2016年Amazon致股東信：一直在談Day 1，這次來聊聊Day 2｜見識之旅

導讀

這封信是2016年Amazon的第20封致股東信。

「Day 1」這個詞從1997年第一封致股東信開始，就不斷被Jeff Bezos提起。

有人知道Day 1是朝氣蓬勃的第一天，於是好奇那下一天Day 2長什麼樣子。

Jeff Bezos在這封信中給了答覆，而且還附上Amazon的經驗談，解答了這些問題：什麼是Day 1？什麼是Day 2？既然Day 2不是好東西，那我們應該怎麼對抗它？

其中，「拒絕代理」的思維方式和「不同意但支持」的做事方法最讓我印象深刻。

拒絕代理指的是，避免受所謂的「客戶代理人」蒙騙，拒絕無條件服膺於「看似集合客戶意見」的事物，例如市場研究和客戶調查的結果。

Amazon總是追求客戶至上，因此如何不受客戶代理人的誤導，才能實現真正的客戶至上。這是Amazon避免走入Day 2的真知灼見。

為了要避免走入負面的Day 2，即使在公司規模巨大的狀態下，Amazon依然力行快速的決策速度。

講是這麼講，對於2016年市值3000億美元的Amazon，這有可能做到嗎？

Jeff Bezos是這樣做的－常說「我不同意但支持」，去做吧！

不用說服到他同意才能開始去做，只要讓他知道之後，即使不同意但他也會支持下屬執行，如此一來大大提升了決策速度。

你可能會說，這樣不也提升了失敗的機率嗎？也許是這樣沒錯，但是Amazon是一間鼓勵創新、鼓勵失敗的公司呀！

別忘了，Jeff Bezos在前一年的致股東信曾說過：「如果要失敗，我相信Amazon是世界上最好的地方！

好了，導讀結束，以下致股東信正文開始。

正文

“Jeff, what does Day 2 look like?”

「傑夫，Day 2長什麼樣子？」

That’s a question I just got at our most recent all-hands meeting. I’ve been reminding people that it’s Day 1 for a couple of decades. I work in an Amazon building named Day 1, and when I moved buildings, I took the name with me. I spend time thinking about this topic

這是我在最近的全體會議上遇到的一個問題。我一直提醒人們，現在依舊是Day 1。我原本在一棟名為Day 1的建築中工作，當我換辦公室時，我把這個名字也帶走了。關於Day 1，我花了很多時間思考。

“Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.”

「Day 2是停滯的、無關緊要的、極其乏味的，痛苦地衰退，最終死亡。這就是為什麼我總說現在是Day 1。」

To be sure, this kind of decline would happen in extreme slow motion. An established company might harvest Day 2 for decades, but the final result would still come.

可以肯定的是，這種衰退的過程極度緩慢。一間成熟的公司可能在Day 2歡喜收穫數十年，但最終結果一定會到來。

I’m interested in the question, how do you fend off Day 2? What are the techniques and tactics? How do you keep the vitality of Day 1, even inside a large organization?

我對這個問題感興趣：你如何抵禦Day 2？有哪些技巧和方法？即使在大型組織內部，你如何保持Day 1的活力？

Such a question can’t have a simple answer. There will be many elements, multiple paths, and many traps. I don’t know the whole answer, but I may know bits of it. Here’s a starter pack of essentials for Day 1 defense: customer obsession, a skeptical view of proxies, the eager adoption of external trends, and high-velocity decision making.

這樣的問題不能簡單回答。這個問題包含很多元素、多條路徑和許多陷阱。我並不知道全部答案，但我可能知道其中一部分。這是Day 1的入門裝備：專注於客戶、對代理的懷疑態度、渴望接納外部趨勢及快速決策。

True Customer Obsession

真正專注於客戶

There are many ways to center a business. You can be competitor focused, you can be product focused, you can be technology focused, you can be business model focused, and there are more. But in my view, obsessive customer focus is by far the most protective of Day 1 vitality.

一項業務可以有很多種專注方式。你可以專注於競爭對手，可以專注於產品，可以專注於技術，可以專注於商業模式等等。但是在我看來，專注於客戶是保持Day 1活力的最好方式。

Why? There are many advantages to a customer-centric approach, but here’s the big one: customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy and business is great. Even when they don’t yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you to invent on their behalf. No customer ever asked Amazon to create the Prime membership program, but it sure turns out they wanted it, and I could give you many such examples.

為什麼？以客戶為中心有很多優點，其中最大的優點是：即使客戶表示滿意而且生意很好，他們仍舊總是還有些不滿意。即使他們還不了解他們要什麼，但客戶就是想要更好的東西。若你聚焦於客戶，客戶的希望會驅動你為他們發明更好的東西。從未有客戶直接要求Amazon創建Prime會員計劃，但可以肯定的是，他們確實希望這樣做。我還可以舉出許多這樣的例子。

Staying in Day 1 requires you to experiment patiently, accept failures, plant seeds, protect saplings, and double down when you see customer delight. A customer-obsessed culture best creates the conditions where all of that can happen.

保持在Day 1需要耐心試驗、接受失敗、種下種子、保護樹苗，並在客戶滿意時加倍努力。專注於客戶的文化最能創造Day 1的條件，使一切發生。

Resist Proxies

拒絕代理

As companies get larger and more complex, there’s a tendency to manage to proxies. This comes in many shapes and sizes, and it’s dangerous, subtle, and very Day 2.

隨著公司的規模變大且日益複雜，會出現代理管理的趨勢。代理管理十分多樣、非常危險，而且正是Day 2的徵兆。

A common example is process as proxy. Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right. Gulp. It’s not that rare to hear a junior leader defend a bad outcome with something like, “Well, we followed the process.” A more experienced leader will use it as an opportunity to investigate and improve the process. The process is not the thing. It’s always worth asking, do we own the process or does the process own us? In a Day 2 company, you might find it’s the second.

一個常見的例子就是代理流程。好的流程讓你可以更好地為客戶服務。但是如果你不注意的話，「遵循流程」就會變成「為客戶服務」的同義詞，這會變成問題。在大型組織中，這個問題很容易發生。於是，你不再關注結果，只是確保自己正確地執行流程。年輕領導者以「是這樣的，我們確實遵循流序」之類的話來為自己辯護，這樣的事並不罕見。經驗豐富的領導者，將以此為契機調查和改進流程。過程本身不是問題。我們要不斷問自己：流程聽命於我們，還是我們聽命於流程？在Day 2的公司中，你會發現他們是後者。

Another example: market research and customer surveys can become proxies for customers — something that’s especially dangerous when you’re inventing and designing products. “Fifty-five percent of beta testers report being satisfied with this feature. That is up from 47% in the first survey.” That’s hard to interpret and could unintentionally mislead.

另一個例子是：市場研究和客戶調查可能會成為客戶的代理－當你在發明和設計產品時，這尤其危險。「在Beta測試中，55%的測試人員對此功能感到滿意，比第一次調查的47％還高。」這樣的現象很難解釋，而且可能在無意間誤導我們。

Good inventors and designers deeply understand their customer. They spend tremendous energy developing that intuition. They study and understand many anecdotes rather than only the averages you’ll find on surveys. They live with the design.

優秀的發明者和設計師對客戶有深刻的了解。他們花費巨大的精力培養這種直覺。他們研究並了解許多奇聞軼事，而不僅僅是你在調查中能找到的平均值。他們與設計共生。

I’m not against beta testing or surveys. But you, the product or service owner, must understand the customer, have a vision, and love the offering. Then, beta testing and research can help you find your blind spots. A remarkable customer experience starts with heart, intuition, curiosity, play, guts, taste. You won’t find any of it in a survey.

我不反對Beta測試或調查研究。但是你，產品或服務的所有者，必須了解客戶、有遠見並熱愛產品。Beta測試和調查可以幫助你找到盲點。出色的客戶體驗始於內心、直覺、好奇心、樂趣、膽量和品味。你不會在調查研究中找到以上任何一項。

Embrace External Trends

擁抱外部趨勢

The outside world can push you into Day 2 if you won’t or can’t embrace powerful trends quickly. If you fight them, you’re probably fighting the future. Embrace them and you have a tailwind.

如果你不願或無法迅速接受大趨勢，那外界將會把你帶入Day 2。如果你與之對抗，那麼你可能正在和未來對立。擁抱趨勢，你會順風順水。

These big trends are not that hard to spot (they get talked and written about a lot), but they can be strangely hard for large organizations to embrace. We’re in the middle of an obvious one right now: machine learning and artificial intelligence.

這些大趨勢並不難發現（很多人都在談論大趨勢），但是對於大型組織而言很難適應。我們正處於一個明顯的趨勢之中：機器學習和人工智能。

Over the past decades computers have broadly automated tasks that programmers could describe with clear rules and algorithms. Modern machine learning techniques now allow us to do the same for tasks where describing the precise rules is much harder.

在過去的幾十年間，由程序員以清晰的規則和算法定義任務，計算機可以自動化處理廣泛的任務。現在，機器學習技術使我們能夠對難以描述清晰規則的任務，執行相同的操作。

At Amazon, we’ve been engaged in the practical application of machine learning for many years now. Some of this work is highly visible: our autonomous Prime Air delivery drones; the Amazon Go convenience store that uses machine vision to eliminate checkout lines; and Alexa, our cloud-based AI assistant. (We still struggle to keep Echo in stock, despite our best efforts. A high-quality problem, but a problem. We’re working on it.)

