1. Amazon: Overcome Key Organizational Hurdles
Group 5:
Patricia Martinez, Shavena Smith, Bryan Arias
10am Class

2. Chapter Overview Tipping Point Leadership
The Pivotal Lever: Disproportionate Influence Factors
Break through the Cognitive Hurdle
Jump the Resource Hurdle
Jump the Motivational Hurdle
Knock Over the Political Hurdle
Challenging Conventional Wisdom

3. Overcome Key Motivational Hurdles
They face 4 hurdles
Cognitive: waking employees up to the need for a strategy shift
What factors or acts exercise a disproportionately positive influence on breaking the status quo?
Limited Resources: the greater the shift in strategy, the greater it is assumed are the resources needed to execute it
How can you get the maximum bang out of each buck of resources?
Motivation: how do you motivate key players to move fast and tenaciously to carry out a break from status quo?
What motivates key players to aggressively move forward with change?
Politics: in most organizations, you get shot down before you even stand up
How do you knock down political roadblocks that often trip up even the best strategies?

4. Tipping Point Leadership in Action
How does an organization defy conventional wisdom to achieve breakthrough results while lifting employee morale?
Ex: Amazon implementing Amazon Prime to give its customers a better experience compared to other retailers while working with employees to ensure that they are functioning as if it were their first day of work.

5. Disproportionate Influence Factors
In every organization, there are people, acts, and activities that exercise a disproportionate influence on performance
Overcoming a massive challenge is about conserving resources and cutting time by focusing on identifying and then leveraging the factors of disproportionate influence in an organization
By single mindedly focusing on points of disproportionate influence, tipping point leaders can topple 4 hurdles that limit execution of Blue Ocean Strategy

6. Amazon’s Disproportionate Influence Factors
Focusing on influencers is a smart way to influence change
Since Amazon’s mission statement is to have the lowest prices, best available selection, and utmost convenience- Amazon breaks the status quo by being customer centric instead of profit oriented.
To combat limited resources, Amazon takes on a small business approach
Amazon motivates their employees by not becoming complacent
Amazon has combated one of its potential roadblocks of international shipping by creating more advanced distribution centers

7. To achieve a strategic shift at low cost, focus on the extremes – the people, acts, and activities that exert a disproportionate influence on performance.

8. The Four Organizational Hurdles

9. Breaking through the Cognitive Hurdle
In corporate transformations, among the hardest battles is to make people aware for a shift and agree on the causes.
Positive stimuli reinforce behavior, whereas negative stimuli change attitudes and behavior.
How can one break through? Examples: “Seeing is believing.”
Child tasting icing vs child touching hot stove
Meeting with disgruntled customers

10. Meeting with Disgruntled Customers
In every company it is important to prevent customer dissatisfaction and reduce the amount of complaints
For Amazon’s C.E.O., Jeff Bezos, he doesn’t tolerate failure in his company
Having the managers meet with their most disgruntled customers
Example:

11. Jumping the Resources Hurdle (Limited Resources)
Does the company have money to spend on necessary changes?
How do you get an organization to execute a strategic shift with fewer resources?
Leaders concentrate on multiplying the value of resources they have.
Hot Sports, Cold Spots, and Horse Trading

12. Hot Spots, Cold Spots, and Horse Trading
Hotpots: Activities that have low resource input but high potential performance gains
Coldspots: Activities that have high resource input but low performance input
Horse Trading: Involves trading your unit’s excess resources in one area for another unit’s excess resources to fill remaining resource gaps

13. Jumping the Motivational Hurdle (Unmotivated Staff)
How can Amazon motivate the mass of employees fast and at low costs?
By providing benefits and incentives to its employees
Increasing wages to $15
Providing free higher education programs for certain employees
Training and educating all workers, particular those who are not full-time

14. The Three Factors of Disproportionate Influence
Kingpins- The key influencers in the organization
Fishbowl Management- Where actions and inaction are made as transparent to others as are fish in a bowl of water
Atomization- The framing of strategic challenge

15. Knock Over the Political Hurdle
Organizational politics is an inescapable reality of corporate and public life
To overcome these political forces, tipping point leaders focus on three disproportionate influence factors:
Leveraging Angels
Silencing Devils
Getting a Consigliere on their top management team
Example: Amazon’s Future in New York

16. Three Disproportionate Influence Factors
Angels - those who have the most to gain from the strategic shift
Devils - those who have the most to lose from the strategic shift
Consigliere - is a politically adept but highly respected insider who knows in advance all the land mines, including who will fight you and who will support you
Example: Marty Singer

17. Challenging Conventional Wisdom
Conventional theory of organizational change rests on transforming the mass
Requires steep resources & long time frames
Tipping point leadership takes a reverse course
Transforming the extremes: the people, acts, and activities that exercise a disproportionate influence on performance