Acronym

In line with Virgil’s post on strategy yesterday, I’d like to recommend an article that appears in the October issue of Harvard Business Review—an extended Q&A with Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos. (Full disclosure: I spend way too much time adding books to my Amazon wish list.)

It’s an interesting interview all the way around, but I was particularly drawn to what Bezos says about the methods Amazon uses to develop its corporate strategy:

- “We have a group called the S Team—‘S’ means senior—that stays abreast of what the company is working on and delves into strategy issues. It meets for about four hours every Tuesday. Once or twice a year the S Team also gets together in a two-day meeting where different ideas are explored …”

- “We are willing to plant seeds and wait a long time for them to turn into trees … when we plant a seed, it tends to take five to seven years before it has a meaningful impact on the economics of the company.”

Both of those quotes demonstrate a key virtue, at least to me: patience. Could your association plant small seeds now and have the patience to wait five to seven years to see them succeed? Bezos wasn’t talking about betting the reserves on a single new idea, but about making multiple small investments based on trends you think are developing and committing to nurture those small investments over time. Can your association make that commitment? (If you’re wondering how to come up with ideas for those seeds in the first place, there was a good related discussion on Acronym earlier this year).