在Amazon，我們從事機器學習的應用已經很多年了。其中一些工作的成果是明顯可見的：我們的自動化運送無人機Prime Air、使用機器視覺技術達到無櫃台結帳的便利店Amazon Go、基於雲技術的AI助手Alexa，1我們基於雲的AI助手。（儘管我們已盡了最大的努力，但我們仍在努力增加智能音箱Echo的庫存量。這是一個維護品質的問題，我們正在努力。）

But much of what we do with machine learning happens beneath the surface. Machine learning drives our algorithms for demand forecasting, product search ranking, product and deals recommendations, merchandising placements, fraud detection, translations, and much more. Though less visible, much of the impact of machine learning will be of this type — quietly but meaningfully improving core operations.

但是，更多的事情沒那麼顯而易見。機器學習驅動我們的算法，用於需求預測、產品搜索排名、產品和交易建議、商品陳列、詐騙檢測、翻譯等等。大部分機器學習的投入屬於這種類型－儘管沒那麼明顯，但悄然改善了核心操作。

Inside AWS, we’re excited to lower the costs and barriers to machine learning and AI so organizations of all sizes can take advantage of these advanced techniques.

在AWS內部，我們很高興可以降低機器學習和AI的成本和障礙，因此各種規模的組織都可以利用這些先進技術。

Using our pre-packaged versions of popular deep learning frameworks running on P2 compute instances (optimized for this workload), customers are already developing powerful systems ranging everywhere from early disease detection to increasing crop yields. And we’ve also made Amazon’s higher level services available in a convenient form. Amazon Lex (what’s inside Alexa), Amazon Polly, and Amazon Rekognition remove the heavy lifting from natural language understanding, speech generation, and image analysis. They can be accessed with simple API calls — no machine learning expertise required. Watch this space. Much more to come.

使用我們在P2計算實例上運行深度學習框架的預包裝版本，客戶已經在開發功能強大的系統，其範圍從早期疾病檢測到農作物產量提升。而且，我們以方便的形式提供了Amazon的更高級別服務。Amazon Lex（Alexa的內部功能）、Amazon Polly和Amazon Rekognition去除了自然語言理解、語音生成和圖像分析方面的繁重工作。開發者可以透過簡單的API來使用它們－無須複雜的機器學習專業知識。注意了，還有更多東西將推出。

High-Velocity Decision Making

快速決策

Day 2 companies make high-quality decisions, but they make high-quality decisions slowly. To keep the energy and dynamism of Day 1, you have to somehow make high-quality, high-velocity decisions. Easy for start-ups and very challenging for large organizations. The senior team at Amazon is determined to keep our decision-making velocity high. Speed matters in business — plus a high-velocity decision making environment is more fun too. We don’t know all the answers, but here are some thoughts.

Day 2的公司可以做出高質量的決策，但他們是慢慢地做出高質量的決策。為了保持Day 1的精力與活力，你必須以某種方式做出質量高、速度快的決策。對於新創來說很容易，但這對於大型組織來說很有挑戰性。Amazon的高級團隊決心保持快速的決策速度。速度對企業至關重要，快速決策讓商業環境更加有趣。我們並不知道所有問題的答案，這只是我們的一些想法。

First, never use a one-size-fits-all decision-making process. Many decisions are reversible, two-way doors. Those decisions can use a light-weight process. For those, so what if you’re wrong? I wrote about this in more detail in last year’s letter.

首先，切勿使用千篇一律的決策流程。許多決策都是可逆的、雙向的。這些決策可以使用輕量的決策流程。對於這些決策，錯了又何妨？我在去年的致股東信中詳細地介紹了這一點。

Second, most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you’re probably being slow. Plus, either way, you need to be good at quickly recognizing and correcting bad decisions. If you’re good at course correcting, being wrong may be less costly than you think, whereas being slow is going to be expensive for sure.

其次，大多數決策可能需要在你只擁有70％資訊時進行。在大多數情況下，如果你等待90％資訊，那你的決策速度會很慢。你需要擅長快速識別和糾正錯誤的決策。如果你擅長調整路線，那麼犯錯的代價可能會比你想像的要低，而速度慢將使你付出高昂的代價。

Third, use the phrase “disagree and commit.” This phrase will save a lot of time. If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, “Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?” By the time you’re at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you’ll probably get a quick yes.

第三，使用慣用語「不同意但支持」將節省大量時間。即使在沒有達成共識的情況下，你仍對某個特定方向充滿信心，那麼你可以說：「看，我知道我們對此沒有共識，但你是否可以和我賭一把？不同意但支持？」 雖然還沒有任何一方知道這個方向的前景如何，但你很可能會得到嘗試的機會。

This isn’t one way. If you’re the boss, you should do this too. I disagree and commit all the time. We recently greenlit a particular Amazon Studios original. I told the team my view: debatable whether it would be interesting enough, complicated to produce, the business terms aren’t that good, and we have lots of other opportunities. They had a completely different opinion and wanted to go ahead. I wrote back right away with “I disagree and commit and hope it becomes the most watched thing we’ve ever made.” Consider how much slower this decision cycle would have been if the team had actually had to convince me rather than simply get my commitment.

