Andy Jassy’s latest canvas for reinvigorating Amazon’s cultural DNA? Employee reviews

·AmazonAndy Jassy’s canvas for reinvigorating Amazon’s cultural DNA

Employee reviewsBY Jason Del ReyBY Jason Del Rey CorrespondentJason Del Rey CorrespondentJason Del Rey is a nology correspondent at Fortune and a co-chair of the Fortune Brainstorm and Fortune Brainstorm AI conferences

SEE FULL BIOHow well does this employee exemplify our company values

That’s essentially what Amazon and its CEO Andy Jassy is requiring its corporate managers to start factoring into employee performance evaluations beginning this quarter, Insider reported on Wednesday

The move codifies and formalizes what was previously implied: that Amazon managers should evaluate employees in part on how well their actions up to the company’s 16 Leadership Principles – corporate totems or values “Bias for Action,” “Customer Obsession, and “Frugality” that are supposed to guide behavior, decision-making, and new-idea development inside the behemoth. “By making Leadership Principles a formal input… the d cess helps us strengthen the connection between performance and culture,” the new internal guideline read in part, according to the report

The formalization of this new evaluation is not surprising if you’ve tracked Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s leadership of the company in recent years

But it is significant; it’s the salvo in his years-long crusade to strengthen, and in some corners of the organization, resuscitate, the company DNA architected by founder and previous CEO Jeff Bezos

What Jassy is seeking to do doesn’t have many examples to model after: to transform the 1. 5-million person company into the “world’s largest startup,” as he’s said is his goal

But he and his leadership team have been consistently and meticulously taking action that they believe gives them a fighting chance to do so

In Jassy’s annual letter to holders published this spring, for example, the Bezos successor said his company strives “to operate the world’s largest startup” and then laid out some of the details on getting there, including using what’s essentially an internal bureaucracy hotline to identify and, in turn, cut red tape

Last year, the CEO also released what was essentially an hour-long tutorial on the meaning of each of the company’s 16 LPs, and how they should be interpreted

In the fall, Jassy and his deputies ordered corporate staff back to the office five days a week, believing new employees can’t learn or the company’s principles if they’re not observing and practicing them daily

As Fortune documented in a deep investigation last year, the remote work boom incited by the pandemic, coupled with Amazon’s rapid hiring and employee growth over the past decade, greatly impacted the company’s culture and how it operates

With it, the famed leadership principles began showing signs of fraying

While formally evaluating how well employees exhibit the leadership principles will surely create its own challenges due to the subjective nature of the task, Jassy’s recent track record says it won’t be his company’s last attempt to fortify Amazon’s culture

Are you a current or former Amazon employee with thoughts on this topic or a tip to

Jason Del Rey at jason

Com, jasondelrey@tonmail

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