There is a saying that success leaves clues. If you look at successful people, you will find a common core of habits that contribute directly to their success. One of the most common habits is reading. Successful people across all industries dump the TV and read! They are voracious readers and consume books with an energy level that matches their success.

One of those highly successful individuals is Jeff Bezos of Amazon. Now the world’s richest man, with a net worth of over $90 billion, Bezos devours books! Of course, this shouldn’t be much of a surprise, when you understand that Amazon began as a book platform. He’s spent his career changing the way books are published and sold, devouring many small bookstores in the process. Amazon now appears to be laying claim to the entire retail universe ” and beyond. It is a formidable force in such disparate fields as cloud computing, movies, music, food, artificial intelligence and the distribution of washing machines and toasters. What does Jeff Bezos read for success and professional development?

The Bezos Top 12

1. “The Remains of the Day” by Kazuo Ishiguro
2. “Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies” by Jim Collins
3. “Creation: Life and How to Make It” by Steve Grand
4. “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ¦ and Others Don’t” by Jim Collins
5. “The Innovator’s Dilemma” by Clayton Christensen
6. “Sam Walton: Made in America” by Sam Walton
7. “Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation” by James Womack and Daniel Jones
8. “Memos from the Chairman” by Alan Greenberg
9. “The Mythical Man-Month” by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
10. “The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvements” by Eliyahu Goldratt
11. “Data-Driven Marketing: The 15 Metrics Everyone in Marketing Should Know” by Mark Jeffery
12. “The Black Swan” by Nassim Taleb

But Jeff Bezos isn’t alone in reading for success and professional development. When Warren Buffett was once asked about the key to success, he pointed to a stack of nearby books and said, Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it. He takes this habit to the extreme, reading between 600 and 1000 pages per day when he was beginning his investing career, and still devotes about 80 percent of each day to reading.

Successful people tend to choose educational books and publications over novels, tabloids, and magazines. And in particular they obsess over biographies and autobiographies of other successful people for guidance and inspiration. There are many examples of successful people dropping out of school or foregoing a formal education, but it is clear that they never stop learning. Reading is a key part of their success and professional development.

If reading as a pathway to success isn’t enough to get you motivated, consider these health benefits of reading: it has been shown to help prevent stress, depression, and dementia, while enhancing confidence, empathy, decision-making, and overall life satisfaction, not to mention, enormous wealth and success.

What is on your nightstand?

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Amazon is like Frank Sinatra ¦ they do it their way! If you live in 27 cities that offer the Prime Now service, you will get a rare opportunity to see how they do it!

Amazon Does It Their Way

Amazon is an electronic commerce and cloud computing company with headquarters in Seattle, Washington. It is the largest Internet-based retailer in the world by total sales and market capitalization. In 2015, they surpassed Walmart as the most valuable retailer in the United States by market capitalization. Amazon Prime Now offers household items and essentials delivered within 2 hours of your order. The service offers more than 25,000 items, across 25 categories of products. Delivery availability is 7 days a week, from early morning to late evening. You can even schedule a window for your delivery in the checkout process.

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We’ve discussed Amazon many times in the past, including founder Jeff Bezos.

With COVID-19 risks, they have discontinued their tours, but decided to create a video showing their latest technology, including robots that bring the shelves to the packers (instead of have the workers go to the items).

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eBay, originally called AuctionWeb, is a highly successful multinational e-commerce corporation, rivaling both Amazon and Alibaba. Founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995, the site is also a household name, with users buying and selling on a global scale. Today, learn how eBay went from an unknown startup of the dot-com bubble to one of the world’s most successful online marketplaces. Learn how eBay achieved operational excellence, and all from using Six Sigma methodologies.

eBay and Operational Excellence

To understand how eBay has used Six Sigma to achieve operational excellence, we first have to ask, what is operational excellence? What does it look like? There are various factors that are essential to eBay’s success. Firstly, they appreciate the value of teamwork. Similarly to Six Sigma, which involves project-oriented process improvement work, eBay has partnered with other successful sites. Their collaborations all help move them towards the goal of optimum customer experience and complete operational excellence. Furthermore, sites like StubHub, Shopping.com, Rent.com, PayPal, and Bill Me Later complement and enhance user experience, and to deliver improved profits. Through outsourcing from external partners in Europe, Asia-Pacific, as well as internal partners in America, eBay maintains excellent results. They can draw on multiple resource reserves and sources of expertise to bolster their operations.

