Fear Day 2

Jeff Bezos runs Amazon in Day 1. He works in a building named Day 1. And he works with a Day 1 mindset.

For Bezos every day is Day 1. And he obsessively acts to ensure that Amazon and all of its employees are right there with him in Day 1.

Day 1 companies are entrepreneurial companies no matter how big they get. They’re always looking up. Everything they do is aimed at continually working to realize their full potential. Full potential which they can never reach because as they aim higher and higher and achieve goal after goal their potential increases even faster than they grow.

The potential to keep growing, keep achieving new gains, keeps Day 1 companies hungry and continually striving to become even better.

This means taking a long-term view about building market leadership through continuous action and innovation. It means focusing on giving your customers a continuous stream of new and better things. It means making decisions and rapidly acting on them. It means never slowing down.

In Bezos’ world you make decisions when you get “around 70% of the information you wish you had.” 70% is enough for great people to make good decisions and keep moving forward.

Fill your company with great people and turn them loose to continually push the envelope and wow your customers…and customers-to-be.

It’s not about getting consensus. It’s about trusting your instincts and the instincts of your people, even if you don’t always agree with them. Bezos calls this “disagree and commit.”

Day 1 companies stay flexible. Most of the time the results will be good. And if they aren’t, they fix things and move on.

In Bezos’ recent shareholder letter, he reveals he is always thinking about these two critical questions: “how do you retain the vitality of Day 1?” and “how do you fend off Day 2?”

If you don’t continue to live in Day 1, Day 2 appears. And in Bezos’s view “Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death.”

The truth of his thinking is all around you.

Have you seen a Blackberry phone lately?