has adopted so as to become successful. But at the same time, critical role is also played by
the management skills he has. Many have questioned that whether Jeff Bezos is a better
leader of manager. Actually he is both (Stone, 2013). His transformational leadership along
with his understanding about the market has made him a good leader. He knew when
exactly was a time when Amazon should move from being just a book, video and music
stores to an online stores that delivers all the products. He is known to follow strategic
leadership which again is used for the management of situation and for making strategies
that gives them competitive advantage over the rivals. His leadership quality such as
motivational skills has helped him to gain the faith of the stakeholders. This can be
understood by the fact that in his strategy of utilising low cost pricing so as to gain
competitive advantage over the rivals has led Amazon to lose a significant amount of money
in the market (Chaston, 2017). For years, this company did not show a positive profits even
when the sales volume was increasing at much faster speed. Even after this he was able to
convince his investors that Amazon is going to give them returns that are unexpected. It is
his hardship that its stock was up by around 397% in the last five years. He understands the
value of making lightening quick decision making process. Slower decision making can
degrade the performance of the company especially when it comes to the management of
the services (Collinson and Tourish, 2015). At the same time, he also suggests that quality

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of the decisions should also be according to the changing habits of the people. The matter of
the fact that in being quick what happens is that most of the companies will wait for 90% of
the information so as to make decisions but he suggests that Amazon should concentrate on
making decisions even when the information is just 70%. It is these smaller things that give a
company advantage in the market.
Jeff Bezos is stated to follow the customer centric approach towards strategy development.
This can be understood in terms of the fact that in any strategic meeting he always leaves a
chair empty, which denotes the customers and considers them as the most important person
in the room as he states that the actual owner of Amazon is its customers. The extent of
their leadership can be understood by the fact that he has made 500 measurable goals for
themselves and almost 80% of it gets related with the objectives of the consumers (Brandt,
2011). He has been focused towards developing algorithms that turned one set of
consumer’s habit into recommendation for new set customers.
At the same time, there is an enhancement in the way an organisation is keeping the pace
with the changing global business environment. In this situation what organisations needs is
a situational leader having lots of ideas (Kantor and Streitfeld, 2015). He is known to follow
contingent theory as he thinks that there is no best approach to leadership. Since the
complexity of the job as a leader is becoming difficult day by day hence it is critical that
leaders utilises their skills of management so as to manage the resources in an effective
manner that can help them in their development and also ensure that there are lesser
numbers of leak points that can be dangerous for the company. With his focus of
management revolving towards the technology, he is known for managing things with the
help of technological mediums. It is also seen that there are people from different parts of
the world working as his subordinates and he know how to manage them as a team which
enables them to achieve the desired results (Matthews, Harbin and Daigle, 2018). His
management quality can be understood in terms of the fact that he conducts meeting every
week where corrective actions are taken by the company so as to remain competitive in the
market. Bezos is a strict manager as he wants everything to get delivered on time, without
errors and ensures that their products do not get out-of stock. Amazon’s metric showed that
0.1 second delay in the page rendering can result in the 1% drop in the consumer’s activity
(Ignatius, 2014). For this he monitors each and every aspect of their process so as to ensure
that he could take best possible efforts to deliver things on time to their consumers. Many of
his colleagues tell the story of his way of doing things when he extended his limits as a
leader so as to ensure that everything goes as per the requirements of the company. He
always pushed towards details which ensured that he is getting everything as per the
requirements of the firm. He as a manger ensures that each of the resources of the company

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is utilised in an appropriate manner so as to ensure that everything goes as per the plans he
has made. He focuses on outcomes and not the just the process applied and he has an idea
that processes becomes proxy when it comes to management of outcomes. He suggests
that it is not effective for any manager to look at the management while not ensuring the
outcomes (Saleh and Hu, 2016).
He is an effective leader and manager because he has been able to look towards the
organisational purposes and also towards the corporate social responsibilities. As a
manager he aims to improve the corporate profitability but as a leader he aims to improve
the overall image of the firm. This can be understood in terms of fact that he has invested a
lot in the areas such as CSR development. He has a visionary approach towards making the
business look easy while ensuring that tasks are completed on time (Fetscherin, 2015). He
also suggests focusing on external trends as it gives the idea about how the things are going
to change within the firm and ignoring these might result in ignoring the future.
Characteristics that helped him driving Amazon forward
It is the characteristic of the leader that enhances the way in which they deal with the
challenges both internal and external in nature.
 Big thinker: He believes in looking towards the big thinks rather than concentrating on
small things. This is why he is concentrated towards developing strategies that gives
them long term profits in the market. He understands the value of corporate purpose
in order to achieve the specific demands. Jeff listens to every idea that is presented
in front of him and thinks about the consequences that this idea can generate for
company in the long run. He puts up bigger challenges in front of the team within the
organisation and he set the team to think something big in every situation. It is his
characteristic that has promoted Apple to search for innovations (Hamad, 2015). In
this regards, he innovate skills and at the same time he innovates the processes so
as to remain ahead of the competitors.

