An Analysis of the Corporate Culture of "Flower Exploration" of Fortune 500 Enterprises

In a recent Fortune magazine ranking of the world's top 500 companies, there is a focus worthy of attention: Amazon entered the world's top three for the first time and became the "flower exploration" of the world's top 500 companies. This is the first time that an IT company has entered the top three in the world since 1995 Fortune Global 500 was first released. To some extent, this fact also shows that the power of science and technology will usher in a qualitative rise in the 2 1 century.

The Fortune 500 companies on the list not only have successful businesses, but also have their own unique corporate culture-Amazon, the most eye-catching "flower exploration" on the list, is like this. Its corporate culture, especially the 14 leadership principle and the "six-page" culture in corporate culture, is well known and imitated by more and more domestic enterprises.

Amazon's 14 leadership guide consists of 14 words or phrases, which are explained separately. Details can be found in official website, its company. These 14 leadership guidelines set standards for employees in almost all aspects of the company's work, such as "standing high" in setting goals, "acting fast" in carrying out tasks, "innovating and simplifying" in project teams, and "keeping frugal" in work style. In addition, the 65,438+04 Leadership Guidelines mainly stipulate the personal standards that Amazon employees should have, such as ownership, curiosity, daring to break through the comfort zone, having high standards and strict requirements for themselves.

However, what really makes the 14 leadership principle famous is not its content itself, but its implementation. From recruitment, performance, salary to personnel training, Amazon integrates the 14 leadership principle into all aspects of human resources "selection and retention". For example, in the recruitment process, when Amazon recruits new employees, it will specially arrange an old interviewer named "pole vault" to check whether the interviewer's values meet the 14 leadership standard during the interview. This move seems to "raise" the recruitment standard invisibly, but in fact it is to screen out people who are like-minded with Amazon.

Amazon employees who have been recruited and successfully hired will receive an assignment at the beginning of their employment: reciting the full text of 14 leadership guide. The specific content of the guidelines will be reflected in various management details of daily work. For example, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, constantly preaches frugality-reducing the cost of office chairs and rewarding those employees who dare to point out the extravagance and waste of the company, which is the implementation of the principle of "keeping frugality"; For another example, compared with other IT companies in the United States, Amazon gives employees a lower starting salary, but the return on shares will get better with the growth of employees' age, which is the implementation of the "ownership spirit" principle.

In addition to the organizational principle of 14, Amazon has a distinctive "six-page" culture. The so-called "six-page" culture means that Amazon is not willing to show the project meeting with PPT, but prefers to let the speaker write a report at the beginning of the meeting and send it to everyone for reading. The amount of writing should be about 6 pages, so as to ensure that participants can read it within 20 minutes. These six pages generally include "project background", "what problems should the project solve", "what should the team do", "discussion and analysis in the meeting" and "summary". It is believed that this culture will also inspire the improvement of the meeting process of domestic enterprises.

Compared with PPT, the six-page text requires the speaker's language organization and logical connection ability, which can stimulate the deep thinking of project members and improve the efficiency of Amazon project management in the long run. When writing a six-page paper, in order to achieve logical clarity, you need to use a certain logical framework. For example, barbara minto's "Golden Tower Principle", which is highly praised by many enterprises today, fails to provide opportunities to practice this principle in daily work, but Amazon's six-page culture can be introduced and continuously consolidated.

In fact, whether it is the 14 leadership principle or the six-page culture, there is a kind of "meta-culture"-Amazon's "Day 1" culture. It is by treating every day as the first day of starting a business that Amazon can always attach importance to values. Today, in an open letter to shareholders, Amazon still claims that "today is Amazon's 1 day". It's hard to get carried away when enterprises go deep into rivers and lakes. Amazon's 14 and 6, and the "1" behind them, will probably inspire many enterprises, especially the technology enterprises in China.