Amazon CEO: Jeff Bezos once called out a big mistake I made in a presentation—how I won him back over
If you're going to give a presentation to Jeff Bezos, you'd better have your facts straight.
Andy Jassy, who eventually succeeded Bezos as Amazon CEO, learned that lesson in the early 2000s while giving a presentation to the e-commerce giant's founder. Jassy described the experience of giving Bezos a flawed presentation as "one of my worst fears realized" In a May 15 appearance on the "How Leaders Lead" podcast.
"We worked really hard on this presentation for the senior leadership team," Jassy said, explaining that he and his partner had put together 140 slides, and he was responsible for presenting the first half. "I get maybe three slides in and I'm talking about customer retention, and Jeff Bezos interrupted me and said 'all the numbers on this page are wrong.'"
One of Jassy's biggest work-related anxieties "was going into a big meeting and being exposed as not knowing what I was talking about," he said — and as Bezos pointed out all the flaws in the numbers in front of him, "it was one of my worst fears realized."
Faced with his error, Jassy opted to quickly admit that he was mistaken in hopes of continuing with the presentation, he said. But before letting Jassy move on, Bezos challenged his employee.
"He said, 'Why should I trust one other thing you say this entire presentation?'" Jassy recalled. "And I said, 'Well, I hope you do, cause we have 137 pages left in this presentation and it's going to be a really long few hours for you if you don't.'"Jassy got through the rest of his slides, describing it as "not a great presentation, but it was not a catastrophe." Being called out by Bezos and living to tell the tale was "very seminal" for his professional development, he added.
"Afterwards I felt like if that's the worst that happens when you get something really wrong and get called out for it publicly, I can deal with it," said Jassy. "It was actually in a weird way a confidence builder."
Jassy's response — admit your mistake, rather than getting defensive — is exactly the right way to build influence at work, some experts say. Showing humility when you're wrong, without dwelling on the mistake, can make other people more likely to trust you in the future, Stanford University lecturer and communication expert Matt Abrahams told CNBC Make It on Oct. 18.
Bezos grew to trust Jassy: Five years into Jassy's tenure at the company he was invited to be the CEO's first "shadow" advisor. The role was akin to a chief of staff position and allowed him to sit in on all of Bezos' meetings and learn how he did his job.
"I hadn't ever heard of another job like this," he said in an interview with LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky last year. "And it was just an incredible experience."
Jassy would go on to lead the Amazon Web Services team before officially being named Amazon CEO in 2021.
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