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Figure 1: Amazon's growth over the year
 Strategically patient, tactically impatient: He knows when to remain patient and when
to work with impatience. He makes strategies that he has made for the long term and
puts his vision in centre of everything so as to ensure that everything get achieved on
time. When anyone says him that something is impossible, he suggests not to think
in that way and tells them to come out of some new idea (Muenjohn and McMurray,
2018). Tactically he wants to stay ahead of his rivals for whom he suggests to
quicken thinks rather than waiting for the situation to get developed and then take
actions accordingly. He is known for taking risks but once that are calculated. He is a
hardcode realist and known for understanding the probabilities and calculating the
chances of the failure of his strategies. This has helped the company in reaching at
the top. He is a staunch experimentalist who believes in doing experiments according
to the demand in the company.

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Figure 2: Amazon Stats
 Believes in regret minimisation: Jeff Bezos is known for his regret minimisation theory
and he is known for taking responsibilities and strong decisions for betterment of their
associated stakeholders (Cronin, 2014). In this process, he is taking the help of
knowledge management initiatives. He is straight forward and ensures that all the
expectation of their stakeholders is met. This is major reason why there are so many
associated stakeholders who are happy with the firm.
Consequences of taking his style too far
His style of leadership and his skills related to the management of resources has helped him
to enhance his overall business strategies. The consequences of the company are long term
and most of them will be long term. The first consequence will be the fact that this company
is going to achieve new heights and at the same time it will help in enhancing the skills
related to the management. His calculated risk taking approach will help the firm in
enhancing the pace of the development of the firm (Mishra, 2016). He is known for the use
of technology by continuous innovation in the technology mediums so as to improve the
overall processes going in the organisation. This is going to give the company competitive
advantage in the future. Taking his style too far might bring changes in the way companies
are thinking about their customers (Thompson and Tracy, 2010). The customer driven
approach adopted by the companies will allow the firms to remain competitive and also
allows the firms to enhance the skills that they have.
Taking Jeff Bezos style too far can also have negative impact on the business which does
not have the ability to look at different perspectives of the management. This can also be

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understood in terms of the fact that there are people from different parts of the world and it is
not easy for any management to take everyone together. For this there is need of strategic
leaders and management that stands with the people (Al-Daaja, 2017). By just adopting the
leadership style of Jeff Bezos one cannot be successful, leaders also requires the vision and
the skills to manage all the functional units of the firm appropriately. As he himself believes
that there is large chance that Amazon might fail in case even one decision is made. This is
learning for other leaders who think that investment is the key to success but rather a
decisive and probabilistic calculation that lets an organisation to succeed.
Jeff Bezos in the future
Since the environment for business is changing at much faster speed hence it is critical for
the leaders to be more realistic and take decision that is in the interest of all the
stakeholders. In the time ahead since the business environment is going to get more
complex hence it is critical that company needs an able manager than a leader. Since Jeff
Bezos have quality of manager as well as leader hence he is a suitable leader for the firm.
Since the economic and political situation of the world is going to become more volatile
hence company needs a manager that is able to construct strategies that enables the
company to take proper utilisation of resources and also ensure that long term success of
the firm is achieved (Lampel, Honig and Drori, 2014). The issues such as sustainability and
the corporate social responsibilities are becoming big hence it is critical that the decision
making of the firm remains in the hands of the person that has long term vision who can
work for the progress of the company in the long run. It is also essential for the leaders in
tomorrow’s business markets that they have a plan to deal with the uncertainties which again
could not just be fulfilled by providing resources or investments to the firm but also requires
management skills.
Conclusion
From the above based report, it can be concluded that Jeff Bezos is an able leader and he is
known to use the leadership theory of contingent leader. He is both a leader and manager as
he has a vision of a leader and understanding of a manager to take Amazon to new heights.
Big thinker, strategically patient, tactically impatient and believe in regret minimisation
theory, risk taking approach are some of his characteristics that has taken Amazon to the
heights which is in current times. There are both positive and negative consequences of
taking his leadership too far. In future also, he should remain as a leader of the Amazon as
he has a visionary leadership for the sustainability approach of the company.

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