How a $120 Billion Company Thinks Like a Startup | Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services

Michael Gervais (0:00)

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Matt Garman (1:29)

The cost of going slow is just so high. The business that we're in, innovation and technology move so fast that you have to get to a product offering that's great for customers. But if you wait until it's perfect, three more people are going to launch ahead of you because the world is moving so fast.

Michael Gervais (1:42)

What if your biggest competitive advantage isn't how technologically advanced you are, but how psychologically agile your teams are?

Matt Garman (1:49)

If you have somebody that thinks small, they offer or deliver to the thing that they think about. If you have somebody that thinks big and says, hey, look, we can do this other thing that seems unachievable, even if you get 95 percent of the way there, it's a pretty good outcome. We want people who are going to go do something, not just sit around and think about it.

Michael Gervais (2:03)

Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast, where we dive into the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and doers. I'm your host, Dr Michael Gervais, by trade and training a high-performance psychologist. The idea behind these conversations is simple. It's to sit with the extraordinaries and learn, to really learn how they work from the inside out. Today's guest is Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services.

Matt Garman (2:24)

What AWS is, our goal is to power all of the applications, capabilities and technology that every company around the world needs to do. Whether that's two kids in a dorm room building a new web application, whether that's some of the largest companies in the world running their technical infrastructure. We run the data centers and the services that power a lot of what they do.

Michael Gervais (2:41)

In this conversation, we unpack how he leads one of the world's most innovative companies. From why optimism fuels bold ideas to how he empowers teams to make faster decisions using his one-way versus two-way doors approach.

Matt Garman (2:53)

A lot of times, when you really dig in, like, why are you slow to make a decision? People are afraid that they're just like, I'm not sure I'm allowed to make that decision. And so we tell people if a decision is an easy two-way door decision, which means it's super easy to undo. You make this decision, turned out didn't quite work right. You just undo it and then keep running forward. Overall, you're going to get to where you want to go faster.

Michael Gervais (3:10)

We also explore what's really slowing AI adoption. By replacing juniors with AI is a terrible idea. What is the main friction right now with AI?

Matt Garman (3:19)

People are appropriately worried about business disruption and job disruption. Some people position it as elimination. I just don't think it's that. I think it's...

Michael Gervais (3:26)

With that, let's jump into this week's conversation with Matt Garman. Okay, this has been a long time coming. First, I want to congratulate you on a massive body of work and leading a important company into our future. So Matt, thank you for coming on the podcast.

Matt Garman (3:49)

Yeah, thanks for having me. Looking forward to it.

Michael Gervais (3:50)

Okay, great. So for those who might be unfamiliar with AWS, in this most simplest of terms, how do you describe AWS?