Six Sigma Techniques

Moreover, one of the great things about eBay is that it is simple to use and highly effective. Their process is streamlined and efficient, allowing users to buy and sell with ease. It’s clear that Six Sigma ideas have influenced their business model as they have gradually improved and expanded their company over the years. By eliminating variation and wasteful none-value-adding processes, they have crafted a near-perfect user interface and a highly profitable trading platform. Six Sigma techniques like DMAIC and Root Cause Analysis are likely popular at eBay. These practices enable you to define, measure, analyze, improve, and control problems, as well as to isolate the underlying causes. This makes it easier to act on problems and resolve them.

Six Sigma + Lean + Kaizen = Success

Furthermore, Lean ideas and Kaizen thinking are also plain to see in the way eBay works. The company introduced continuous improvement several years ago and has enjoyed major improvements. Remember, Kaizen is a culture, a point of view, and not just a set of practices. As such, eBay has built its team around driving Kaizen to ensure they always maintain optimum efficiency and productivity. The key to this is to train employees to be vigilant and actively seek out areas that require improvement. Problems could also appear as waste from over-processing, human error, or transport, and even defective products resulting from variation in part quality. Moreover, using Six Sigma, Lean, and Kaizen thinking, eBay guards its place as a leading global figure in e-commerce.

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Small businesses and multinational corporations all over the world use Six Sigma to turn their failing processes around. Companies like 3M and General Electric are, in fact, one of the world’s largest and most successful e-commerce companies using Six Sigma to great effect. A household name we’re all familiar with their trademark smile logo also started leveraging Six Sigma for its multitude of business benefits — Amazon

Since its inception as an online bookstore, Amazon has drastically expanded its product range, breaking into the technology market with its range of Kindle e-readers and tablets. They have even implemented innovative practices like same-day delivery, set to reach new heights for efficiency with automated drone delivery. Their steadily growing catalog of Amazon Originals rivals that of online giants like Netflix. But have you ever wondered how Amazon became one of the largest online retailers in the world? Today we will learn — How Amazon does it?

How Amazon Have Incorporated Six Sigma into Their Work?

Six Sigma has been a firm approach in Amazon’s business culture. With around 2000 items ordered every sixty seconds, Amazon can’t afford to let standards slip. As far back as 1999, the company began the Operational Excellence program aimed at improving company processes. Amazon defines Operational Excellence in two ways.

Firstly — to deliver continuous improvement for customer experience. 

Secondly — to drive productivity, margin, efficiency, and asset velocity across the entire corporation.

To make the Six Sigma process gel further, Amazon has adopted several Six Sigma concepts, including recruiting the finest thought leaders from exclusive top schools like MIT and Carnegie-Mellon. Since the methodology is as good as the one who is driving it, it is of utmost necessity the talent hired knows what they are doing.

Keeping it Lean for Micro-Management

The Lean approach adds a bonus to the Six Sigma perspective. And, Amazon has tied its central focus on streamlining operations into everyday practices. The company devotes more manpower to its fulfillment and customer service centers than its engineering end to keep its level of service high!

Moreover, the transportation (shipping) method for packages (services) is based on the promised delivery date, and each job function is thoughtfully designed to achieve maximum efficiency. Considering this approach allowed Amazon to make the most of the available resources and trim costs. (It’s a smart move to protect a business against premature growth!)

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Building Kaizen Blocks for Inventory Management

Since the goal of any business is better results, it’s obvious that the operations should be consistently improving. At Amazon, Kaizen governs the way the company runs. For example, in the warehouse process, more than 35 orders are placed within a second, making it a near-unprecedented service level in the retail space. For such, every distribution center has a manager assigned to ensure continuous improvement as far as workflow is concerned. Even if a company doesn’t have a high volume of orders, they might use a similar methodology to streamline the entire process in any of their department.

The Importance of Data and Metrics

Six Sigma is more than just a methodology for improving an organization’s quality. Most people don’t understand the nuances and complexities of Six Sigma beyond its well-known uses. Those who aren’t quite au fait on the subject may see Six Sigma as a simple improvement strategy. But they often don’t question how it improves businesses or what it needs to function. In truth, data drives Six Sigma’s success.

