Amazon Leadership Principle - Insist on the Highest Standards

The Thought - “Leaders have relentlessly high standards — many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high quality products, services, and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed”

What is “Insist on the Highest Standards” at Amazon

Insisting on the highest standard speaks about itself, it is about holding very high standards for performance, processes, people and for the services delivered to customers. Amazon, being a dynamic company, firmly believes that their processes can never be perfect, as they provide more services to the clients, yesterday’s solution may quickly become obsolete tomorrow. Hence it is importance to identify right metrics that measure the success of current processes and constantly look for improved metrics that ensure continuous rise of performance bar of the organisation.

Insist on the Highest Standards Amazon interview questions

• Talk about a time when you challenged the status-quo? Why was it important to change what was already working well?

• Talk about a significant initiative you have taken to improve customer experience?

• Take an example to explain a situation when you considered customer feedback to make changes to improve the service (sounds like a customer obsession question)?

• Talk about an example when you had to decide between quality and turn around time? What all did take into consideration or how did you decide which one needs more weightage?

Interviewers expectations from your answers on “Insist on the Highest Standards”

• Are you someone who continuously looks for improving the current process/service?

• Are you someone who constantly looks for building controls in the process so that sufficient time is spent on reviewing the process.

• Are you someone who evaluates current goals or metrics as opposed to growing needs?

• Are you someone who weighs quality of service over speed of service without impacting the timelines of service delivery?

Must have in your answers on “Insist on the Highest Standards”

• Mention about the frameworks you build to control and improve the quality of a service.

• Talk about improvement projects you exercised in past with a focus to generate long term business impact.

• Mention if you changed a metric that rightly aligns with customer expectations and measures the success of current process more aptly.

• Use data to set benchmarks, take aggressive but realistic improvement on goals to ensure customer experience is constantly improving.