Jeff Bezos is the kind of man whom I have watched from far with much fascination. What drives him? What is it about him being at the helm that catapulted Amazon into the kind of entity it is now?
An interesting pointer that came my way on how to look at everything he does and Amazon's longer term strategy came from my friend Haresh Chawla. He highlighted the significance of understanding the difference between velocity and speed. Like many people, you can move with great speed, but go around in circles. Few have the muscle in them to understand that only when direction is embedded into speed, it morphs into velocity and you reach someplace of consequence.This subtlety formed the underpinnings of a hypothesis he framed on what sense to make of contemporary technology companies.
Jeff Bezos, Haresh has always argued, is among those who gets the difference and it is embedded into everything that Amazon does. That is what Bezos a formidable thinker and makes Amazon an entity to watch out for.
When Haresh put it in as many words, I have since latched on to every byte of information that come in on Jeff Bezos, the man. What may he really be like? What keeps him awake? How does he think? What kind of mental models does he deploy? What philosophy does he subscribe to?
All thanks to a newsletter from James Clear, a transcript of a speech by him made at Princeton University in 2010 hit my inbox earlier today.
Some parts of it had my attention. There is this episode where he talks of this time while attempting to show off his mathematical prowess to his grandmother. Instead of being impressed though, she bursts into tears. He is bewildered, until his grandfather's puts things into perspective: My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, “Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.”
Every word of the talk is worth thinking over. This anecdote has stayed with me. What has stayed as well are the questions he leaves the audience with. I'd be curious to hear first hand from him how did he go about framing all of these in the first instance. Answers to questions like these insist on second-order thinking. It makes for a compelling read.
Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life — the life you author from scratch on your own — begins.
How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make?
Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions?
Will you follow dogma, or will you be original?
Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure?
Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?
Will you bluff it out when you’re wrong, or will you apologize?
Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love?
Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling?
When it’s tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?
Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?
Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?
I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices.