Leadership Principle Worksheet
This worksheet was designed to share how I align my experience with Amazon’s Leadership Principles. I’ve written down a couple of detailed examples from my experience that relate to each of Amazon’s Leadership Principles. Enjoy! Sandra Burns
Invent and Simplify: Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here.” As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time.
Example 1:
Situation: I noticed most trainings booked were mostly beginner level, not as many of the intermediate or advanced level courses. Customers just wanted to get a project done, i.e. newsletter, brochure, etc.
Task: Offered besides the typical Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced Adobe classes like most other schools. I decided to create a basic core for each of the 4 most used courses/applications in any design application.
Action: I decided to create this core of each program and called it the Creative Suite Bootcamp, perhaps coming from a military family or being aware of the rigors of bootcamp. The Creative Suite Bootcamp comprised of a 5 day Class with a day in each application:
Day 1: Illustrator was taught to create/edit vector based drawing. (logo’s, artwork, etc.)
Day 2: PhotoShop was taught to create/edit raster based images. (edit photo’s, etc.)
Day 3: InDesign was taught to help them layout newsletters, brochures, etc.
Day 4: Acrobat was taught to help them export their InDesign to PDF to share with others via email/web.
Day 5: The last day I took their project as a challenge, as I always asked them when they booked, why are you taking this class. Answers might be I am tasked to create a newsletter, etc. so then I rolled together all they learned from the 5 days and we created their newsletter or at least a good start on a template they could take back.
Result: Adobe Training in Phoenix now offered a Creative Suites Bootcamp. Besides learning the core, or basics on all the different applications needed, they also learned how to apply them into their own projects. Bosses loved this as they not only learned but may have had a start or template on their own projects to take back to the office.
Example 2:
Situation: After realization of the downturn in ILT and putting my training online my next task was to help others perhaps experiencing the same thing or just wishing to digitize and share online to audiences they never reached before.
Task: Duplicate what I did to convert online training for others.
Action: Sought out, met with individuals such as authors, trainers, professors who had an interest in putting their courses online. I organized even simplified their content which helped them revisit their content to better prepare it for online.
Result: I created an LMS site for my Adobe training, then put others on it which resulted reach audiences outside their current market bringing in another form of income flow for them.
Example 3:
Situation: Professor is in a panic of what to do with her live speakers she normally had come into class to speak.
Task: Help my professor to convert her live speakers to online.
Action: I worked with each speaker, some may have had videos of what they spoke about and others did not. First thing, was to have them create a video of what they spoke about. I showed them how to video themselves with whatever tools were available at the time.
Result: This resulted in the speakers having a more organized, concise speaking presentation. It also helped the professor to take her live speakers online. It was called the Lecture Series, and is sort of a Ted Talks, you can see it here: https://learn-u.com/course/lecture-series/.
Sandra J. Burns, M.Ed. 