Episode 35 of “What is Innovation?” is out! Jared talks about the innovation playbook, Amazon, and the three elements of innovation with John Rossman, Managing Partner at Rossman Partners and Author of The Amazon Way series.
John Rossman, Managing Partner at Rossman Partners and Author of The Amazon Way series, talks The Amazon Way Leadership, Executive Decisions, and Innovation.
More about our guest:
John Rossman is an expert at digital business models, operations, and organizing programs. He has led engagements on developing innovation processes, Internet of Things strategies, marketplace and API-driven platform business models. He is a sought-after speaker on creating a culture of operational excellence and innovation.
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Episode Guide:
1:26 - What Is Innovation?
3:04 - Innovation playbook and Amazon
6:37 - Book: The Amazon Way
9:17 - Teams and 'failure'
10:51 - Leadership, Executive Decisions, and Innovation
13:44 - Amazon Way: building leadership principles
16:05 - Making the Amazon way your way
18:04 - Amazon and the Culture of Writing
21:29 - Universality of The Amazon Way
24:35 - Intentional Innovation
25:05 - Third element of Innovation
30:00 - 'What sucks?' framework
33:09 - Advice for Innovators
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OUTLAST Consulting offers professional development and strategic advisory services in the areas of innovation and diversity management.
/This transcript was automatically generated using AI; please forgive any inconsistencies. We are working to provide the correct and more concise copy of the transcript. For urgent need, please send us an email."
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Jared Simmons 00:05
Hello, and welcome to what is innovation. The podcast that explores the reality of a word that is in danger of losing its meaning altogether. This podcast is produced by OUTLAST Consulting, LLC, a boutique consultancy that helps companies use innovation principles to solve their toughest business problems. I'm your host Jared Simmons, and I'm so excited to have John Rossman. John Rossman is the author of the Amazon Way book series, a former Amazon leader and managing partner at Rossman partners. Mr. Rossman is an expert leveraging the Amazon leadership principles to help others innovate, compete and win in the digital era. One of the leading innovation speakers, John delivers practical techniques and strategies the audience can apply in their business. John was an executive at amazon.com, where he played a key role in launching the Amazon Marketplace business as the director of merchant integration and went on to have responsibilities for the enterprise business at Amazon. John welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us.
John Rossman 01:05
Jared, great to be here.
Jared Simmons 01:08
Everyone knows Amazon is it's a household name. Your reputation and experience speaks for itself. I'm just really excited to have you and learn a bit more about what innovation means to you as a word and then as a way of operating. So why don't we dive right in? Tell me, what is innovation?
John Rossman 01:28
Yeah, I think a slight twist on that question is what does it mean to innovate? And I think that there's three core components to innovation. One is the ability to envision the future, see something that's better? The second is the ability to test it, like how do you demonstrate, prove it, get it just right. Then the third component is the ability to make business value out of it. In each one of those areas, there's lots of different techniques, lots of different approaches and methodologies to do it, but I honestly see companies missing one or multiple of those in pretty common fashion. That's why I try to royal and boil it down and like, hey, three things you got to do, you got to envision the future, you got to be able to test it and implement it. Then you got to be able to create business value out of it and you can go about it in multiple ways. Innovation is an improvement. It can be a small thing, it can be a big thing. But it is a new way of either delighting the customer driving an operational improvement, and it's the ability to test implement it and make business value out of it.
Jared Simmons 02:41
Well said, I love that structure around envisioning, testing, and then creating the value. Because it does it makes this nebulous word this ethereal word, innovation, it makes it tactical, tangible. I love frameworks that do double duty. Your framework, lets people think about things in an organized way but it also implies the process and that is so important.
