Jeff Bezos expresses his frustration with the slow progress of Blue Origin and explains why he left his role as CEO of Amazon.

Frustration with the rate of progress in Blue Origin

Bezos emphasizes the importance of moving faster at Blue Origin and becoming the world's most decisive company.

The need for speed and decisive decision-making

Bezos discusses the concept of one-way door decisions that are difficult to reverse and the need for careful analysis and decision-making.

Differentiating one-way door and two-way door decisions

Bezos explains the importance of the 'disagree and commit' principle in decision-making and teamwork.

Disagree and commit principle

Bezos discusses the limitations of compromise and stubbornness as resolution mechanisms and emphasizes the importance of seeking truth and making decisions quickly.

Effective dispute resolution mechanisms

Bezos highlights the need for a culture that supports high velocity decision-making and the importance of maximizing the speed of decisions at all scale levels.

Maximizing velocity of decisions

# Blue Origin's Need for Speed

In this edition:

- Frustration with the rate of progress
- The importance of speed and urgency
- Decisiveness as a key principle
- Differentiating one-way door and two-way door decisions
- Disagreeing and committing
- Resolving disputes effectively


Is there a part of you that's frustrated by the rate of progress in Blue Origin? Blue Origin needs to be much faster and it's one of the reasons that Jeff Bezos left his role as the CEO of Amazon a couple of years ago. He wanted to come in and Blue Origin needs him right now.

## The Importance of Speed and Urgency

As the CEO of Amazon, Bezos believed in giving his full attention to the publicly traded company. He felt an obligation to all stakeholders to do so. However, to bring the necessary energy and sense of urgency to Blue Origin, Bezos made the decision to step down as CEO of Amazon and focus on Blue Origin.

At Blue Origin, the goal is to become the world's most decisive company across any industry. Just as Amazon became known for its customer obsession, Blue Origin aims to be known for its decisiveness. This involves taking appropriate technology risks, making quick decisions, and fostering a culture that supports boldness and ambition.

## Differentiating One-Way Door and Two-Way Door Decisions

Bezos explains the concept of one-way door and two-way door decisions. One-way door decisions are consequential, irreversible, and require careful consideration. These decisions should be made deliberately and with multiple ways of analyzing the situation. On the other hand, two-way door decisions are reversible and can be made quickly by individuals or small teams within the organization.

## Disagreeing and Committing

One of the key principles Bezos highlights is the importance of disagreeing and committing. In a team setting, disagreements are inevitable, but at some point, a decision needs to be made. Disagreeing and committing means that even if you don't fully agree with a decision, you support it and actively work towards its success. This behavior fosters trust and collaboration within teams.

## Resolving Disputes Effectively

Bezos discusses various dispute resolution mechanisms and highlights the limitations of compromise and stubbornness. Compromise may be low energy, but it doesn't necessarily lead to truth. Similarly, a war of attrition based on stubbornness is demoralizing and unproductive. Instead, Bezos encourages escalation to higher levels of authority for resolution and emphasizes the importance of seeking truth and making decisions quickly.

In the next edition, we will explore more insights from Jeff Bezos on leadership and innovation at Blue Origin.

Stay tuned!


Blue Origin's Need for Speed

He was frustrated by the rate of progress in Blue Origin.

He wanted to start a new business venture.

He wanted to retire from his professional career.

To add energy and urgency to Blue Origin.

Decisions that have irreversible consequences.

Decisions that involve multiple stakeholders.

By making quick decisions without analysis.

By empowering individuals or small teams.

Disagreeing without committing to a decision.

Disagreeing and refusing to commit to a decision.

Disagreeing but still supporting a decision.

It promotes open and honest communication.

He was frustrated by the rate of progress in Blue Origin

To become the world's most customer-obsessed company

To become the world's most decisive company

To become the world's largest e-commerce company

To become the world's leading healthcare provider

Decisions that are irreversible and require careful consideration

Decisions that are made quickly without much thought

Decisions that have no significant impact

To disagree with a decision but still support and commit to it

To always agree with decisions made by others

To disagree and refuse to participate in the decision-making process

To disagree and actively work against the decision

Using compromise as a resolution mechanism

Arriving at truth through exhaustive arguments

Moving forward quickly and making decisive decisions

Jeff Bezos left his role as CEO of Amazon in order to focus on Blue Origin and speed up progress. He wants Blue Origin to become the world's most decisive company and make bold decisions quickly. He emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between one-way door decisions and two-way door decisions. He also promotes the principle of "disagree and commit" to resolve disagreements and make decisions. Bezos criticizes compromise and stubbornness as ineffective resolution mechanisms.

