The Gift of Unexpected Change
A Lesson from the Amazon Crypt
In the world of 24-hour news cycle, an hour ago is yesterday's news. Change happens whether you like it or not and often arrives without advance warning. Scary or annoying as change can be, unexpected events also offer a gift, a chance to shift from idling in neutral to drive.
We have a sterling example of that when President Biden announced, minutes after he made his decision, that he would end his candidacy for another term. Regardless of whether you agreed with him, the announcement set off a tsunami of reactions. Democrats breathed a sigh of relief to exit from limbo land, checkbooks flew open, and Republicans revised their attack points.
Whether in politics, business or personal life, there is nothing like a forcing function, an event that shakes loose inertia, blows away the white noise, and brings on single minded focus. The disruption caused by a forcing function can trigger anxiety. It also fires up engines, bringing energy nobody knew was there.
A Lesson from the Amazon Crypt
I saw this phenomenon writ large when I worked at Amazon, starting in the late 90's. As an adolescent company that needed to prove to Wall Street that we deserved the money it was sending us, we had to move at warp speed. Our organizing slogan, "Get big fast" meant taking large chances, because everything we did was new: new company, new channel of product distribution, new industry, and new employees arriving daily to work with people they hadn't met before.
What we had in common was a bias for action, except when we got stuck. With so many things to do and untested directions without the benefit of any operational history to guide us, assigning priorities to point the way was tough. To achieve success, we needed catalysts to flip the switch into the "on" position to pave the way to defined endings.
I initially reported to the Chief Logistics Officer whose charge was to roll out a national fulfillment center network before the holiday season at the end of the year. My team wasn't given anything so bourgeois as parameters, other than to find half million square foot buildings that happened to be unoccupied, were located next to good labor pools and not in "tax hellholes." To avoid waking up the competition, we had to move by cover of night, not letting anyone know we were looking around. That's all. In other words, if you succeeded in finding a building that met all those requirements, you had to leap on it.
Almost by miracle, we found a building that fit our parameters in an attractive region for product distribution. It also was the only available property in that area. We prepared to pounce.
The challenge was our CLO. When I told him about the building, rather than being excited, he responded with a perfunctory nod. He was busy navigating Amazon politics and figuring out how to design a new fulfillment system that would sort and send millions of product SKUs to individuals rather than stores. While his distraction was understandable, it was maddening, because without a building in which to process those SKUs, the fulfillment process was moot. Yet over the next few days, my lobbying for the building met with the same indifferent response.
Finally, as if answering my prayers, the angel of change appeared. Out of the blue came a rumor that an arch competitor of Amazon was nosing around the same neighborhood. I couldn't confirm it, but I decided a rumor was good enough. I plunked myself down opposite the CLO and told him what I learned. He stopped was he was doing, looked at me and said, "Okay, let's go."
Two weeks later, the CLO and twenty-four logistics experts gathered inside that building. With the benefit of sitting in a space from which to draw ideas and the intense pressure to close the real estate deal, in one day the team succeeded in developing the original map of Amazon's new and unprecedented fulfillment system.
And What About the Election?
I have no prediction on how the 2024 presidential election will turn out. I do know what happens when time is short and the stakes are high. People put aside other priorities and zero in on a target. With the unexpected catalyst of President Biden passing the torch to a new nominee, the Democrat party's stalled presidential election campaign has shifted into gear, enabling it to unify and focus on speeding down the same highway toward its November 5th destination.