不只是員工應該如此，如果你是老闆，你也應該這麼做。我總是不同意但支持。我們最近放行了幾部Amazon Studios的原創內容。我告訴團隊：無論想法是否足夠有趣、會不會太複雜、有沒有考量商業層面，在我們面前還有很多機會，歡迎把想法提出來討論。他們有完全不同的意見，並希望可以往前推進。我立刻回信：「我不同意但支持，希望它成為我們有史以來最受關注的事情。」想想看，如果團隊必須說服我才能得到我的支持，那麼這個決策週期變得多慢。

Note what this example is not: it’s not me thinking to myself “well, these guys are wrong and missing the point, but this isn’t worth me chasing.” It’s a genuine disagreement of opinion, a candid expression of my view, a chance for the team to weigh my view, and a quick, sincere commitment to go their way. And given that this team has already brought home 11 Emmys, 6 Golden Globes, and 3 Oscars, I’m just glad they let me in the room at all!

值得注意的是，這個例子不是我對自己說「好吧，這些人錯了，沒把握住重點，不過這件事不值得我花費心力。」這個例子是真正的意見分歧，我坦率表達我的想法，團隊因此有機會權衡我的想法，迅速得到我的支持。有鑑於該團隊已經帶回了11個艾美獎、6個金球獎和3個奧斯卡獎，我非常高興他們讓我參與！

Fourth, recognize true misalignment issues early and escalate them immediately. Sometimes teams have different objectives and fundamentally different views. They are not aligned. No amount of discussion, no number of meetings will resolve that deep misalignment. Without escalation, the default dispute resolution mechanism for this scenario is exhaustion. Whoever has more stamina carries the decision.

第四，及早發現錯位問題，並立即調整。有時不同團隊會有不同的目標和觀點。它們無法對齊。沒有討論或會議可以解決嚴重的錯位問題。如果不由上級管理者干預，錯位問題引發的爭端將耗盡所有人的精力。最終，只能由耐力更好的人來做決定。

I’ve seen many examples of sincere misalignment at Amazon over the years. When we decided to invite third party sellers to compete directly against us on our own product detail pages — that was a big one. Many smart, well-intentioned Amazonians were simply not at all aligned with the direction. The big decision set up hundreds of smaller decisions, many of which needed to be escalated to the senior team.

多年來，我在Amazon已經看到許多錯位的例子。當我們決定邀請第三方賣家使用我們的產品詳細資訊頁，直接與我們自家商品競爭時，發生了很大的錯位問題。出於善意，許多聰明的Amazon員工並沒有照著這個目標執行。這個重大決策影響底下數百個小決策，其中許多小決策因此需要上報給上級團隊。

“You’ve worn me down” is an awful decision-making process. It’s slow and de-energizing. Go for quick escalation instead — it’s better.

「你使我精疲力竭」是一種糟糕的決策過程，緩慢而耗盡心力。更好的做法是－上報後迅速決策。

So, have you settled only for decision quality, or are you mindful of decision velocity too? Are the world’s trends tailwinds for you? Are you falling prey to proxies, or do they serve you? And most important of all, are you delighting customers? We can have the scope and capabilities of a large company and the spirit and heart of a small one. But we have to choose it.

那麼，你是否只關心決策質量，還是也注意到決策速度？世界趨勢對你來說有利嗎？你是代理的受害者，還是代理的主人？最重要的是，你使客戶滿意嗎？能不能同時擁有大公司的規模和能力和小公司的精神和內心？可以，但是我們必須做出選擇。

A huge thank you to each and every customer for allowing us to serve you, to our shareowners for your support, and to Amazonians everywhere for your hard work, your ingenuity, and your passion.

非常感謝每個客戶讓我們為你提供服務，感謝我們的股東的支持，也感謝所有Amazon員工的勤奮、獨創性和熱情。

As always, I attach a copy of our original 1997 letter. It remains Day 1.

如同往常，我把我們在1997年寫的致股東信附在文末。我們的價值觀依然不變，今天依舊是Day 1。

Sincerely,

Jeff

真誠的

傑夫

Jeffrey P. Bezos

Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Amazon.com, Inc.

傑夫·貝佐斯

Amazon創始人暨CEO

以上就是2016年Amazon致股東信。

想看隔年的Amazon致股東信，請至《2017年Amazon致股東信：我們非常感謝客戶的「不滿意」》。

想看全系列導讀目錄，請至《Amazon 1997–2019年致股東信導讀目錄》。