Without sufficient data, you simply cannot make decisions without data to support and justify them. Six Sigma’s data-driven nature derives from the six standard deviations practitioners use to keep defects in check. Like Six Sigma, data drives everything for Amazon. From the types of purchases, customers make online to how people use their technology. Moreover, Amazon uses various metrics to constantly harvest data that shed light on areas for improvement and opportunities for expansion. For Amazon, data isn’t just a means to improve customer experience. It’s a way of life.

Advance Business Management Practices

Amazon has always been researching, innovating, and implementing bold supply chains strategies. In 2004, Amazon’s annual revenue was just under $7 billion. According to Statista, by 2018, its annual revenue reached almost $233 billion.

Amazon is the fastest company to reach $100 billion in sales revenue, taking only 20 years. From its inception, Amazon has grown approximately 20% per year. It grew from 30% from 2018 to 2019. Currently, it enjoys more than 13% of gross global e-commerce sales.

The major contributor to this rapid business success for Amazon is none other than efficient supply chain management using advanced information technology, extensive warehouse network, multitier inventory management, and excellent transportation management and facilities.

Read More Six Sigma Case Studies:

Demonstration of Six Sigma Principles through Catalent Pharma Solutions

Case Study: Lean Six Sigma Improves Environment – Baxter Manufacturing

Case Study: Lean 6 Sigma in Aerospace Manufacturer Streamlines Processes & Improves Cycle Time

3M 6Sigma Case Study – Pollution Prevention

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On July 30^th 2016, in our blog entitled “Origami As A Lean Six Sigma Learning Tool” we brought to light how a Certified Six Sigma instructor from India taught the whole concept of Six Sigma to 36 students who were 14-15 years old.  The genius of that he himself was also using the core of Six Sigma, which is VOC, the voice of the customer, what the customer needs or requires. The school system wanted those kids to understand Six Sigma and the instructor delivered.

On August 14 2016, in our blog entitled “Lean Six Sigma Tools for Your Email Inbox” we talked about how versatile these tools are, through the example of a hammer.  You can use a hammer to pound in a nail, or you can use the hammer with a chisel to remove a tile. The basic function of that hammer doesn’t change, but how you use to apply its use is up to you.

On November 27, 2016, we tackled emergency preparedness in our blog entitled “Six Sigma the Perfect Template for Emergency Preparedness.” Here we discussed dealing with a situation that has not yet happened, so the doctrines in Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) would be used. As many of you remember, this is used for a new product or service that hasn’t been established yet.

In our blog dated December 10^th 2016, “Is the Spirit of Six Sigma Encrypted Inside Amazon?” we discussed the online retail giant Amazon. Like it or not, Amazon is here to stay, and they constantly are improving using VOC as their staple. The software that was created and is continuously updated is all done to satisfy the customer’s needs and requirements.

These are but a few of our blogs that is dedicated to finding the Six Sigma in our every day lives, thus making Six Sigma both timeless and genius.

Learn more about our Six Sigma courses and services.

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If the perks mentioned above aren’t enough, we have the added benefit of receiving tailored recommendations and emails — it’s almost as though they know us personally! When we have an issue with an order — say they send us the wrong item, for our inconvenience they let us keep the item! The representative will even suggest we donate it to charity.

The reason they are so successful is that their approach to sales is “Know your customer very, very well,” and they do. This is a core fundamental concept of Six Sigma!

All of Amazon’s efforts seem to be geared towards customer satisfaction. They seem to be constantly defining any problems that need to be solved. They analyze their data when a mistake was made, by asking the customer to fill out a survey to share their experience.

Amazon is constantly improving and controlling future forecasts based on past experience and current situations, as well as through VOC, the voice of the customer.

It’s in the Cookie

Amazon’s customer tracking is done by a simple cookie. Once that cookie makes its home inside your hard drive, consider yourself part of the family. You will be getting recommendations and emails forever.

Amazon has made it their business to constantly be improving features and developing new ones. Amazon has four software development centers worldwide that are constantly developing new features for their current software. Constant improvement…sound familiar?

Whether Amazon knows it or not, the spirit of Six Sigma is encrypted inside their software and in their mission statement — to know their customers very, very well.

Sign up for one of our Six Sigma training courses available across the United States. Also be sure to check out our fundamentals of Lean Six Sigma.

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