Team development

The difference between success and failure for a team is not dependent on
factors such as intellect but more on behaviour. People are not the same and
each person has its own stage of intelect and focus. Of course all these factors
are important if you are working independent but when it comes to team forming
and team objectives the situation changes. Researches show that every team
development its formed based on a few stages:
FORMING; STORMING; NORMING; PREFORMING CONSTRUCTIVE ACTION;
ADJOURNING; SELF EVALUATION;
When refering to AMAZON.COM think that all of these stages are
applied over hundread of teams.
Now lets see why Jeff Bezos is such a good leader and CEO and more than that,
lets discuss about the methodes he used in building his company. Well start with
an interview where David Selinger, the founder of a well known company named
RichRelevance talks about how his experience with Bezos shaped him as a true
leader and CEO.
He says that in 2003 Amazon hired him directly out of Standford. He was bounced
around from one manager to another, including working directly with Bezos
himself. He said that Bezos formed a team and gave it to him, tasking them to dig
into Amazon's data to unearth new ways to grow business. His team responded
with three new systems that drove Amazon's annual profit by over 50$milion.
Bezos had an early love of computers and computer engineering. Even when he
had the idea and started developing it ( Amazon.com ) he worked along with a
few employees where they began developing software. They expanded
operations into a two-bedroom house, equipped with three Sun Microstations,
and eventually developed a test site. He had the gift to analyse each person and
test him so that he know perfectly how to establishe the team roles for each
employee and when Amazon was at its begining he assumed a few ones himself
so that everything could work perfectly.
While conventional wisdom has held that customer service is Amazons secret
sauce, Bezoss core innovation was to place data at the center of his corporate
culture. Despite big datas hype, Bezos is unique in his data focus. The rest of us
are using buzzwords to try to keep up.
Heres what it takes to do it right, according to the Amazon boss:
1. Metrics define your corporate culture. Bezos knew that things dont
improve unless theyre measured. At Amazon, everything that can be measured
is. Every piece of data is tested and analyzed, not just web design or product
features, but finance, HR and operations processes. Bezos and Amazon
reorganized around a new, even more aggressive method of measuring website

performance, changing hundreds of jobs to obsess about these very metrics.

Metrics become objectives, objectives become mantra, and mantra composes the
verbiage of everyones job.
2. Listening to data starts at the top. A data-driven culture is meaningless
without the support of the CEO and executive team. Bezos had a rare ability to
set opinions aside in favor of data
3. Democratize data. It is an approach to business that institutionalizes the
finding, questioning and testing of data. This requires that everyone, regardless
of seniority, have access to data and tools to test their ideas and intuitions. With
the established primacy of data, and broad empowerment to test early and often,
rapid innovation and huge gains become possible at scale. Its that simple.
Metrics, leadership and democracy are the data principles that will drive your
business forward.
But for any business administration there has to be a long term living plan. Jeff
Bezos focused on a few ideas and appointed different departments to develop
them. This is another good example of team development and working results.
1. Write out new ideas.
Bezos says the act of communal reading guarantees the groups undivided
attention.
2. Incentivize team members for the long term: make them owners.
3. Follow the two pizza rule.
When you're heading a collaboration of any kind, the number of people you bring
on board can change how effective your team's output is. Jeff Bezos, the CEO of
Amazon, suggests employing the "two pizza rule" to help keep yourself from
including too many people. Imagine you've ordered two pizzas for glorious
consumption. Now how many people could you reasonably feed with those two
pizzas? That's how many people should be involved in your team project.
4. Dedicate time to think about the future.
5. Routinely check in on long-term goals.
6. Work backwards.