John Rossman 03:04
Well, I mean, you touched on like my whole mission. I've left Amazon a long time ago but everything I do, like I go, this isn't about Amazon, it's about you, and what can you take from a company like Amazon, to incorporate into your practices, into your culture, into your techniques in order to become a systematic innovator. Amazon is the interesting company of the digital era, because they have really developed their playbook for how they go about innovating, how they go about scaling. And those are two separate types of playbooks. And that's another thing people get wrong is they think that they're kind of big, the bigger playbook, what most of us are good at is the same playbook from nothing to something playbook. Right? Well, that's the innovation playbook. And that's where they need to pay a little closer attention to the differences there. But I think Amazon is the company that has figured this out. And because they have such a complex and multi sided business model and operating organization, they really tell that story of how do you focus on different sets of inputs in order to get the outputs of innovation and growth that we all want?
Jared Simmons 04:24
That makes perfect sense. And I think that concept of systematic innovation is something that is probably the less sexy branch of the innovation tree. I think people love to envision this lightning bolt moment.
John Rossman 04:37
Exactly. The creative genius.
Jared Simmons 04:40
Exactly. There are different forms of genius and different types of innovation that are born of those different forms.
John Rossman 04:47
Yeah, I always equate it to like an athlete, right, and everybody wants the gold medal moment, right. And they envision that lightning bolt. It's akin to like stepping up and getting the gold medal at the Olympics, but What you have to understand that that's the output, right? The inputs are about every day, for years going to the gym, not knowing whether you're actually going to get that success or not, right? It's the same way with innovation. You can have those championship moments, but you have to trust the process, right? You have to do the every day work. In order to get there. You don't know when you're going to get there. But you know, if you focus on a set of inputs, you will win in this game of improving and innovating.
Jared Simmons 05:31
Hmm. Yeah, you know, as you're talking about this and describing it, I'm a, I'm a college football fan attended the University of Alabama. So I'm sure I just lost some listeners with that. I wrote a, but the way you're describing the systemic innovation process is very much akin to the way Nick Saban describes his process, you know, in my favorite quote of his is, you don't practice until you can do it, right. You practice until you can't do it wrong. As I think about your see, envision test value in, go create the value in that model. In the way you're talking about systematic innovation is a lot about it's the process, you focus on the process, not the outcomes. And it's the mundane, it's the everyday, boring, repetitive habits, things that become habits that become things you can't do wrong, and what you know, as Amazon is moved into different arenas, different markets and different sorts of things that I'm sure they are bringing those habits that they just can't do wrong anymore, because they have done the right for so long.
John Rossman 06:37
Well, and really, that's the the nature of this book. So the Amazon way is on Amazon's leadership principles. And that is the manifestation of a lot of those habits that go into it. And really the definition of their culture and you know, call it their management system is articulated in those leadership principles. And that's why I think it's such an interesting story. This is the third edition, I did some updates, made a suggestion to Amazon actually in it. But I think that those those leadership principles, not in entirety, but especially in the questions that the leadership principles pose to you, is a thoughtful conversation, because it really is a combination of both technique of like the habits we do, but you have to wrap it in an environment boom, especially the executive team manages this process of guided wandering, and exploring and inventing, because if you don't understand that guided wandering is different than operational excellence and scaling, you're gonna squash it, no matter what techniques you take into it, if you don't create the playing field correctly, right, put it in the right set of holding hands here, right, you're gonna squash the very nature of it, because by its very nature, it is about quote, unquote, failing, right, but the type of failure we're talking about isn't experimentation, led failure, not a failure of execution basis has this great quote, it was in one of his shareholder letters, where he leads off with Amazon is the most successful company of failing was basically his headline. And then he goes on into his, he explains is that, you know, most big companies embrace the idea of invention and innovation, but they don't understand the necessary set of failed experiments necessary to get that right, right. And so what he's saying is, like, if you don't understand how experimenting is different than your normal management, science, you won't win at this game of innovation. And so it takes both technique as well as culture and leadership in order to do it, right.
