Backward Senior Quotes

My recommendation is to keep up the good work. I’m changing your title to senior executive assistant, and giving you a three percent raise effective next payday. Congratulations.” Wow, three percent. I could move up that early retirement plan to age seventy-five now, instead of eighty. Lucky me. Thank you,” I said. “That’s very generous.” You’re quite welcome.” Ms. Saunders nodded and grabbed a gold-plated letter opener to begin attacking her stack of mail. I turned to leave. Didn’t want to outstay my welcome. Damn it!” she exclaimed, and I turned back around. She winced and nodded at the letter opener that she’d dropped to her desktop. “Damn thing slipped. I’m probably going to need stitches now. Can you be a dear and fetch the first-aid kit for me?” She held her left index finger and frowned at the steady flow of blood oozing out. A few small drops of red splashed onto the other letters spread out on the desk. I felt woozy. And suddenly dizzy. I blinked. When I opened my eyes, I was no longer standing by the door about to leave. I was crouched down next to Ms. Saunders’s imported black leather chair, grasping her wrist tightly…… and sucking noisily on her fingertip. I shrieked and let go of her, staggering backward. I grabbed at her desk to keep from falling, but I dropped on my butt, anyhow, taking most of the contents of the top of her desk with me. She held her injured finger far away from her and stared at me, wide-eyed, with a mixture of shock and disgust. I scrambled to my feet and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. What in the holy hell just happened? I… I… uh… I’m so sorry,” I managed. “I don’t know what… I wouldn’t normally do something… I just…” Ms. Saunders pulled her hand close to her chest, perhaps to protect it from further abuse. Get out,” she said quietly. Yeah, I’ll get back to work. Again, I’m so, so sorry. Would you like me to bring you a cup of coffee?” No, not to your desk,” she said evenly, but her volume increased with every word. “Get out of here, you freak. I don’t care what you’ve heard, I’m not into women. You’re fired. Now get out of here before I call security.” But… my job review—” Get out!” she yelled.

There was no doorman outside Harrison Kinuye's house, just a Phillite senior leaning into a huge stone urn. He extricated himself as I reached the door. "Hey," he greeted me, sending out plumes of condensed breath and beer fumes. "Thought I was gonna heave." "Okay," I said. Apparently,that satisfied them, because he opened the front door for me with a clumsy flourish. I was in.That simple. I'd spent the entire walk over worried that I wasn't going to get past the door,I'd watched Harrison's YouTube video (cleverly posted under the complicted name "Harrison Kinuye's Party") three times to be sure of the password. The whole video consisted of Harrison holding a piece of paper with the address, date, and time of the party. Of course,it read backward, but that wasn't much of a challenge, and I suspected it wasn't deliberate on his part. At the eighteen-second mark, he opened his mouth and let out a massive, echoing belch.Fade to black. I'd been afraid that was the password and that I would have to burn for admittance.

These include: the Bar Raiser hiring process that ensures that the company continues to acquire top talent; a bias for separable teams run by leaders with a singular focus that optimizes for speed of delivery and innovation; the use of written narratives instead of slide decks to ensure that deep understanding of complex issues drives well-informed decisions; a relentless focus on input metrics to ensure that teams work on activities that propel the business. And finally there is the product development process that gives this book its name: working backwards from the desired customer experience. Many of the business problems that Amazon faces are no different from those faced by every other company, small or large. The difference is how Amazon keeps coming up with uniquely Amazonian solutions to those problems. Taken together, these elements combine to form a way of thinking, managing, and working that we refer to as being Amazonian, a term that we coined for the purposes of this book. Both of us, Colin and Bill, were “in the room,” and—along with other senior leaders—we shaped and refined what it means to be Amazonian. We both worked extensively with Jeff and were actively involved in creating a number of Amazon’s most enduring successes (not to mention some of its notable flops) in what was the most invigorating professional experience of our lives.

At many companies, when the senior leadership meets, they tend to focus more on big-picture, high-level strategy issues than on execution. At Amazon, it’s the opposite. Amazon leaders toil over the execution details and regularly embody the Dive Deep leadership principle, which states: “Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdotes differ. No task is beneath them.

Like any company, we have a corporate culture formed not only by our intentions but also as a result of our history. For Amazon, that history is fairly fresh and, fortunately, it includes several examples of tiny seeds growing into big trees. We have many people at our company who have watched multiple $10 million seeds turn into billion dollar businesses. That first-hand experience and the culture that has grown up around those successes is, in my opinion, a big part of why we can start businesses from scratch. The culture demands that these new businesses be high potential and that they be innovative and differentiated, but it does not demand that they be large on the day that they are born. I remember how excited we were in 1996 as we crossed $10 million in book sales. It wasn’t hard to be excited—we had grown to $10 million from zero. Today, when a new business inside Amazon grows to $10 million, the overall company is growing from $10 billion to $10.01 billion. It would be easy for the senior executives who run our established billion dollar businesses to scoff. But they don’t. They watch the growth rates of the emerging businesses and send emails of congratulations. That’s pretty cool, and we’re proud it’s a part of our culture.

