Summary

The article discusses Amazon's "Are Right, A Lot" leadership principle, emphasizing the importance of leaders making well-informed decisions through strong judgment, diverse perspectives, and open-mindedness.

Abstract

The article, part of a series explaining Amazon's Leadership Principles, delves into the principle "Are Right, A Lot." It clarifies that this principle is not about being infallible but rather about possessing strong judgment and good instincts, coupled with the humility to seek disconfirming evidence and diverse perspectives. Leaders at Amazon are expected to make high-quality decisions, especially in situations with incomplete information, by drawing on their experience and anecdotal evidence, as well as by being open to input from others. The principle underscores the idea that leaders should strive to be as right as possible by learning from their mistakes and supporting the best solutions, even when they are not their own. The article also touches on the potential pitfalls of overconfidence and the importance of self-trust and data-backed decision-making.

Opinions

The principle "Are Right, A Lot" is often misunderstood; it's not about being always right but about striving to make the best decisions with the information available.
Leaders should combine their judgment and experience with an open-minded approach to gather information from various sources, including team members.
The principle suggests that the best solution may come from others, and leaders should support these solutions rather than insisting on their own.
Overconfidence and stubbornness are seen as dangerous signs, indicating a lack of openness to other perspectives and data.
Admitting mistakes and learning from them is crucial for leadership growth, as it prevents repeating the same errors and improves future decision-making.
In interviews, candidates should demonstrate their ability to make tough decisions with limited information and show that they can learn and grow from being wrong.

Working like an Amazonian: Leadership Principles Explained — 4. Are Right, A Lot

In my previous articles, I have covered the first three Amazon Leadership Principles. If you haven’t read them, here are some links:

Working like an Amazonian: Leadership Principles Explained — 1. Customer Obsession

In this series, I will explain all the leadership principles so that you too can work like an Amazonian, and nail the…

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Working like an Amazonian: Leadership Principles Explained — 2. Ownership

In the second chapter of this series, we talk about ownership — how Amazonians do it and what you can learn from it.

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Working like an Amazonian: Leadership Principles Explained — 3. Invent and Simplify

An introduction to AWS leadership principle — invent and simplify. How to do it right, what to avoid, and how to ace…

medium.com

In this chapter, we will cover the most misunderstood principle:

Are Right, A Lot

Photo by Pablo García Saldaña on Unsplash

Amazon’s definition goes as follows:

Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs.

Amazon wants everybody to make good decisions, and this is where this principle kicks in.

I knew I have said that Amazon wants you to think everybody is a leader in the project, but this principle mainly applies to the real leaders, I.E., managers. Because chances are, not every individual is in a position where they would be fully in charge of a decision, especially when it’s a hard decision to make. If you are interviewing for a junior position, chances are, you will not meet questions on this one. So while it’s essential, you can prepare for it accordingly.

This is also perhaps the most misunderstood principle of them all. I’ve even heard Amazonians say the same about it. While it’s true, people understood it because this principle isn’t well defined (I’m sorry to say this, but it’s true), both the title and the official definition.

If you understand it literally, you would explain it by “leaders are always right because they have strong judgment.” Well, you don’t even need any knowledge to know this saying couldn’t possibly be true because nobody can always be right — that’s what the hidden meaning of this principle is all about.

Here’s my interpretation of this principle:

Are Right

Leaders should be both smart and open-minded.

Everyone can make decisions, especially the easy ones, where you have all the information you need.

The difficulty lies in the lack of information — to make a well-informed decision — “guess” if you wish — even though there isn’t enough information at hand.

To make a well-informed decision, there isn’t much to do, except two methods:

1 Using Anecdotal Experience

Chances are, there have been similar situations before from which you can learn. You can compare, find similarities, and infer if the previous method would work for the current issue or not.

Leaders should have quite some project experience.

When facing uncertainty, they know to rely on not only their instinct (which can also be sharpened by your previous experience) but also anecdotal experience.

2 Open-minded

You may not know all the details needed to make a well-informed decision, but chances are, other people and other sources might have the information that you don’t. It’s not possible to know everything, but with a group effort, you might know more than you already did.

So, when making decisions and there is a lack of information, seek out it. This principle doesn’t mean you are always right. It means you know how to become “more” right — by applying good judgment, experience and seeking out more information, aka open-minded.

A Lot

You are right a lot doesn’t really mean you are right “a lot”; au contraire, it means you could be wrong.

Nobody can always be right, and you have to know this before making the best decisions.

You need to know there is a limit to your knowledge. Everybody has his own knowledge pool. It’s not possible for you to know everything, so it’s not a shame that sometimes you don’t know better than your teammates.

The goal of the leader is to choose the best solution for the problem, and if the best solution is your solution, it’s only a happy coincidence. Sometimes, more often than not, the best solutions come from others: team members, colleagues, etc. As a leader, you need to know that you can’t always be right, and you should support the best solution rather than your own solution. When there are multiple solutions, though, you can still rely on your good judgment and experience to help the team reach a conclusion about which is best.

That’s what this principle is all about — know your limit, know that you could be wrong, be open-minded, learn from others, besides using your judgment and experience.

Dangerous Signs

If you always think you are right, you are already wrong. This is equivalent to not listening to other people’s inputs / stubborn / would not change idea even if other people’s data supports it, etc.

On the other extreme, you should trust yourself. Trust your good judgment; trust your experience. Do not switch sides easily just to please the team. Using your best judgment when there are multiple opinions.

When using your judgment, you should have enough knowledge in that area, and you should have data supporting your idea. If the facts were wrong or your logic didn’t stand, the decision would be wrong too.

I felt like I should have another section about how to be right a lot, but I think it’s already covered in this section, so I’ll leave that part out.

Mock Interview

Really, there are only two key things I want to figure out if I were an interviewer: making a not well-informed decision (who can’t make easy decisions, right?), and how do you handle it when you are wrong.

On the “not well informed decision” part, I could ask: please tell me when you didn’t have all the required data, but you have to make a decision. Here, apparently, I want to hear how you used your judgment, experience to solve the issue. And, I want to poke around and see whether you gathered information from others or not; and if yes, how you handled all the different opinions, especially if the opinions came from different parties, and how you used your judgment to put the team on the same page.

On the “wrong” part, I could ask: tell me about a project where you made a bad or even wrong decision. Of course, I want you to admit your error and take responsibility. But more importantly, I want to know if you have learned from this lesson or not. Everybody can make mistakes. Leaders are not exceptions. What separates the “great” from the “good” is, when the “great” make mistakes, they learn from them so that they won’t make the mistakes again. Maybe you made a mistake by not proactively trying to collect more data. Maybe you made a mistake by not using the proper experience to make the decision. Maybe it’s because you didn’t listen to others. It doesn’t matter; the mistake has already been made. What’s more important is to learn from it — whether you see why you made that mistake or not, and how you could improve.