Jared Simmons 08:44
That's, that's gold. If no one takes anything else away from this conversation, that right there will put you on in a position to compete in whatever you're doing. If you can just make that mindset shift, and internalize failure as an as an outcome of an experiment. And not as a an outcome of who you are as a person who you are as a company, your capabilities. When you tie failures to experiments, then they get less personal, and they are closer to data than they are to judgments. Right?
John Rossman 09:17
When I work with teams in this venue, we don't use the word failure because it's an it's an overloaded term right? It is it means both testing failure as well as you know, poor executions. Sloppy thinking, you know, when everything right, and so, because that word is confusing, everybody just don't use it. Right? Don't Don't use this fail forward concept because people don't understand it, or they twist it to mean something that's not so I always say like we're gonna use the word experimentation or testing. Yeah, we're very specific about what we are trying to get to which is quick, fast learning step so that we can progress on our next iteration. In here right now, so that, you know, all these little tricks are the things I tried to bring out in, in the book. And in my keynote speaking, and in the work I do with companies, brilliant, brilliant, I love walking away from that word, because the English language is full of words. And for some reason, when we go to do business, we narrowed it down to about 75 words that we were allowed to use for things. And then, you know, that's, that's how you intended that's how you have to communicate. But walking away from that word really does open up a lot of headspace for people, because words matter words have connotations that are much stronger than the denotative meaning. And so I love that you do that. Right. I want to ask you about something that you touched on just as you were talking about the principles, you call them leadership principles, and you talked about executives and the ways they have to think about things. And I'm sure it's intuitive to you, but can you connect that for us in terms of how leadership and executive decisions relate to innovation? Yeah, I think that, you know, on one basis, the most important decision, a CEO, a board and an executive team makes is about resource allocation, right? We can invest, you know, precious few, you know, fungible or re purposeful resources, in, you know, X number of different places. And so, being purposeful in how you think through where to put your resources is an essential part of what the executive agenda is about. If you can help that team do that better, you're in a position to help create enormous amount of enterprise value, how that team thinks about short term optimization versus long term optimization? Do we stay focused just within kind of our customers and our use cases? Or are we willing to expand either our customers or how we serve customers? It's those types of prioritization that leadership principles can help with on the other angle, one of the things you want to try to do is speed up an organization, right? Like you don't want to slow down an organization, you want to speed it up.
Jared Simmons 12:19
Sure, sure,
John Rossman 12:20
especially when you're in the game of experimentation of innovation, because what you're trying to optimize around is speed to learning, right? Make it as small, make it as tiny, make it as cheap, and make it as fast as possible to prove out your specific little hypothesis, your little test and everything, right? Well, if you have a management structure, where people can kind of it's unknown how we think about things, how we prioritize how we work together, what we expect out of each other, well, guess what happens, everything kind of has to come to the center, right? And so you have to bring decisions to the center slows it down, it creates, you know, this centralized mentality, cypa mentality, all of that stuff, right, right.
Jared Simmons 13:03
But if
John Rossman 13:04
you can create common thinking common frameworks for how we work together, how we make decisions, how we prioritize, are we thinking long term, short term, all of those things, then everybody in the organization can make decisions using the same set of priorities and framework that helps speed up an organization. And so these leadership principles serve multiple purposes. But I think in particular, it helps the executive team make better and consistent decisions. And it helps other leaders in the organization have that same mindset to make the right decisions at their level, speeding up the organization. And so one of the appendixes, I wrote in this edition of the Amazon way, was about building your own leadership principles and how to go through that process of thinking through unpacking, testing, trialing leadership principles in an agile manner. Because the exercise of doing that is tremendously enlightening, right? It's not just having the leadership principles. It's the process, you go through those leadership principles. So I was at Amazon from early 2000, to through late 2005. Oh, watch marketplace business. When it services. Amazon's leadership principles were they weren't written down. They weren't codified at that point. But we were hammering them out, right, like we were talking about, well, how do we make this decision? How would How would this approach work in other circumstances, until we were hammering out our leadership principles, and it was a couple of years after I left that they codified the leadership principles I see. And it's because they took their time and they truly practice them. One of the sayings at Amazon is that our leadership principles are not a poster on the wall, right? They're not intended for show they are meant to be actionable, used by everybody in everyday meetings and when we hire people, when we review people when we are In the moment of making decisions in our business, and I think that's really what you want from your leadership principles is not something that's glossy, that makes you feel good. It's something that helps you operate better.
