This article is written by Mohammad Eslim, a Contributor Author at Startup Istanbul.
Startup Istanbul 2017 had a number industry leaders hold a panel session and discuss relevant topics, including: Vera Shokina who is the Managing Director of Silicon Valley Bank. Yinal Özkan, CEO of AWS. Yousef M. Hamidaddin who handles Innovation & Change Advocate Anchored. And Asra Nadeem, Program Director of Draper University.
Every first day of our life's journey was significant. Your very first birthday, the horrifying first day at preschool. The first day your curious selves enrolled in school, then comes the, so cool, first day as college students till finally your first day starting your career!!. Every day of firsts in our life holds so much prominence, so much importance!!
Companies’ day one?
Unlike us, humans, any company starts before day one, in the mind of an entrepreneur as a promising idea, then to paper as a business plan till eventually it becomes a real estate as a corporate of some sort. The official work of the employees starts at day one. So what does day one mean for the corporate in the business? And what does day two mean for the company?
Day one is a term Jeff bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, stated for the employees at Amazon to always start every working day in the company as Day one. What does exactly Day one mean? Well, it means to act as a startup company, working harder, looking for opportunities, thrive on new ideas, always be innovating!!
How to have a bright first day at your new “highschool”?
Different than the old high school, where your focus is on books and friends, Jeff bezos believes that Day one is successfully achieved by four fundamental rules all employees have to accomplish in their working life :
Be obsessed with the customer.
Focus on results over process.
Make high quality decisions quickly.
Embrace external trends quickly.
Customers’ satisfaction is essential for the success of your business, and their needs are the basic pillars your business’s existence count on. According to Bezos, employees must ensure that the customers are satisfied with the company's functionality performance and the services are to their preference and liking.
Secondly, the attention the executives should be paying more is to the result of the processes that the corporate runs. Focusing on the process is superfluous if the result is not up to the company's standards and the satisfactory of the customers or does not deserve the sources wasted upon the process.
Managing big business, the employees in a position of a manager especially the executive officers, have to make a critical decision in hard times. It may not seem hard enough of a deal bit it is. These decisions can be definitive in terms of how much money you spend, make, waste or lose. It may very well affect the nature of the business you lead,and where the future of the company lays.
The last point is so important for the employees, it should be considered before as it is a factor of innovating. Embracing the external change of trends quickly gives the corporate a quicker chance to find new opportunities, work for higher expectations , attract more customers, make new plans, tremendous innovation in the business, creating new sectors and designing new product lines. The change is happening quickly whether we want it or not so we better work it for our best benefits. All of that above was Bezos’ views on Day one, the following question would be:
What about Day two? How does he feel about it?
To our surprise, Bezos describes Day two quite the opposite of Day one. He says and I quote: “ ‘Day Two’ is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day One at Amazon."
In fact, Bezos believes that the company's Day one is the company's first day and its last day is when the company dies. In this context, we understand that the company's functionality and entrepreneurial spirit must stay alive and running at Day one’s level in every other day, specially Days Tow, or the company's death is in process.
In the end, Amazon is the best instance to illustrate the problem with DayOne-DayTwo deferences. Any corporate must work harder every day to maintain the business’s agility and efficiency. In this accelerating world, the change is inevitable and Day One’s innovation spirit should be all-time working mood.
https://vimeo.com/241696419