Dani Wawryk
June 1, 2021

Why Vendasta is adopting Amazon-tested models for workplace excellence

On May 6, an email dropped into your inbox from Christa Ragoonath: "Read request from Brendan - Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon." More than 100 free copies of the book are falling into the hands of Vendastians right now. If you're reading it, you're uncovering some of the influences Amazon has on our company—some recent, and some more established. We sat down with Brendan King to understand why it's important we thumb through the pages of this popular insiders’ look at the tech behemoth.

Q: What was your initial impression of the book?

BK: It struck a chord with me. I’ve been following Amazon for a long time. I’ve always read Jeff Bezos’ shareholder letters with interest, and when I read the book, I recognized a lot of the same things we’re working on modeling at Vendasta. They have tested strategic processes and demand excellence. We’ve long talked about some of these things but haven’t established the rigor—the input and output metrics—and the processes. Amazon was a big company a long time ago, and we have the opportunity to learn from their successes as we grow past 500 employees. We can lean into some of their processes to grow and scale. 

Q: Should Vendastians see this as a playbook?

BK: People shouldn’t think we're taking directly from Amazon. We're not. Amazon took inspiration and formulas from other business writers and just added a nice system on top of them. So it’s really important to me that people know these are some practices that are layered upon a lot of other seminal thinkers. The key takeaway here is rigor. Rigor in our metrics and processes that everyone understands.  I’ve been a student of many different companies, and try to adapt the best practices that work for our unique teams and circumstances. I have five books I’d like to put in everyone’s hands today. This is just the first book we’ve shared widely in the last while. What I like about this book is that it solidifies my conviction in having infrastructure, frameworks, and processes—to follow them and insist on the highest standards. When I read Working Backwards, I just thought “hey, these are a lot of the same principles we embody at Vendasta.” Will we do things exactly the same as Amazon with our PR FAQs or narratives? Probably not. But it’s a starting point based on another company's experience.

Q: We’ve been inspired by Amazon before. Why did we choose to adapt their leadership principles at the start of our company?

Like Amazon borrowed from other business best practices, we adopted similar principles and expanded upon them to make them our own. Read Good to Great by Jim Collins or Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. The building blocks they’ve developed are used by the likes of Amazon. We borrow, we learn, and we build processes and standards using what’s best for our team. We embody our values of drive, innovation, agility, and respect. We exemplify Vendasta’s leadership principles. It’s important to note that we have two additional leadership principles: “Lead with Sunshine” and “Learn from Mistakes.” Amazon might have more of a sharp edge on those things. We care about people being happy. Learning from mistakes is super, super important. I think a lot of people don’t do that. We just felt that those were things that were important enough to emphasize.

Q: We’re already adapting the PR FAQ and narrative process at Vendasta. Can you explain why you think these processes are valuable?

We used to have it called a "vivid description" or an "envisioned future." That’s what the PR FAQ really is, but it’s framed up so people can understand it. The press release sets the scope, and it sets the date when it'll be released. The other thing is, you don't write a press release about something that isn't worthy of a press release. The FAQs are all the questions that people would ask, so a reader knows you've considered those things. We're getting people to write the PR FAQ right now for things that are already approved and ongoing. It gives you an idea about what someone's working on. It creates transparency and it makes you think about it from the point of view of the customer. It also makes you distill the real problems you're solving. The first PR FAQ never looks like it's going to look at the end after you go through the process. There's a lot of documents that come with the PR FAQ, including mock-ups. 

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"The entire company needs to see something that's press-worthy and what it will look like for the customer. That’s why it’s so valuable. It’s going to mean a bit more work and thought before the start of the project, but it will bring clarity to everything we do."

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Q: What other insights from the book do you anticipate we’ll adapt or adopt?

The PR FAQ and six-page narratives are important. The other big one is the way we think about input and output metrics. The things you can control are input metrics. Output metrics follow those things. They are something you track as a result of something. Take for example new revenue or bookings. I may think about expansion revenue, what existing customers expect – how do we control those things? Well, we hire BDRs and spend money on inbound demand. On the expansion side, I control the number of partner development managers. All of these things are input metrics to my output record of revenue. It’s important to remember that when someone's input metric is changed, it could be another person's output metric. Input metrics should be controllable in your area. Understanding input and output metrics is the next thing that's going to change. The book explains it really well.

Q: Anything else?

We’ll implement the “bar raiser.” More people get to do the interview than just People Operations, and they’ll make sure that the people we hire have our leadership principles. We're going to grade candidates explicitly. If they don't make the grade on the leadership principles, anyone can exclude them. So it's going to get a little bit harder to hire, but we're going to make better hires. Weekly Business Reviews as well. I also want to lean into our Leadership Principles to get them more exposure. Over time, I want to reward people and have them feel rewarded for the valuable work they do to help our customers—financially, in stock, and in other ways —to feel accomplished and to have great careers.

Q: What should we read next?

Atomic Habits by James Clear is a quick, easy read, and it’s really going to change your life. You're going to learn how important it is to do things in a systematic way. Your thoughts become your actions, and your actions become habits, and habits define who you are. The hardest read in the bunch is Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, but it's the one that'll change your life the most. You’ve gotta be prepared, put some effort into that, and probably read it twice. Good to Great is the book we were founded on.