Jared Simmons 15:11
That's Well said. And that is what I think you It sounds like you will find in these 14 principles are things that are more rooted. That's right. Yep. Yep.
John Rossman 15:19
Yeah. And but again, like, it's not about Amazon, it's about how do you take both the first principles of thinking through how we operate together, as well as Amazon's examples, whether it's the little habits they insert into these principles, or this specific principle itself, and make your team more competitive?
Jared Simmons 15:38
Got it? Got it. Now, I've picked up the book, I have a $5 million business that I want to turn into a $50 million business, and I'm gonna do it, you know, I'm going to use the 14 principles from your book the Amazon way. Now, one of the things I always you know, when I approach a book, I'm always thinking about how do I go from here, where the author is to here where I am on Tuesday at two o'clock in the afternoon. And so any advice on how to make the Amazon way your way?
John Rossman 16:09
Yeah, absolutely. I'll talk about two specific things. So we started off with like, what is innovation, right? And the first thing I started with was, it's the ability to envision the future, right, like that's the first step of innovating. So one of the techniques from Amazon that helps you envision the future is this technique, that's called a future press release. So future Presley's if you have a concept, if you have a new idea, if you kind of see this fuzzy outline of what the future might be, write in a future press release. So it's a it's a one pager or less, it's an announcement, not about the launch of a capability. But after you've had success, so maybe two or three years after you've been in market, right? You talk about in detail, so you can touch it, so you can feel it. So you can taste it. booze, the customer. And why did this new thing, delight them? Like specifically, what delighted the customer which is really the superpower of your product or your service? What's the differentiator? Right, right. The second thing you talk about is maybe it might be the the market size or some metrics of success. But then the third piece is what were the hard things we had to do in order to accomplish this success. Right? So now you're like, Okay, I know where I want to get, what are some things I need to do along the way? What are the hardest problems we have to solve for you don't talk about how you solve for them. Because you haven't done that work. You're just getting the outline of like, oh, here's the big things we have to work on. If you use these techniques of writing a future press release, writing is a superpower, it helps the clarity of thinking, and then the future discussion around that clarity of thinking so much better than the typical PowerPoint slide or something like that. Right? So Amazon talks about having this culture of writing, because writing things out full paragraphs, full sentences for a specific purpose for a specific audience to consider a situation will help whether it's, I do this stuff for my own business. I'm an operator of one, right, right. You can scale it to any size business and any size team, right. Our your concept is so that somebody can read it. And without you talking to them, they can understand what you're proposing, you will think so much better about Oh, well. Yeah, that idea. Here's the problems that that ideas pivoted a little bit. And now I've got the idea. Well, that's the cheapest way in the world to be testing something right, just just by writing it out, you're testing out the concept. Exactly. So that's one of the examples. And then the other thing I would just talk about is the way Amazon uses metrics. It really gives it both insights into how to operate better today. But really, by understanding and exploring a consistent broad set of metrics, especially around the customer experience. That's the going to the everyday gym, that's going to the gym habit, that you explore your customer experience and pay attention to details. What you'll start noticing is a you understand your customer better and you're more curious about your customer, and B you'll start seeing the little points of friction, right? And friction. Friction is the the best and easiest way to innovate. The friction is essentially how am I asking my customer to compensate for a process or a product and experience that hasn't been completed yet. Right? And when you consistently set and explore a set of metrics about the customer experience, over time, these ideas in these insights will come to you. So those would be the two things whether you're a $5 million business or a 50 The billion dollar business, everybody can do those techniques. And you will become both a better innovator and a better operator. And you'll also be a better communicator.
