Weekly Business Review

In this lesson, we introduce the Weekly Business Review (WBR) as Amazon’s core mechanism for consistently analyzing, improving, and controlling business performance. This structured, weekly ritual helped us align leadership around metrics, dive deep into customer experience, and create a culture of truth-seeking and operational rigor.

Key Takeaways:

• We used the WBR to bridge strategy and detail: Contrary to conventional advice, we didn’t choose between high-level strategy and operational detail—we embraced both. The WBR let senior leaders dive deep while still steering big-picture strategy.
• We built the WBR around the customer journey: Our report flowed from financials to marketing, browsing, shopping, fulfillment, and customer support. Each department leader owned and explained their metrics—not analysts—ensuring accountability and depth.
• We started before everything was perfect: We launched the WBR even before our metrics were fully refined. By including many metrics upfront, we learned over time which ones provided signal and which were noise.
• We continuously refined our metrics: In each WBR meeting, we didn’t just review results—we asked whether we were measuring the right things and how to improve clarity and relevance of our metrics.
• We made it a disciplined habit: Reports were automated and delivered every Monday by 7 a.m., enabling prep ahead of the all-company WBR. This rhythm created organizational focus, enabled early issue detection, and aligned everyone around the brutal facts of performance.

The WBR was not just a meeting—it was a weekly dose of operational truth that made Amazon more customer-obsessed, data-informed, and execution-focused.

To dive deeper into Input Metrics Mastery and learn more from Bill and Colin, follow these links:

• Take the full course at their website: https://workingbackwards.com/
• Buy the book: https://www.amazon.com/Working-Backwards-Insights-Stories-Secrets/dp/1250267595
• Bill's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-carr/
• Colin's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinbryar/