The Amazon Way by John Rossman

Author:John Rossman
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf, mobi
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent
Published: 2014-06-15T16:00:00+00:00

The Regret Minimization Framework

One of my favorite Jeff concepts is the idea of the regret minimization framework. It was something he referred to every once in a while, especially when we were thinking big and preparing to do something that everyone thought was crazy ... launching the third-party seller division, for instance.

Apparently, when Jeff decided he was going to quit his job and start a company that sold books online, his boss at D. E. Shaw advised him to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision. So Jeff sat down and tried to find the right framework in which to make that kind of big decision. In typical Jeff Bezos long-term thinking manner, he referenced something he called his regret minimization framework. As he explained in a 2001 interview:

I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, “Okay, now I’m looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have.” I knew that when I was 80 I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day, and so, when I thought about it that way it was an incredibly easy decision. And, I think that’s very good. If you can project yourself out to age 80 and sort of think, “What will I think at that time?” It gets you away from some of the daily pieces of confusion. You know, I left this Wall Street firm in the middle of the year. When you do that, you walk away from your annual bonus. That’s the kind of thing that in the short-term can confuse you, but if you think about the long-term then you can really make good life decisions that you won’t regret later.9

This is advice that works well when applied to a personal career decision. But it works just as well when making a decision about the future of your business. Which choice will look best when you consider it, not six months or one year from now, but decades in the future? Chances are that’s the right option—the one that holds out the promise of doing really big things.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.