Jared Simmons 20:10
I love that the future press release is a brilliant concept. And I love that the future press release and the metrics, both tools that you just kind of laid out, they are both about putting pen to paper. And I love that you touched on, you know, whether your company of one or 1 million, putting pen to paper is important. And that's something I missed. When I started my business as a company of one, it was all up here, it's all in my head. And so, you know, I felt like I had it. But writing it down is as important for something you're going to do by yourself as a company of one as it is for you know, a company of millions or 10s of 1000s of employees, because of what you just described, organizing your thoughts becoming a better communicator, because you're going to have to tell someone something about your idea if you're going to sell it to them or get them to buy into it, whether they work for you or not. So I wish I had had we'd had this conversation five years ago. I really liked that. And I think it's it's a, it's great that the book reinforces those things as principles and tactical things that you can go do. There are a lot of books on principles, but those two things are very tangible. And I really, I really appreciate you sharing those with us today. Absolutely. As you were talking about, you know, guided wandering and other concepts. Are there any concepts or ideas in this book that you would see as sort of industry or domain specific? So how universal is this book?
John Rossman 21:39
Yeah, that's a great question. And no, I think that, and not that these principles are the entirety or the right set of principles for anybody else. But I think it's a universal to ask yourself the question, well, what are our principles? How do we operate? What are our priorities? What are our mutual expectations of each other? Right, right. And if you can get those straight, you will be a better team. Secondly, I think the concept of how do we grow and innovate is universal, especially through the lens of how do we serve our customers better, right? You know, as Peter Drucker says, there's two things a company needs to be able to do, it needs to be able to market and it needs to be able to innovate, right? And so you have to be able to ask yourself the questions of how are we going to compete differently in the future? And then bring it back? Well, if we think that's the future, what do we need to do today, in order to start building that future, because things get expensive and risky when you have to do them in a hurry. If you can take your little ideas, that's when you have the luxury of time to experiment small and test them out and figure out and then scaling, it's when you have to rush something that they become high risk, not very feasible and really expensive to do. And that's what you see most companies get the predicament is, they wait too long to start the growth agenda. Right. And, and that's, that's when you really get sideways, because they fall in love with today's profits. And this quarter's results, instead of prioritizing long term enterprise value. So I think that this discussion, you know, I'm sure somebody will be able to point out a business or an industry where it's not feasible. I don't know what it is. But these are cross industry, I work across every industry. In fact, the one industry that I kind of shy away with from a little bit is retail, because I think the playbook is so well established there. And everything. I think that it's easier, at least for me to have an impact in other industries, because they they haven't advanced down this right. Industry consolidation, customer multi channel, effortless experience, innovation mindset quite as much. They've done it more than most other industries. Hmm,
Jared Simmons 24:09
that makes sense. I'm wondering about people who connect innovation to technology. You know, I've been listening to you. And you have not once talked about, you know, where you stood up the marketplace here, the technological hurdles, we had to clear, you know, I was our best in class technology that gave us the advantage to drive innovation. Yeah. Which is 70% of the conversation around innovation right now. I would say, yeah. So can you talk to me a bit about you know, I didn't hear that. Was that intentional? Is that something that shows up?
John Rossman 24:42
Well, it was unintentional because I don't think of technology equaling innovation. Innovation takes a lot of different disciplines and capabilities to come together. Right. I think first and foremost, it requires a value proposition right? It has to be done. demonstrated Li better than whatever the current state is for it to win, right? Remember, the third element of innovation has has to create business value. So you have to envision the future, you have to be able to test it. But it has to be able to create business value, the way that you test business value is through a value proposition. Right? And and so the first thing this takes is like, do we think that this thing is a winner? Like, does it have a testable value proposition and so that's the first thing you have to have, then you have to have a business model that helps you take it to market, then you have to have all the supporting capabilities of whether it's supply chain, or a human resources strategy, or the technology or legal risks that have to be figured out whatever they are, those are all the structural elements that it takes to do kind of anything, right? But it's not at the behest of technology, it's at the behest of serving a new customer in a new way. And then I figure out all the capabilities that it takes, including a technical capability. Now, I do think that technology is the lever that can help transform so many things into being demonstratively better, right? So when we can, when we can take cost out time out, when we can digitize something that's physical. Well, that helps make a better value proposition, right. And so I do think that that technology is oftentimes a key component of making this happen. But you don't do it by starting with like, Well, here's the technology, what do I go? Do you start with a customer in mind and how I'm going to serve that customer?