It is worth noting here that, at Amazon, even the most senior executives review the full WBR deck of metrics, including all the inputs and outputs. Metrics—as well as anecdotes about the customer experience—are the area where the leadership principle Dive Deep is most clearly demonstrated by senior leaders. They carefully examine the trends and changes in the metrics; audit incidents, failures, and customer anecdotes; and consider whether the input metrics should be updated in some way to improve the outputs.

Over the course of many years, Amazon has put in place mechanisms to ensure that the Leadership Principles translate into action. Three foundational mechanisms are: the annual planning process; the S-Team goals process (the S-Team consists of the senior vice presidents and direct reports to Jeff Bezos); and Amazon’s compensation plan, which aligns incentives with what’s best for customers and the company over the long term.

What happens inside the WBR is critical execution not normally visible outside the company. A well-run WBR meeting is defined by intense customer focus, deep dives into complex challenges, and insistence on high standards and operational excellence. One may wonder, at what level is it appropriate for executives to shift focus to output metrics? After all, companies and their senior executives are routinely judged by output metrics like revenue and profit. Jeff knows this well, in part based on his time spent working at a Wall Street investment firm. The simple answer is that the focus does not shift at any level of management. Yes, executives know their output metrics backward and forward. But if they don’t continue to focus on inputs, they lose control over and visibility into the tools that generate output results.

I reached down to move some fruit crates. From somewhere inside the pile, a small voice yelped, “NOPE!” I stumbled backward into a crate of rotten bananas. Mrs. O’Leary didn’t look worried, though. Whatever she was smelling, she was curious about it, and excited. The thing in the pile yapped again—“NOPE!”—and I realized how small it sounded, how afraid.… My heart twisted in a knot. I had a sudden overpowering urge to help the nope-yapper. I started clearing away boxes and bags. Mrs. O’Leary guided me, nosing through the trash until we unearthed the source of the yapping. It was a puppy. A hellhound puppy.

There are just too many coincidences for me. Combined with too many things that don’t add up.” “Maybe I’m just a woman of mystery,” I said. He gave a sudden bark of laughter. “Maybe, but I doubt it. I’ll say this, though. You’re full of surprises.” I took a step, closing the distance between us, and saw emotion flare back into his eyes. This time, surprise. “Leave me alone, Mark,” I said, using his first name for the very first time. “Stop following me. I don’t have anything to hide.” “Prove it,” he said. “How?” “Take me to the prom.” “You have it backward,” I said, my tone condescending and patient. “You’re supposed to say, Claire, may I please take you to the prom.” “Not the Royer prom,” Mark said impatiently. “The Beacon prom.” “I can’t do that,” I said, giving my head a toss to cover the fact that he’d totally caught me off guard. I really liked the way Claire’s hair moved when I did that. “I’m already going with Alex Crawford.” For just an instant, Mark’s face became absolutely unreadable. “I don’t mean as a date,” he said, his tone ever so slightly snide. “You’ll need a staff photographer.” “Forget it,” I said. Without warning, he leaned down until our faces were close. Omigod, he’s going to kiss me, I thought. “Make me,” he said. “You want me to back off, fine. Prove to me you’re not Jo O’Connor and I’ll do whatever you say. I’ll flap my arms and fly to the moon.” “That won’t be necessary,” I said. “The other side of the room will be just fine.” He gave a breathy laugh, the air of it moving across my face, and eased back.

propel them backward, not forward, to reflect on what their lives have meant—to themselves, their loved ones, and the world at large.

In fact, minimal thought ever went into race-related issues when it came to the Sussexes. This is the same institution that suggested that Lady Susan Hussey (yes, that Lady Susan Hussey) help biracial Meghan acclimate to Palace life and navigate the royal system. The duchess turned down the offer, probably having already sensed that it might not be the best idea. When Palace aides later told reporters, including myself, that they “bent over backwards” to make Meghan feel comfortable at Buckingham Palace, this included a follow-up suggestion that perhaps the Queen’s Ghanaian-born household cavalry officer Lieutenant Colonel Nana Kofi Twumasi-Ankrah should be the one to help Meghan. Though a charming and intelligent man, it stood out like a sore thumb to Meghan and her friends that, due to a lack of Black or other non-white staff, let alone women, in relevant senior roles, the Palace had to turn to someone who was the Queen’s attendant. “I doubt Kate was offered an equerry [for guidance],” a pal said to Meghan.

Studies show that seniors with the lowest Klotho levels have a 78 percent higher risk of death over a six-year period than those with the highest Klotho levels, even after correcting for sex, age, and health status.

History certainly suggests as much. In the past, at just the moments women had gained some measure of education or independence, the pendulum often took a wild swing backward, with the culture suddenly churning out the unambiguous message that women ought to be seated back at the hearth. A number of books have made this argument over the years, but Sharon Hays’s The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood, published in 1996, still ranks among the most cogent to me. In her view, whenever the free market threatens to invade the sanctity of the home, women feel greater pressure to engage in “intensive mothering.