Jeff Bezos: Let the Most Junior Person Overrule the CEO

Jeff Bezos explains why building a high-performing culture means empowering junior voices—even when it means disagreeing with leadership.

“Truths often don’t want to be heard. Important truths can be uncomfortable, awkward, exhausting, challenging. They can make people defensive.”

He continues:

“But any high-performing organization—whether it’s a sports team, a business, a political organization, or activist group—has to have mechanisms and a culture that supports truth telling.”

Jeff wanted to build a culture of truth-telling in Amazon.

So in every meeting Jeff attends, he always speaks last:

“I know from experience that if I speak first, even very strong-willed, highly-intelligent participants of that meeting will [wonder if their ideas are incorrect]”

By allowing junior people to speak first, he makes sure that all ideas are heard and weighed equally:

“You want to set up your culture so that the most junior person can overrule the most senior person.”