The Amazon Leadership Principles are 16 values that describe how Amazon does business, how its leaders lead, and how the company keeps the customer at the centre of decisions. They're not a poster on a wall — Amazon explicitly uses them to hire, promote, and make day-to-day decisions, and candidates are interviewed directly against them. [Source: Amazon, Leadership Principles]
They're worth understanding beyond interviews, too: because AWS builds products like Amazon Connect the same "start with the customer and work backwards" way, the principles quietly explain why those products are designed and prioritised as they are. Below is the full list, each explained simply, with a contact-centre lens.
How many are there? There are 16 Amazon Leadership Principles. The original 14 were expanded to 16 in 2021 with the addition of Strive to be Earth's Best Employer and Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility. The summaries below are paraphrased; see Amazon's official page for the exact wording. Content was rephrased for compliance with licensing restrictions.
All 16 Amazon Leadership Principles
1.Customer Obsession
Start with the customer and work backwards; earn and keep their trust, and obsess over customers rather than competitors. The foundational principle — and the one most visible in how Amazon Connect is designed around customer experience.
2.Ownership
Think long term, act on behalf of the whole company, and never say "that's not my job." In delivery terms: own the outcome, not just your task.
3.Invent and Simplify
Expect innovation, look for ideas everywhere, and always find ways to simplify. The mindset behind no-code tools and features that remove complexity for the customer.
4.Are Right, A Lot
Have strong judgment, seek diverse perspectives, and actively try to disprove your own beliefs. Good instincts, tested against evidence.
5.Learn and Be Curious
Never stop learning; stay curious about new possibilities and explore them. Essential in a fast-moving space like contact centre AI.
6.Hire and Develop the Best
Raise the bar with every hire, recognise great talent, and take coaching seriously. Leaders develop leaders.
7.Insist on the Highest Standards
Hold relentlessly high standards, keep raising the bar, and make sure defects don't get passed down the line — fix problems so they stay fixed. The quality discipline behind good testing and evals.
8.Think Big
Thinking small is self-fulfilling; create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results, and look around corners for ways to serve customers.
9.Bias for Action
Speed matters; many decisions are reversible and don't need exhaustive study, so value calculated risk-taking. The reason you can stand up a contact centre in a day rather than a year.
10.Frugality
Accomplish more with less; constraints breed resourcefulness and invention. No extra points for bigger budgets or headcount — which maps neatly onto pay-as-you-go economics.
11.Earn Trust
Listen, speak candidly, treat others with respect, and be vocally self-critical; benchmark against the best. Trust is earned, not assumed.
12.Dive Deep
Operate at all levels, stay connected to the detail, audit frequently, and be sceptical when the metrics and the anecdotes disagree. No task is beneath a leader — the discipline behind digging into analytics rather than trusting a headline number.
13.Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit
Respectfully challenge decisions you disagree with, even when it's uncomfortable — then, once a decision is made, commit to it fully. Don't compromise for the sake of harmony, but don't relitigate forever either.
14.Deliver Results
Focus on the key inputs, deliver them with the right quality and on time, and rise to the occasion despite setbacks — never settle.
15.Strive to be Earth's Best Employer
Work every day toward a safer, more productive, more diverse and just workplace; lead with empathy and care about whether colleagues are growing and empowered. Added in 2021.
16.Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility
Be humble and thoughtful about the wider effects of your actions on communities, the planet, and future generations — create more than you consume and leave things better than you found them. Added in 2021.
Why a contact centre blog cares: if you've ever wondered why Amazon Connect leads so hard on customer experience, ships features at pace, prices pay-as-you-go, and keeps simplifying — that's Customer Obsession, Bias for Action, Frugality, and Invent and Simplify showing up in product form. The principles are the operating system beneath the products.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Amazon Leadership Principles are there?
There are 16 Amazon Leadership Principles. The original 14 were expanded to 16 in 2021 with the addition of 'Strive to be Earth's Best Employer' and 'Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility'. Amazon publishes the full, current set on its official site.
What are the Amazon Leadership Principles?
They are the 16 values Amazon uses to hire, promote, and make decisions: Customer Obsession, Ownership, Invent and Simplify, Are Right A Lot, Learn and Be Curious, Hire and Develop the Best, Insist on the Highest Standards, Think Big, Bias for Action, Frugality, Earn Trust, Dive Deep, Have Backbone Disagree and Commit, Deliver Results, Strive to be Earth's Best Employer, and Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility.
What is the most important Amazon Leadership Principle?
Customer Obsession is widely regarded as the foundational principle — Amazon describes leaders as starting with the customer and working backwards, and obsessing over customers rather than competitors. Many of the other principles ultimately serve that customer-first starting point.
Why do the Amazon Leadership Principles matter beyond Amazon?
They are a widely studied operating model used in interviews, management, and product work far beyond Amazon itself, and because AWS products like Amazon Connect are built the same 'customer-obsessed, work-backwards' way, understanding the principles helps explain why those products are designed and roadmapped as they are.
Conclusion
The 16 Amazon Leadership Principles are more than interview fodder — they're the operating model that shapes how Amazon and AWS build, decide, and prioritise, right down to the design of products like Amazon Connect. Whether you're preparing for an interview, leading a team, or just trying to understand why AWS behaves the way it does, knowing the principles — starting with Customer Obsession — is genuinely useful context.
Source
Official list and definitions: Amazon — Leadership Principles. Summaries above are paraphrased for clarity and licensing compliance; refer to Amazon's page for the exact official wording. This is an independent reference article and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Amazon or AWS.