Biography and Successes of Jeff Bezos Paper Example

Introduction

Jeffrey P. Bezos or Jeff Bezos as he is commonly known is founder and CEO of online retail company Amazon. Bezos is currently the wealthiest person on earth with a net worth of $ 127 billion (Forbes, 29). Jeff Bezos was born in 1964 from a 17-year-old mother in Albuquerque. He never got to know his father, and he took up the name of Mike Bezos, his stepfather, who married his mother right before the birth of Bezos.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Bezos early successes in life came in the form of his education career where he graduated with a class valedictorian from a high school in Dade County, Miami. He later joined Princeton University to major in electrical engineering and computer science and graduated summa cum laude (Whoriskey, Kang, & Yang, 2013). As one would expect, he had a successful professional career in a hedge fund in New York before venturing out into entrepreneurship.

Positive Leadership Traits

According to Durkin (2017), six common traits are necessary for the success of leaders of an organization. These traits are capacity, choice, connection, collaboration, creativity, and change agility. Typically leaders can't rank high in all of the six attributes but will possess a high amount of one or two of those traits.

Whoriskey, Kang, & Yang (2013), have indicated that Bezos has the resilience to endure short-term losses. That grants him the trait of capacity which is one of the six common characteristics of successful leaders that Durkin (2017) has discussed. Bezos capacity has made Amazon relentless and allowed the company to survive the dot-com burst and the recession.

Creativity is also another positive trait of Jeff Bezos. Amazon has recently expanded from an online retail store to other fields such as content production and the space aviation industry. Of notable mention is the Amazon echo a smart speaker that is redefining home entertainment. Nazaryan (2016) describes it as, "making a mockery of Apple's robotic Siri...." That goes to show the creativity of the Amazon founder and CEO.

There is also kindle a series of e-readers that is threatening to replace traditional books. In an interview with Charlie Ross, Bezos says that it is time for books to follow suit like other forms of media such as music and video by becoming digitized (Bezos, 2007). That is an example of a visionary that is creative enough to come up with new ideas that can move his company forward.

The Amazon founder also posses change agility as a trait that enables him and his company to adapt to the changing business environment (Striphas, 2010). In a feature on Keefe (2003), Bezos says that physics was his primary interest back in, but he fell in love with computers and changed his major to electrical engineering and computer science.

Bezos change agility is also reflected when he quit his job in New York in one of the leading Hedge funds to go and launch Amazon. Bezos read about the internet growth rate of 2300 percent per year, and that was his wake up call (Marble, 2018). The original plan was for Amazon to stick to selling books, but there was a shift in customer's demands which caused Amazon to venture into electronics and other categories like DVDs. His change agility enabled Amazon to adapt to change.

Negative Leadership Traits

Despite the positive attributes of the tech mogul highlighted above, other negative qualities have attracted a lot of criticism for the online retail store and its leader. However, James (2018), says that the hostility for the organization is due to its leader and not because of the services that Amazon offers. People dislike the business practices of Jeff Bezos, but they like what Amazon offers. That is, an easier way to do shopping.

One negative attribute of the Amazon founder is his lack of compassion for his employees. Amazon employees in the US, UK, and Germany describe their working experience as living in constant pressure of meeting targets while undergoing constant surveillance (Ghosh, 2018). The Amazon CEO also an authoritarian who amasses power using ruthless military tactics rather than collaboration. That trait has enabled him and Amazon to gain more grip in the publishing industry as stated by (Anonymous, 2009).

Conclusion

As a successful business leader, Bezos posses some good attributes such as capacity, creativity and change agility that have enabled Amazon to become the giant it is. As a human being, Bezos has some weaknesses such as lack of empathy for his employees and authoritarian rule that may prevent him an Amazon from reaching its full potential. However, there is no denying the impact he makes on the world.

Recommendations

I think for a business to reach the success of Amazon it needs a ruthless and unrelenting leader such as Jeff Bezos. However, the current level of the company, demands continuous improvement of customer experience (Business Wire, 2012). The business leader should also seek to improve his employee experience because that is directly proportional to customer experience (Morgan, 2018).

Lessons Learned

I have learned that it is essential to accomplish high IQ activities before lunch and try to make the tough decisions before 5 pm (Stevens, 2018). Also, according to Stevens, Leadership and Life Lessons from Jeff Bezos (2018), Bezos doesn't care about short time wins. That teaches me to that I should focus on the long-term gains. I also learned that an excellent, memorable company name is important when launching a company.

References

Anonymous. (2009, January 05). Jeff Bezos. (Newsweek Media Group Inc) Retrieved from Newsweek: https://libproxy.bridgeport.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/214

Bezos, J. (2007, November 20). Jeff Bezos Interview. (C. Rose, Interviewer) United States of America: Waltham. Retrieved from https://libproxy.bridgeport.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/190

Business Wire. (2012, December 19). Amazon's Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos Named. Retrieved from NRF's Gold Award Recipient: https://libproxy.bridgeport.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/124

Durkin, P. (2017, August 1). Bezos, Jobs' winning formula. Retrieved from The Australian Financial Review: https://libproxy.bridgeport.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/192

Forbes. (29, October 2018). Jeff Bezos. Retrieved from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/#2c5561b91b23

Ghosh, S. (2018, 05 03). Peeing in trash cans, constant surveillance, and asthma attacks on the job: Amazon workers tell us their warehouse horror stories (AMZN). Retrieved from Business Insider: https://www.pulselive.co.ke/bi/tech/peeing-in-trash-cans-constant-surveillance-and-asthma-attacks-on-the-job-amazon-workers-tell-us-their-warehouse-horror-stories-amzn-id8334713.html

James, G. (2018, May 1). Why Does Everyone Seem to Hate Jeff Bezos? Retrieved from Inc: https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/why-does-everyone-seem-to-hate-jeff-bezos.html

Keefe, C. (2003, January). Jeff Bezos: Founder and CEO, Amazon.com. Dealerscope, 45(1), 76. Retrieved from https://libproxy.bridgeport.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/218

Marble, D. (2018, March 27). Jeff Bezos Quit His Job at 30 to Launch Amazon--Here Are the 3 Simple Strategies He Used to Do It. Retrieved from Inc: https://www.inc.com/darren-marble/jeff-bezos-quit-his-job-at-30-to-launch-amazon-heres-how-to-know-if-its-right-time-for-your-big-move.html

Morgan, B. (2018). The Un-Ignorable Link Between Employee Experience And Customer Experience. Retrieved October 30, 2018, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2018/02/23/the-un-ignorable-link-between-employee-experience-and-customer-experience/#329b446948dc

Nazaryan, A. (2016, June 22). How Jeff Bezos Is Hurtling Toward World. Newsweek, Global ed., 167(3), 1-8. Retrieved from Newsweek: https://libproxy.bridgeport.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/180

Stevens, L. (2018, September 17). Leadership and life lessons from Amazon's Jeff Bezos. Retrieved October 29, 2018, from The Australian (National, Australia).: http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A554436580/OVIC?u=a22ub&sid=OVIC&xid=8aa16db9. Accessed 29 Oct. 2018

Stevens, L. (2018, September 14). Leadership and Life Lessons from Jeff Bezos. Retrieved October 29, 2018, from Dow Jones Institutional News: https://libproxy.bridgeport.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/210

Striphas, T. (2010). The abuses of literacy: Amazon Kindle and the right to read. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 7(3), 297-317.

Whoriskey, P., Kang, C., & Yang, J. L. (2013, August 06). Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is known for patience, Retrieved from The Washington Post: https://libproxy.bridgeport.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/141