John Rossman helped our technology organization in many ways including giving a keynote about what being digital meant, and several tools and strategies to develop this throughout our organization. The speech resonated with the team and discussion continued far after. If you're thinking about building your digital strategy and capabilities, John will give you unique and actionable insights.
John Rossman
Former Amazon Executive, Managing Partner at Rossman Partners and Expert on Disruption, Innovation & IoT
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John Rossman
Biography
John Rossman is the author of four books on leadership and business innovation including the best seller The Amazon Way. He is an early Amazon executive who played a key role in launching the Amazon marketplace business in 2002. He has served as the senior technology advisor at the Gates Foundation and senior innovation advisor at
T-Mobile. Today he is a leading keynote speaker on leadership for innovation and transformation. John is an operator and builder whose love is diving into business problems and customer needs designing innovative solutions and business models and creating durable enterprise value.
His new book, Big Bet Leadership: Your Transformation Playbook for Winning in the Hyper-Digital Era just released on Feb 27, 2024.
John Rossman
Featured Keynote Programs
Thinking In Outcomes
Leadership for FAST Innovation & Succeeding at Big Bets
BIG BETS happen at all levels in a company – the enterprise, division, product, program, and team. BIG BETS are the initiatives and plans we think will deliver lasting impact, but there is significant risk as these are complex strategies and plans. They are a BIG BET.
BIG BETS goes by many names, like digital transformations, new business models, innovation programs, and strategic initiatives. Over 80% of all BIG BETS fail to deliver on time, on a budget, or deliver the expected business impact. Some seem to never end. This leaves leadership wary of trying more bets and risk being left behind in a rapidly changing industry.
Based on research and 35 years of delivering BIG BETS to Fortune 100 companies, John Rossman gives you a playbook for Thinking in Outcomes to succeed at your BIG BETS. Based on his forthcoming book Thinking in Outcomes.
Leaving your audience with:
• A comprehensive playbook to Think in Outcomes and work backward
• An understanding of the leadership challenges and skills to lead these missions
• Understanding why defining the future customer experience or operational capability is a superpower we all need to leverage
Leadership & Culture for Growth & Innovation
Leadership is a skill. Culture is the default standard defining how we work together. So, how can you build on your leadership and culture to drive systematic growth & innovation?
Based on the best-selling The Amazon Way: Amazon’s Leadership Principles, Rossman outlines a set of strategies and tactics, giving a playbook for any industry or situation to make small changes resulting in significant impact.
Customer centricity, metrics and operational excellence, a system for innovation, Amazon’s “working backwards” methodology, disagree but commit, and deliver hard results are just some of the leadership playbook with habits to reinforce and create change.
Leaving your audience with:
• A series of actionable lessons on leadership for driving improvements and innovation
• Confidence in how to work together to achieve hard results despite setbacks
• Motivation for a customer-centric mindset leading to business improvements and agile development for growth
Think Like Amazon
What's the Future of Your Industry?
Is your company ready to create the future of your company and industry? Leaders who want to drive innovation must ask this while challenging conventional thinking if they want to have a future in their industry. But what are the right questions to ask to create that future? How do we develop our strategy? How can we anticipate industry disruption, and how we adapt?
Former Amazon Executive John Rossman was a key leader in launching and scaling the third-party platform which today accounts for over 50% of Amazon’s business, leading to fundamental disruption to the retail industry. By leveraging many of the ideas from Think Like Amazon, Rossman provides principles and strategies which drove Amazon and can drive your industry’s future. He will challenge your team and provide them with strategies, tools, and questions to help you begin creating your company’s future.
Leaving your audience with:
• Perspectives on “How would Jeff think” in disrupting your industry from a customer-centric strategy
• Tools to THINK BIG but bet small in an agile manner for innovation
• Examples of existing friction to challenge the audience in recognizing opportunities
• Envision how disruptive technologies such as AI and computer vision coupled with new business models could reshape your industry
Never Waste A Good Crisis
The Winning Playbook for Market Volatility
Your supply prices and lead times are rising, your employee wages are increasing, transportation is getting more expensive, and critical components (like chips) might be in short supply. Your COGS and your P&L are a mess. Your world and business might feel like it’s in crisis. This is a leadership choice -- waste time worrying about what’s coming or plan to survive and thrive in the volatile market?
John delivers an engaging story explaining how challenging traditional thinking and management science can help you maximize the value of a good crisis and guide you to innovate and strengthen your business.
Volatile markets and uncertainty lead most organizations to cut, run and stick their head in the sand until the storm passes. You'll learn how it is the ideal time to go on offense by focusing on rapid innovation and finding immediate ROI opportunities to improve operational effectiveness. Audience members leave with practical theory, examples, tools, and techniques to help them build better strategies, plans, and solutions so they never waste a good crisis.
