Jeff, is it Really You?

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12 Things I Believe

1. Sometimes the best management is no management at all -- first do no harm!
2. Indifference is as important as passion.
3. Saying smart things and giving smart answers are important. Learning to listen to others and to ask smart questions is more important.
4. You get what you expect from people. This is especially true when it comes to selfish behavior; unvarnished self-interest is a learned social norm, not an unwavering feature of human behavior.
5. Avoid pompous jerks whenever possible. They not only can make you feel bad about yourself, chances are that you will eventually start acting like them.
6. Anyone can learn to be creative, it just takes a lot of practice and little confidence
7. "Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong."
8. Sutton's Law: “If you think that you have a new idea, you are wrong. Someone else probably already had it. This idea isn’t original either; I stole it from someone else”
9. "Am I a success or a failure?" is not a very useful question
10. The world would be a better place if people slept more and took more naps
11. Strive for simplicity and competence, but embrace the confusion and messiness along the way.
12. Jimmy Maloney is right, work is an overrated activity.

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Jeff, is it Really You?

I’ve been having a lot of trouble with Amazon lately. They had the wrong description up for both Hard Facts and The No Asshole Rule, and both my publishers –- Harvard Business School Press and Warner -- have found that getting these things repaired can take weeks with Amazon. It was taking forever for Amazon to put up the correct description of The No Asshole Rule. So I finally got fed-up and wrote a note of complaint directly to jeff@amazon.com, which is allegedly the CEO’s email. I got what seemed like a personal response in a few minutes: “I couldn't agree with you more. The goal is to treat authors and publishers like customers. Something we've clearly failed at in this case. Let me poke into this one, and thanks for taking the time and making the effort to complain.” Whether it was really Jeff Bezos, or just a stand in, I was impressed with both the speed and the tone. Now let’s see how long it takes them to fix it!

July 17, 2006 | Permalink

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I agree that it's pretty cool you were able to get a response like that so quickly. I don't know if it was really Jeff, though. It could go either way. For example, Mark Cuban (owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks), is known to personally answer all the emails he gets. But other execs definitely have secretaries and assistants answering emails for them. Tough call.