Diving Deep and establishing company culture with Faisal Masud

Think Like Amazon

Faisal spent over 7 years at Amazon as a Director over the early growth of several businesses including Mobile Electronics, Amazon Warehouse, Amazon BuyBack, Amazon TradeIn, and Amazon Basics. Building these programs helped Faisal hone his ability to Dive Deep into business processes and health. Since leaving Amazon in 2011, Faisal held a number of VP and C-level roles for companies such as eBay, Groupon, Staples, and Google, before joining Fabric as CEO in 2020.

In this episode, Faisal shares key examples and insights about the Dive Deep principle and his approach to leadership and building an organizational culture. At Fabric – a fast-growing tech startup with two funding rounds in the first half 2021 – Faisal has pulled talent, practices, and values from Amazon, Google, and other top companies to form the current culture at Fabric. Listeners are likely to find valuable insights into how leaders can evaluate the best principles of past companies and apply them in their current work and team building.

Mentioned in the podcast:

Fabric: fabric.inc

Faisal on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/faisal/

Faisal on Twitter: @FaisMasud

Coffee + Commerce Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coffee-commerce/id1546141800
More from the episode:

1:40 – Faisal’s journey at Amazon and insights behind the businesses he led

7:20 – Challenges to scaling Amazon TradeIn

9:20 – Single-threaded leaders and document writing as key mechanisms to drive stakeholder engagement

10:29 – Using customer-level anecdotes and asking uncomfortable questions to understand the health of a business

20:00 – Dive Deep mechanisms from Amazon that have and have not transferred well in other organizations

25:33 – Top leadership practices that Faisal picked up outside of Amazon

29:16 – Establishing cultural values (i.e. leadership principles) at Fabric

30:49 – Amazon practices and principles adapted at Fabric

34:25 – How leaders can Dive Deep, regardless of the business culture they find themselves in