Leaving your audience will:
• Have the confidence and tools to innovate and rapidly drive improvements even in difficult markets and forecasts
• Optimism and techniques to collectively assess, define and iterate to improvements
• Understand multiple examples where constraints are used as the basis for improved business results and innovation
John Rossman
Featured Books
The Amazon Way: 14 Leadership Principles Behind the World's Most Disruptive Company
by John Rossman
Think Like Amazon
by John Rossman
"Reading this book is like having Jeff Bezos advise me." --Eric Martinez, Founder and CEO of Modjoul
The former Amazon executive who launched and scaled Amazon Marketplace delivers the ultimate playbook on how to "think like Amazon" and succeed in the digital age.
"What would Jeff do?" Since leaving Amazon to advise start-ups and corporations, John Rossman has been asked this question countless times by executives who want to know "the secret" behind Amazon's historic success. In this step-by-step guide, he provides 50 1/2 answers drawn from his experience as an Amazon executive--and shows today's business leaders how to think like Amazon, strategize like Bezos, and beat the competition like nobody's business. Learn how to:
- Move forward to get back to Day 1--and change the status quo.
- Use the "working backwards" innovation and problem-solving approach to lead the way.
- Become a platform company--with the right platform strategy.
- Create customer obsession--and grant your customers superpowers.
- Experiment, fail, rinse, and repeat.
- Decentralize your way to digital greatness.
- Master the magic of small autonomous teams.
- Avoid the trap of past positions.
- Make better and faster decisions.
- Use metrics to create a culture of accountability and innovation
- Use AI and the Internet of Things to reinvent customer experiences.
In addition to these targeted strategies, you'll receive a rare inside glimpse into how Jeff Bezos and Amazon take a remarkably consistent approach to innovate, explore new markets, and spark new growth. You'll understand the unique mindset and inner workings that drive Amazon's operational excellence, from its ground-up approach to new digital markets to its out-of-the-box attitudes on innovation. Along the way, you'll learn specific game-changing strategies that made Amazon stand out in a crowded digital world. These include actionable ideas that you can use to transform your culture, expand your business into digital, and become the kind of platform company that customers obsess over. Rossman also offers invaluable insights into the latest technologies, e-commerce marketing, online culture, and IoT disruptions that only an Amazon insider would know.
If you want to compete and win in the digital era, you have to Think Like Amazon.
The Amazon Way on IoT: 10 Principles for Every Leader from the World's Leading Internet of Things Strategies (Volume 2)
by John Rossman
Need help developing your Internet of Things strategy and plan? This is the book to help buisness people understand and build their IoT strategy. In this detailed analysis of IoT and Amazon's approach to it, John Rossman guides readers with practical insights and recommendations into the strategies and mindset transforming business and society.
"John has laid out a blueprint not only for an enterprise wanting to understand how sensors embedded in their business can innovate old ways of working while also providing an excellent path for individuals wanting to start their own IoT business. The book is not only a reference tool but also paints a story around innovation and customer centricity to challenge the reader to think differently in solving problems." Eric Martinez -- Founder of Modjoul, former EVP AIG and Safeco Insurance
The Amazon Way on IoT explains how the combination of sensors, cloud computing and machine learning can be used to improve customer experiences, drive operational improvements and build new business models. Rossman offers:
- Guidance through the maze of emerging technologies, customer experiences, and business models, to arrive at a recipe just right for your organization
- Key methods to success from Amazon’s master playbook such as creating seamless customer experiences, process improvement and new business models and utilizing tools such as sensors, machine learning and cloud computing
- Approaches to help you tackle the technology, business and internal challenges in innovating with the internet of things.
Renowned Harvard business professor Michael Porter describes the IoT as the backbone for a third-wave of technology-led innovation and digital disruption.
The Amazon Way on IoT is for business people who want to learn cases, key concepts, technologies and tools to help develop, explain and execute their own IoT approach. As a leader at Amazon who held a front-row seat during its formative years, Rossman understands the iconic company better than most. From the launch of Amazon’s third-party seller program to its foray into enterprise services, he witnessed it all – the amazing successes, the little-known failures, and the experiments with outcomes still to be determined.
Rossman once again examines the heart of Amazon.com’s secret to success, along with other leading companies. He incorporates an extensive focus on sophisticated IoT technologies and strategies related to Amazon’s rise: tens of millions of items in stock, the company’s technological prowess, and the many customer service innovations such as “one-click.”
“This is an excellent book. And a very important book. It evokes both business thought and technical thought, which is rare.” -- Larry Hughes, former head of Amazon cyber security
John Rossman
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