- It is not productive to have a war of attrition where executives exhaust each other in order to make a decision.
- It is important to escalate disagreements rather than prolonging them.
- The goal should be to reach a resolution quickly and get as close to the truth as possible.
- Compromise and exhausting the other person are not effective ways to seek truth.
- Disagree and commit can be used when no one knows the real truth.
- Escalating to a higher authority for a decision is better than a war of attrition.
- Decisiveness and quick decision-making increase velocity and should be part of the culture.
- Amazon's culture supports high velocity decision-making at every scale.

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Is there a part of you that's frustrated by the rate of progress in Blue Origin?

Blue Origin needs to be much faster and it's 1 of the reasons that I left my role as the CEO of Amazon a couple of years ago.

I wanted to come in and Blue Origin needs me right now.

And so I had always, when I was the CEO of Amazon, my point of view on this is, if I'm the CEO of a publicly traded company, it's gonna get my full attention.

And I really, just how I think about things, it was very important to me.

I felt I had an obligation to all the stakeholders that I was on to do that.

And so having turned the CEO, I was still the executive chair there, but I've turned the CEO role over.

And the primary reason I did that is so that I could spend time on Blue Origin adding some energy, some sense of urgency.

We need to move much faster, and we're going to.

So I mean, there's, you've talked a lot of different ways to sort of, and Amazon, you know, removing barriers for progress or distributing, making everybody autonomous and self-reliant in terms, all those kinds of things.

We are gonna become the world's most decisive company across any industry.

And so, you know, at Amazon, forever since the beginning, we're gonna become the world's most customer-obsessed company.

And no matter the industry, like people, 1 day people are going to come to Amazon from the healthcare industry and wanna know, how did you guys, How are you so customer-obsessed?

How do you not just pay lip service to that, but actually do that?

And from, you know, all different industries should come want to study us to see how we accomplish that.

And the analogous thing at Blue Origin, and what will help us move faster is we're gonna become the world's most decisive company.

We're gonna get really good at taking appropriate technology risk, making those decisions quickly, being bold on those things.

That's what, and having the right culture that supports that.

You need people to be ambitious, technically ambitious.

You know, if there are 5 ways to do something, we'll study them, but let's study them very quickly and make a decision.

It doesn't, you know, changing your mind, I talk about one-way doors and two-way doors, most decisions are two-way doors.

If you make the wrong decision, if it's a two-way door decision, you walk out the door, you pick a door, you walk out, and you spend a little time there, it turns out to be the wrong decision, you can come back in and pick another door.

Some decisions are so consequential and so important and so hard to reverse, that they really are one-way door decisions.

You go in that door, you're not coming back.

And those decisions have to be made very deliberately, very carefully.

If you can think of yet another way to analyze the decision, you should slow down and do that.

So, you know, when I was CEO of Amazon, I often found myself in the position of being the chief slowdown officer because somebody would be bringing me a one-way door decision.

And I would say, okay, I can think of 3 more ways to analyze that, so let's go do that.

Because we are not gonna be able to reverse this 1 easily.

Maybe you can reverse it, but it's gonna be very costly and very time consuming.

We really have to get this 1 right from the beginning.

And what happens, unfortunately, in companies, what can happen is that you have a one-size-fits-all decision-making process where you end up using the heavyweight process on all decisions, including the lightweight ones, the two-way door decisions.

Two-way door decisions should mostly be made by single individuals or by very small teams deep in the organization.

And one-way door decisions are the ones that, the irreversible ones, those are the ones that should be elevated up to the senior most executives who should slow them down and make sure that the right thing is being done.

Yeah, I mean, part of the skill here is to know the difference between 1 way and 2 way.

I think you mentioned Amazon Prime, the decision to sort of create Amazon Prime as a 1 way door.

I mean, it's unclear if it is or not, but it probably is, and it's a really big risk to go there.

There are a bunch of decisions like that, that are, you know, changing the decision is gonna be very, very complicated.

Some of them are technical decisions too, because some technical decisions are like quick drying cement.

