How Amazon Designed an Organisation That Scales
Oli Gibson
A few months ago I had the pleasure of working with James Lewis on a project at ThoughtWorks. Through the few weeks we worked together we had some great conversations about organisational design, creating environments that enable flow and how the laws of scaling can be applied to companies. James shared a lot over those weeks and now he has shared these thoughts and more in his talk Flow, Microservices and scale.
In his talk, James introduces the concept of Organisational Metabolism, explaining how at most companies everything slows down as they get bigger and indeed for many, this slowing pace eventually leads to their demise.
He then goes on to discuss how some companies are breaking the trend and accelerating as they grow. Amazon is one of these examples. Their revenue is growing 15% faster than their headcount, meaning that as they grow the size of the organisation they generate revenue more efficiently.
James' talk explores how Amazon, and others, have created organisations that scale. I highly recommend you check it out!
Enjoy :)