I experienced a bit of cognitive dissonance the other day when I watched a video of Jeff Bezos, the Founder and CEO of Amazon, talking about corporate culture with veteran tech journalist Walt Mossberg at Recode's Code Conference. Earlier that same day I had seen an article talking about how awful Amazon's work culture was, how employees deal with burdensome conditions, low wages, long hours. So it was interesting to hear Bezos basically insist the exact opposite was true: that Amazon's culture is top-tier, that it inspires (at least some) employees to be 'missionaries for what they do.'
I'm not sure quite what I expected to hear. It would undermine his credibility and authority if he said 'Oh well, yeah - our culture is garbage, there is nothing good or redeeming about it, all we care about is money, etc. etc.'. Moreover, it wouldn't be a true statement: even in the worst corporate cultures there are generally a couple of cultural pieces that are good. And yet, I found it odd that he papered over the criticism - he just kind of ignored it and spoke about how great the culture was. Unfortunately, he didn't provide many specifics, so there's no way to really verify what he is saying.
Let’s give Bezos the benefit of the doubt in his assessment. What else could be going on here? I’m going to borrow a phrase that has its origins in another major tech leader and innovator, Apple. The engineers at Apple started to refer to Steve Jobs as having a ‘reality distortion field’ (RDF) around him. That is, the force of his personality, intelligence, forward-thinking, and charisma augmented the ‘reality’ around him.
I want to use this term when thinking about culture, because it seems to me that many times there is an RDF surrounding this topic, and Bezos assertion is a good example of this. Despite evidence to the contrary, he insists that Amazon’s culture is excellent. What could be driving this?
For one thing, a cultural RDF is easy to miss when a company is doing as well as Amazon. To refer back to Apple, many people were very happy to keep Jobs at the helm while Apple was growing and doing well, but his RDF eventually caught up with him when he was dismissed by the board in the mid-eighties. Amazon has a great distribution network, platform, streaming service, and generally good customer service – all point towards a healthy and successful company.
For another point, most visionary, successful, and high level leaders have huge amounts of charisma and intelligence. As part of their status, they are generally several levels removed from the ‘boots on the ground’. Furthermore, the information coming to them is distilled through directors and managers on the way up. Though necessary in a huge company like Amazon, Bezos is dependent upon many, many advisors and direct reports to give him accurate information. Sometimes, for many reasons, this fails to happen. As we often say at PG&A, ‘you don’t always know what you don’t know.’
But here is the major problem with a RDF: it is not accurately reflecting reality! And that is a huge problem when it comes to leadership. In his book Necessary Endings, psychologist and consultant Dr. Henry Cloud states "successful people and successful leaders all have one thing in common: they get in touch with reality." What he means by that is that they have the ability, resources, or tools (or all of the above) to clearly interpret what is actually going on - they 'get in touch with reality.'
The bottom line is that reality distortion fields are incredibly damaging for your culture. If you don’t have an accurate, objective, realunderstanding of your company’s reality--competitive pressures, regulatory issues, public perception, economic challenges, employee engagement & morale--you cannot make the best, most informed decision.
So is Bezos in touch with reality concerning his corporate culture? No one on the outside knows for sure, but his answers to Mossberg's questions were kind of standard and unhelpful. I have never spoken with an executive that proudly proclaimed 'our company has the worst culture ever!' - the proof is always in the pudding. For the sake of Amazon's employees, as well as the health of the company in general, let's hope Jeff Bezos gets in touch with Amazon’s reality--regularly.