You know, if you're going to, once you make them, it gets really hard.

I mean, you know, choosing which propellants to use in a vehicle, you know, selecting LNG for the booster stage and selecting hydrogen for the upper stage, that has turned out to be a very good decision.

But if you change your mind, that would be a very big setback.

So that's the kind of decision you scrutinize very, very carefully.

Most decisions should be made by single individuals, but they need, and done quickly, in the full understanding that you can always change your mind.

Yeah, 1 of the things I really liked, perhaps it's not a two-way door decision, is I disagree and commit phrase.

So don't, so somebody brings up an idea to you, if it's a two-way door, you state that you don't understand enough to agree, but you still back them.

and commit is a really important principle that saves a lot of arguing.

It's very common in any endeavor in life, in business, and anybody where you have teammates.

You have a teammate and the 2 of you disagree, at some point you have to make a decision.

And in companies we tend to organize hierarchically, so there's this, whoever's the more senior person ultimately gets to make the decision, so ultimately the CEO gets to make that decision.

And the CEO may not always make the decision that they agree with.

So like, you know, I would often, I would be the 1 who would disagree and commit.

Some, 1 of my direct reports would very much want to do it, do something in a particular way.

I would think it was a bad idea, I would explain my point of view, they would say, Jeff, I think you're wrong and here's why, and we would go back and forth.

And I would often say, you know what, I don't think you're right, but I'm gonna gamble with you, and you're closer to the ground truth than I am.

I've known you for 20 years, you have great judgment.

I don't know that I'm right either, not really, not for sure, all these decisions are complicated.

But at least then you've made a decision.

And I'm agreeing to commit to that decision.

So I'm not gonna be second guessing it, I'm not gonna be sniping at it.

I'm gonna try actively to help make sure it works.

That's a really important teammate behavior.

There's so many ways that dispute resolution is a really interesting thing on teams.

And there are so many ways, so when 2 people disagree about something, even though I'm assuming the case where everybody's well-intentioned, they just have a very different opinion about what the right decision is.

And We have in our society and inside companies, we have a bunch of mechanisms that we use to resolve these kinds of disputes.

So an example of a really bad way of coming to agreement is compromise.

So compromise, you know, look, we're in a room here and I could say, Lex, how tall do you think this ceiling is?

And you'd be like, I don't know, Jeff, maybe 12 feet tall.

And I would say, I think it's 11 feet tall.

And then we'd say, you know what, let's just call it 11 and a half feet.

Instead of, the right thing to do is, you know, to get a tape measure or figure out some way of actually measuring, but think getting that tape measure and figure out how to get it to the top of the ceiling and all these things, that requires energy.

Compromise, the advantage of compromise as a resolution mechanism is that it's low energy.

And so in things like the height of the ceiling where truth is a knowable thing, you shouldn't allow compromise to be used when you can know the truth.

Another really bad resolution mechanism that happens all the time is just who's more stubborn.

This is also, let's say 2 executives who disagree and they just have a war of attrition in which everyone gets exhausted first, capitulates to the other 1.

Again, you haven't arrived at truth, and this is very demoralizing.

So, you know, this is where escalation, I try to ask people who, you know, on my team, I say, never get to a point where you are resolving something by who gets exhausted first.

Because that's so de-energizing and such a terrible, lousy way to make a decision.

Do you want to get to the resolution as quickly as possible because that ultimately leads to a high velocity of the story?

Yes, and you want to try to get as close to truth as possible.

So you want, exhausting the other person is not truth-seeking, and compromise is not truth-seeking.

So, you know, it doesn't mean, now, and there are a lot of cases where no 1 knows the real truth, and that's where disagree and commit can come in.

But it's, escalation is better than war of attrition.

Escalate to your boss and say, hey, we can't agree on this.

We like each other, we're respectful of each other, but we strongly disagree with each other.

We need you to make a decision here so we can move forward.

But decisiveness, moving forward quickly on decisions, as quickly as you responsibly can, is how you increase velocity.

Most of what slows things down is taking too long to make decisions at all scale levels, you know?

So it has to be part of the culture to get high velocity.

You know, Amazon has a million and a half people and the company is still fast.

And that's because the culture supports that.

At every scale and in a distributed way, Yes.

Try to maximize the velocity of decisions.


