There’s no such thing as “no process.” There’s either intentional process, or unintentional process. And actual innovation requires intentional process.
It’s statements like this that remind us why we love Pavel at The Product Picnic. His latest post on the Amazon layoffs, quoted above, is smart, provocative, and cutting.
Layoffs are irreversibly harmful to organizations and are tacit admissions of leadership unimaginitivity and failure. So are the short-sighted and deeply unserious hiring practices that make layoffs such an unsurprising element in our workplaces.
But here’s the thing… When someone with a mantle of leadership provides a simple-sounding but logically ridiculous explanation, and then on top of that does not take personal responsibility, what does that tell you?
Does this sound like an execution problem? Were teams taking too long to make decisions, like Jassy claims? Or were half-assed PRFAQs getting rammed into roadmaps as quickly as it was possible to write them, without the friction of a real process to get everyone to pause and figure out if any of it was valuable?
Unintentional process, accidental strategy, leaving far more than is necessary to chance… High-integrity leaders know they can do better, and so they do.
It is not hard. You must only have the courage to be deliberate about it. (If you feel provoked to action but aren’t sure where to begin, reply and we’ll figure it out together.)
Remember to take care of yourselves, and please consider subscribing to Pavel’s excellent newsletter, The Product Picnic:
Ben and David
StrategyTeaming.com