Jared Simmons 26:46
That's brilliant. And I love the way you phrased it. And it echoes to me the training I got at p&g in the early 2000s. Under ag lafley, you know, is that, you know, consumers boss better and cheaper consumer back development, and all those things. And so it seems like that sort of mindset that wave was kind of in the air in that era.
John Rossman 27:07
Well, at Amazon. It's funny, you mentioned that at Amazon, they they talk about their approach, their mindset is working backwards, start with the customer backwards. And so everything that I'm describing is that ease of start with the market, start with the job to be done, start with the customer start with the friction or abandon work backwards. But the first step back is not the technical solution right now. The first is better understanding the problem space, and better ways of solving problems on behest of customers and then getting into some solution aspects. What we're talking about this so I have a I have a newsletter also, it's called the digital leader newsletter. If you go to substack. And search either john Rossman or the digital leader newsletter, you'll find it you can sign up for free. But But in that newsletter, it's a weekly newsletter for innovators and strategists and problem solvers. I talked about three things consistently, I talk about customer centricity and why it's important to be customer centric, because it all starts with the customer. The second thing I talked about is problem space analysis. What too many people want to rush to is they want to rush to solutions. There is a power of stain in the in the problem space that helps you explore the customer, their real mission, what they're trying to accomplish. And it will open up your eyes to different approaches to solving for the customer before you go into the solutioning aspect. And then the third thing we explore is just different innovation, techniques and mindsets and stuff. So I hope people sign up for the digital leader newsletter. Oh,
Jared Simmons 28:44
yeah, I can provide a first hand endorsement on that it's a wonderful newsletter full of fascinating articles. In the problem space analysis, it makes me think of some other sort of trainings that I've had in various places. And one of the things that was a mantra was kind of drilled into us was, you don't fall in love with the solution, you fall in love with the problem. Because as long as you're obsessed with the problem, you don't get locked into a house. And the more educated you become about the problem, the friction, you know, that the consumer is experiencing, the better your language becomes. So communicate with that consumer, which makes your understanding of the problem better, which makes that whole cycle much more virtuous, and get you to a place where when you're an expert with about of the consumer, the customer and the problem that they're trying to solve, the solutions almost become I don't want to call it self evident to minimize the minimize the extreme challenges of developing a product or service, but the technology almost kind of find you you know, because you get down to the critical essence of the problem you're trying to solve
John Rossman 29:51
and you'll develop multiple options, right? That's the key. Yes, can be then tested, better and everything. So Yeah, in the digital leader newsletter, I have a specific framework that I made up and it's called the what sucks framework. And I'm like asking the question, like, what sucks? That is a customer oriented question that keeps you in the problem space. And so I kind of have a framework that that takes you there. And so one of the examples that I framed out in the newsletter is an everyday occurrence, which is when you're grilling, and you're using a gas grill, and you have the 20 gallon gas canister that your grill runs on, right? Well, what sucks is when that runs out, right? Because a, you have no indication that it's about to run out. It runs out intermittently, right. So it's not a consistent thing that happens, right? It happens, right? One every month or every six months, it depends on the time of year. And the third thing is it happens at the worst possible moments. Right? Your Yeah, burgers are halfway done. And all sudden, you see the temperature, right drop on your grill, right? So that's a really bad customer experience. And so in the example, and you can find this a newsletter I explore, like all the different aspects about the customer experience, that really sucks through the eyes of the actors that are in those scenes, right? And just by reading the the what sucks problem statement, you'll come up with five or six different potential solutions. That then you go, Oh, well, you know, how would we go about testing these, right? And so even as something as obvious is like, you know, running out of the gas grill, I go just by spending a little extra time but having the discipline of writing out the problem space. So Dan Olson, in the lean product playbook does a really nice job of explaining the problem space and the power of the problem space. I'm just building on the work of others, you know, and everything. And so I think it's a real power. But everyone, especially the more senior you are, the more expert you are, you have no expert tunnel vision, you know, in you think your superpower is to go to the solution, the recommendation as fast as possible. And I'm here to tell you, a real expert pulls you back and won't let you go to solutions and helps you see it with a bit more of you know, what they talked about, you know, the beginner's mindset, right? Being more curious.