Speaker 0: Is there a part of you that's frustrated by the rate of progress in Blue Origin?

Speaker 1: Blue Origin needs to be much faster and it's 1 of the reasons that I left my role as the CEO of Amazon a couple of years ago. I wanted to come in and Blue Origin needs me right now. And so I had always, when I was the CEO of Amazon, my point of view on this is, if I'm the CEO of a publicly traded company, it's gonna get my full attention. And I really, just how I think about things, it was very important to me. I felt I had an obligation to all the stakeholders that I was on to do that.

And so having turned the CEO, I was still the executive chair there, but I've turned the CEO role over. And the primary reason I did that is so that I could spend time on Blue Origin adding some energy, some sense of urgency. We need to move much faster, and we're going to.

Speaker 0: What are the ways to speed it up? So I mean, there's, you've talked a lot of different ways to sort of, and Amazon, you know, removing barriers for progress or distributing, making everybody autonomous and self-reliant in terms, all those kinds of things. Is that apply at Blue Origin or

Speaker 1: is this? It does apply. I know I'm leading this directly. We are gonna become the world's most decisive company across any industry. And so, you know, at Amazon, forever since the beginning, we're gonna become the world's most customer-obsessed company.

And no matter the industry, like people, 1 day people are going to come to Amazon from the healthcare industry and wanna know, how did you guys, How are you so customer-obsessed? How do you not just pay lip service to that, but actually do that? And from, you know, all different industries should come want to study us to see how we accomplish that. And the analogous thing at Blue Origin, and what will help us move faster is we're gonna become the world's most decisive company. We're gonna get really good at taking appropriate technology risk, making those decisions quickly, being bold on those things.

That's what, and having the right culture that supports that. You need people to be ambitious, technically ambitious. You know, if there are 5 ways to do something, we'll study them, but let's study them very quickly and make a decision. We can always change our mind. It doesn't, you know, changing your mind, I talk about one-way doors and two-way doors, most decisions are two-way doors.

Speaker 0: Can you explain that? Because I love that metaphor.

Speaker 1: If you make the wrong decision, if it's a two-way door decision, you walk out the door, you pick a door, you walk out, and you spend a little time there, it turns out to be the wrong decision, you can come back in and pick another door. Some decisions are so consequential and so important and so hard to reverse, that they really are one-way door decisions. You go in that door, you're not coming back. And those decisions have to be made very deliberately, very carefully. If you can think of yet another way to analyze the decision, you should slow down and do that.

So, you know, when I was CEO of Amazon, I often found myself in the position of being the chief slowdown officer because somebody would be bringing me a one-way door decision. And I would say, okay, I can think of 3 more ways to analyze that, so let's go do that. Because we are not gonna be able to reverse this 1 easily. Maybe you can reverse it, but it's gonna be very costly and very time consuming. We really have to get this 1 right from the beginning.

And what happens, unfortunately, in companies, what can happen is that you have a one-size-fits-all decision-making process where you end up using the heavyweight process on all decisions, including the lightweight ones, the two-way door decisions. Two-way door decisions should mostly be made by single individuals or by very small teams deep in the organization. And one-way door decisions are the ones that, the irreversible ones, those are the ones that should be elevated up to the senior most executives who should slow them down and make sure that the right thing is being done.

Speaker 0: Yeah, I mean, part of the skill here is to know the difference between 1 way and 2 way. I think you mentioned Amazon Prime, the decision to sort of create Amazon Prime as a 1 way door. I mean, it's unclear if it is or not, but it probably is, and it's a really big risk to go there.

Speaker 1: There are a bunch of decisions like that, that are, you know, changing the decision is gonna be very, very complicated. Some of them are technical decisions too, because some technical decisions are like quick drying cement. You know, if you're going to, once you make them, it gets really hard. I mean, you know, choosing which propellants to use in a vehicle, you know, selecting LNG for the booster stage and selecting hydrogen for the upper stage, that has turned out to be a very good decision. But if you change your mind, that would be a very big setback.

Do you see what I'm saying? So that's the kind of decision you scrutinize very, very carefully. Other things just aren't like that. Most decisions are not that way. Most decisions should be made by single individuals, but they need, and done quickly, in the full understanding that you can always change your mind.

