Amazon Leadership Principle - Dive Deep

The Thought - “Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdotes differ. No task is beneath them”

What is “Dive Deep” at Amazon

Dive Deep is a behaviour associated with one’s ability to drill down deeper into data or an issue. It is about breaking the barriers of level of work and dig deeper into data and the mechanics of the problem or business model. The deeper the understanding of the business model, the better one is equipped with the right information to understand customer problems. The forms of dig deeper can be different for each person, one may do shadow sessions with customer service representatives or may even take the customer calls to get hands on with customer issues. It is really about the approach of rolling up sleeves and take a "do it yourself" approach to understand the root cause of an issue.

Dive Deep Amazon interview questions

• Have you ever tried to dissect the data to find the root cause ? 

• Did you try a problem that needed a thorough analysis of the information or business model ?

• Did you work on a complicated problem that required you to do a lot of data analysis or number crunching ? 

• Did you ever try to analyse a metric/goal that was over achieved, if yes, why did you think you should analyse it ?

Interviewers expectations from your answers on “Dive Deep”

• Are you a person who has a deeper understanding of the business ?

• Are you a person who does process walkthroughs (for ex: GEMBA walk) to understand the upstream or downstream processes ?

• Are you someone who just limits yourself to goal met or not met, or a person who understands what that metric is about, why is it important, what happens if it is not met?

• Are you someone who waits for data to be served to you or someone who will not shy away from jumping into the process to understand & get the desired information ?

Must have in your answers on “Dive Deep”

• Talk about the finer details of the process along with bigger picture of the process.

• Mention how you took the lead to do it on your own to find out more than waiting for someone else to answer to your queries.

• Showcase that you are a person with an eye for detail, you challenge numbers both good and poor. Can ask right questions because you have a better understanding of the process.

• You have “peel the onion” approach, you un-layer the multiple layers of the process to get to the core. And, more importantly how you leverage this knowledge for analysing the solution.