Jared Simmons 32:39
It's such a great framework and such a great way of explaining it. The gas grill is just a perfect example. My mind is just pinging, we could talk for days, I think you and I about this. It's just the it's just such a fertile topic. I wanted to check in with you to see if you have any advice for innovators that you've written an entire book about principles.
John Rossman 33:01
A couple actually.
Jared Simmons 33:05
A series of books about on the topic, but if you had to crystallize, one or two points of advice for for innovators out there. What would that be?
John Rossman 33:15
Well, let's talk about innovators within a big company, in particular, right, because I think for a founder or starter, it's a different set of advice. But if you're a change agent and innovator within an enterprise, the things I would talk about is that a you have to understand that it's a different Management Science for innovating versus what you typically use for running a business. Right? Running a business is all about optimization, right? Having operational excellence relative to it, and and refinement of existing capabilities. Innovation is about guided wandering, right. And you aren't seeking optimization, you're seeking insights. And so it's a completely different playbook. So that's one is you got to build an awareness in your organization that, hey, if we're going to do this, it's a different playbook. It's a different set of optimizations that we're looking for. I think the second thing that I would talk about is we all want that. And this has been something we've already talked about, like we all want the outputs of innovation, talk about the inputs, right? Like, well, what do we need to do in order to get that and if you start that conversation, people understand, we're in control that it is a process, I can be systematic about it. And I need a different set of inputs to get those outputs and the types of inputs I'm used to getting to in my in my business. The third thing I talked about is I think it's really like it's this the story, the power of storytelling, right? But a lot of this is about how you tell a convincing, compelling Story, both internally and externally. A lot of these techniques, not just help you get to better insights, understand the customer better, it helps you tell a better story. I'm an engineer by background, I have completely grown into the appreciation and trying to build my own skill set in how to tell a story because your job is to create change. If you're an innovator, the first principle of what you're trying to get done is create change, right? I'm not about status quo or optimizing the status quo. I'm about creating change. Stories are the way to create change in an organization. So those would be maybe three pieces of advice that I would give an internal change agent at a bigger enterprise and you got to figure out how you're going to do all three of those things.
Jared Simmons 35:50
Wonderful. Fantastic. Thank you so much for that, particularly listening to a fellow engineer talking about the power of storytelling is gratifying. So, john, thank you so much for joining as author of the Amazon Way book series, managing partner at Rosman partners and just a cool and interesting guy to talk to. I really appreciate you making the time and I am looking forward to listening to this myself. So thanks again.
John Rossman 36:15
Jared, Thanks for having me on. People can find me on LinkedIn, the books the Amazon way it's on Amazon. It's paperback, Kindle, audio, and please sign up for the digital leader newsletter. It's a cheap and free way to get a little weekly power boost from me.
Jared Simmons 36:32
Fantastic. Thanks so much, john. Take care. We'd love to hear your thoughts about this week's show. You can drop us a line on twitter at Outlast LLC, O ut LKST LLC, or follow us on LinkedIn where we're at less consulting. Until next time, keep innovating. Whatever that means.