Anyone Can Have a Big Idea. Thinking Big is About Charting a Path.

Welcome to the Scarlet Ink newsletter. I’m Dave Anderson, an ex-Amazon Tech Director and GM. Each week I write a newsletter article on tech industry careers and tactical leadership advice.

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As I mentioned last week, Ethan Evans made a leadership course for those interested in moving to more senior levels, and I have a discount code for 15% off for those interested. The class is “Beyond Senior Manager - Break Through to Strategic Executive.” (that 15% discount code is linked)

I was on a trail running trip this last week with my wife at the Channel Islands National Park. We talked about the vast number of signs with various rules. Obvious things like not chasing the foxes. Or how you need to pick up your garbage. And some that were more picky.

I mentioned that it was funny that they felt the need to put up a sign that you’re not allowed to take a rock from their huge rocky ocean beach.

My wife said that the problem is that you can’t trust people to be smart. A single memento rock isn’t a big deal in reality. But if they didn’t have the signs, people might get the bright idea to collect thousands of pounds of rocks off the beach and cause an issue.

The classic, “Dumb people ruin everything.”

Interestingly, I stumbled on this article about collecting rocks which says the same thing.

“If each of our 50,000 visitors to Middle Cove beach took away a few rocks that wouldn’t make a difference … [but] it does get to be a problem if people decide to start mining the beach or removing dump truck loads. We have had some beaches in eastern Avalon that have been very much changed because of that,” added Catto.

The same thing happens at big companies. If you are at a small company and you trust the competence of your peers, you don’t need many rules. “While traveling, expense a reasonable amount.” is the policy.

Unfortunately, as you grow, you’ll inevitably end up with an idiot who decides to fly first class, and treat their whole family to dinner on the company dime.

And that’s how you end up with a 15 page “expense report policies” document.

I’d quietly broken the rules over the years at Amazon, but Ethan was the first VP I’d heard openly explain how he felt about it. Which was refreshingly clear.

He’d explained that rules are good guidelines to follow, but leaders also need to know when the rules should be broken. He explained that following the rules is never an acceptable excuse for a poor result.

And that’s today’s lesson I took away from working for Ethan. If you’d like similar lessons, take the class I linked above! Ok. Moving on!

I love the Amazon Leadership Principles (LPs). Regardless of what you think of Amazon’s current leadership, or their recent layoffs, or their return-to-the-office edicts, I think the Amazon Leadership Principles are pretty spectacular.

One that I think is regularly misunderstood is the Think Big principle.

The reason I think it’s misunderstood is that it feels so easy to understand. Obviously leaders need to Think Big! Thinking big is probably the first thing we think of when we think of a famous innovation leader.

Like the first iPhone! Steve Jobs! Or the Ford assembly line! Henry Ford!

Those revolutionary products are certainly the results of Think Big, but not in the way you’d think.

I’ve done many interviews, and for various reasons we’d sometimes ask people for an example of Think Big (usually without literally using the LP name). Almost always, they explain an eureka moment.

"I have the best idea! We should build a way for Amazon to automatically buy things that customers might need, but those customers didn't know that they needed them. We can call it Amazon Autobuy. If we automatically have customers buy things every month, it could be worth billions per year."

Yes, someone presented that idea to me during an interview. That’s a real and unexaggerated example.

Is the idea big? Financially, it has the potential to be huge. It certainly doesn’t pass the customer obsession sniff test, and I suspect that it would be hated. But that's not actually the point of this article.

Yes, it’s a big idea.

Is it a unique idea? Yes, it’s an example of out-of-the-box thinking. So it’s a unique big idea.

However, let’s say you worked at Amazon, and presented this idea to your manager. Could your manager use that as an example of how you Think Big?

No, not at all. It wouldn’t match the definition of the Amazon Think Big leadership principle.

"But why not?!" you ask, as you point out that your idea is financially huge, complex, and innovative...