What is a mechanism?

Mechanism at Amazon is a business process to solve any recurring problem. It is a process through which leaders can ensure certain visibility on the business without getting involved in day to day operations. The mechanism allows anyone at Amazon to ensure that problems or errors are prevented once they have found them for the first time. This allows the organization to work effectively and avoid future problems. It is also a way to keep a pulse on the business for leaders.  

Why use a mechanism?

Good intentions rarely work. Relying on good intentions of the people to avoid recurring problems from happening is a bad strategy to tackle those problems because the majority of the time people have good intentions. And yet the problems occur. So instead creating mechanisms is a better approach to avoid recurring problems from happening. 

As the organization grows, leaders lose the direct-line-of-sight of the business. More work occurs, more processes are established and the complexity increases multi-fold. This results in the amount of decisions to be made and attention becomes a scarce resource. The mechanisms help business leaders to make the decisions and still keep their influence on work that is outside of their direct-line-of-sight. 

What are the types of mechanisms?

At Amazon, there are various types of mechanisms that give leaders an oversight of the business and have good control over the business. Some of the examples of mechanisms are:

1. Bar Raiser
2. WBR/MBR/QBR
3. Operating Plans
4. PRFAQs
5. Narratives

Format of mechanisms & various types?

Mechanisms are complete processes. They usually contain: a tool, adoption of the tool and inspection of the mechanism. 

Tool is a structure or process that leaders create to solve a specific business challenge. It accepts a certain set of inputs and gives desired output. The leaders use the tool to accomplish large goals. 

Adoption of the tool is necessary for the success of the mechanism. As the complexity of the organization grows, more work is done by others who need to adopt the tool. Different ways in which the tool can be adopted are: indirect influence of the leader, direct authority, setting adoption metrics or incentivizing the adoption.  

Inspection provides leaders with an opportunity to audit, course correct and teach others. Leaders cannot operate on blind faith and use inspection to see if the mechanism is delivering the desired output. A lot of emphasis is on data but data in isolation does not work and hence needs to be backed with customer anecdotes. 

How to create a mechanism?

The first step towards creating a mechanism is to identify a recurring business challenge that needs to be solved. Define the inputs required and desired output that will indicate that the business challenge is being resolved. A mechanism makes use of organizational levers which are key components of the mechanism. There are 8 organization levers – 1) Mental models, 2) Goals, 3) Org structure, 4) Policies & Rewards, 5) Process steps, 6) Message flow, 7) Metrics and 8) Resources. 

Creating a mechanism involves 4 steps:

1. Creation of the tool
2. Adoption: Identify the impacted stakeholders by this tool and determine what they need to do to adopt your tool. Think about how they need to contribute to your mechanism
3. Inspection process: Determine how frequently you want to inspect the tool, how will you know that the mechanism is delivering the desired output, what inputs will convert to what outputs and what are the barriers to adoption
4. Iteration: A good mechanism can only be built through continuous iterations and the inspection process helps to adapt certain components of the tool to make the mechanism better and serve its purpose.  

My point of view on mechanism?

Mechanisms can not just be used by leaders but by everyone to solve a recurring problem. As an IC PM, I can use mechanisms to solve my day-to-day recurring challenges such as feature requests, knowledge sharing, etc. It is a way to scale yourself as your time gets limited. It helps to make the work efficient and gets the work done by others without you being present. The inspection part of the process enables you to course correct or teach others, thus making others accountable for the desired outcome.