Speaker 0: Yeah, 1 of the things I really liked, perhaps it's not a two-way door decision, is I disagree and commit phrase. So don't, so somebody brings up an idea to you, if it's a two-way door, you state that you don't understand enough to agree, but you still back them. I'd love for you to explain that.

Speaker 1: I'm gonna start

Speaker 0: using that. Yeah, disagree

Speaker 1: and commit is a really important principle that saves a lot of arguing. So, you know. I'm gonna use

Speaker 0: that in my personal life. I disagree, but commit.

Speaker 1: It's very common in any endeavor in life, in business, and anybody where you have teammates. You have a teammate and the 2 of you disagree, at some point you have to make a decision. And in companies we tend to organize hierarchically, so there's this, whoever's the more senior person ultimately gets to make the decision, so ultimately the CEO gets to make that decision. And the CEO may not always make the decision that they agree with. So like, you know, I would often, I would be the 1 who would disagree and commit.

Some, 1 of my direct reports would very much want to do it, do something in a particular way. I would think it was a bad idea, I would explain my point of view, they would say, Jeff, I think you're wrong and here's why, and we would go back and forth. And I would often say, you know what, I don't think you're right, but I'm gonna gamble with you, and you're closer to the ground truth than I am. I've known you for 20 years, you have great judgment. I don't know that I'm right either, not really, not for sure, all these decisions are complicated.

Let's do it your way. But at least then you've made a decision. And I'm agreeing to commit to that decision. So I'm not gonna be second guessing it, I'm not gonna be sniping at it. I'm not gonna be saying, I told you so.

I'm gonna try actively to help make sure it works. That's a really important teammate behavior. There's so many ways that dispute resolution is a really interesting thing on teams. And there are so many ways, so when 2 people disagree about something, even though I'm assuming the case where everybody's well-intentioned, they just have a very different opinion about what the right decision is. And We have in our society and inside companies, we have a bunch of mechanisms that we use to resolve these kinds of disputes.

A lot of them are, I think, really bad. So an example of a really bad way of coming to agreement is compromise. So compromise, you know, look, we're in a room here and I could say, Lex, how tall do you think this ceiling is? And you'd be like, I don't know, Jeff, maybe 12 feet tall. And I would say, I think it's 11 feet tall.

And then we'd say, you know what, let's just call it 11 and a half feet. That's compromise. Instead of, the right thing to do is, you know, to get a tape measure or figure out some way of actually measuring, but think getting that tape measure and figure out how to get it to the top of the ceiling and all these things, that requires energy. Compromise, the advantage of compromise as a resolution mechanism is that it's low energy. But it doesn't lead to truth.

And so in things like the height of the ceiling where truth is a knowable thing, you shouldn't allow compromise to be used when you can know the truth. Another really bad resolution mechanism that happens all the time is just who's more stubborn. This is also, let's say 2 executives who disagree and they just have a war of attrition in which everyone gets exhausted first, capitulates to the other 1. Again, you haven't arrived at truth, and this is very demoralizing. So, you know, this is where escalation, I try to ask people who, you know, on my team, I say, never get to a point where you are resolving something by who gets exhausted first.

Escalate that. I'll help you make the decision. Because that's so de-energizing and such a terrible, lousy way to make a decision.

Speaker 0: Do you want to get to the resolution as quickly as possible because that ultimately leads to a high velocity of the story?

Speaker 1: Yes, and you want to try to get as close to truth as possible. So you want, exhausting the other person is not truth-seeking, and compromise is not truth-seeking. So, you know, it doesn't mean, now, and there are a lot of cases where no 1 knows the real truth, and that's where disagree and commit can come in. But it's, escalation is better than war of attrition. Escalate to your boss and say, hey, we can't agree on this.

We like each other, we're respectful of each other, but we strongly disagree with each other. We need you to make a decision here so we can move forward. But decisiveness, moving forward quickly on decisions, as quickly as you responsibly can, is how you increase velocity. Most of what slows things down is taking too long to make decisions at all scale levels, you know? So it has to be part of the culture to get high velocity.

You know, Amazon has a million and a half people and the company is still fast. We're still decisive, we're still quick. And that's because the culture supports that.

Speaker 0: At every scale and in a distributed way, Yes. Try to maximize the velocity of decisions.

Speaker 1: Exactly.

Speaker 0: You

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Why Jeff Bezos stepped down as Amazon CEO | Lex Fridman Podcast Clips