Lead In 30 Podcast

Amazon Cutting Bureaucracy: What You Should Be Considering

• Russ Hill

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Headlines shout layoffs and AI disruption, but the real friction most teams feel right now is slower and sneakier: bureaucracy. Lone Rock Leadership's co-founder Russ Hill zooms out from the noise and gets specific about why mid-level layers are shrinking, how meeting creep drains momentum, and what leaders can do this quarter to cut delays without cutting trust. If you’ve sat through a pre-meeting for a pre-meeting, this conversation is your playbook for getting time and energy back.

Russ grounds the topic with context from Amazon and other tech firms, separating overhiring corrections from the still-emerging impact of AI. From factory floors to corporate hubs, the machines aren’t replacing people at scale yet; what’s stalling progress is indecision, unclear owners, and approvals stacked five deep. He shares field-tested tactics from coaching executive teams across industries: mapping value streams to find bottlenecks, collapsing decision layers, and standardizing one-page briefs that replace bloated status updates. You’ll learn how to identify high-leverage activities, protect deep work, and shift meetings from ritual to results.

This episode focuses on practical structure and process changes you can run now. Set clear decision rights, move reversible choices to the edge, and use time-boxed experiments to gain speed safely. Lead with clarity by choosing fewer priorities, naming owners, and celebrating fast, well-reasoned decisions. The outcome is a team that moves faster, feels informed, and builds market value—even as AI and volatility reshape the landscape. Subscribe, share with a teammate who’s drowning in meetings, and leave a quick review to tell us where bureaucracy hits you hardest.

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About the podcast:
The Lead In 30 Podcast with Russ Hill is for leaders of teams who want to grow and accelerate their results. In each episode, Russ Hill shares what he's learned consulting executives. Subscribe to get two new episodes every week. To connect with Russ message him on LinkedIn!



SPEAKER_00:

The headlines are pretty staggering. Amazon, with its latest announcement of layoffs, and it comes on the heels of one they just announced a few months ago. And then you start looking at the statistics of what's going on with mid-level managers across all industries, and you get a little bit curious about whether or not there's a major shift going on. The answer is yes, there is. And in this episode, we'll tell you what you need to know about it.

SPEAKER_02:

This is the Lead in 30 podcast with Russell. You cannot be serious. Strengthen your ability to lead in less than 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_01:

It's time to end the confusion. Get the new book by the founders of Lone Rock Leadership. See why executives at Lockheed Martin, Signa, Teva, Chili's, and so many other companies are praising Deliver. Why some leaders get results and most don't. You can download the first chapter right now and request two free copies shipped to you at LoneRock.io.

SPEAKER_00:

To be honest, chapter one is probably my favorite chapter. We call it Founder Mode. But then you look at chapter five and it's called The Clarity Crisis. And uh I'll just read two paragraphs to you real quick. February 28, 2017, in Manhattan. The elevator climbed silently through the glass tower, each floor marker blinking past as Brian Cornell prepared for one of the most challenging presentations of his career. The weight of what he was about to propose felt heavier with each passing floor. In just a few minutes, Brian would walk into a room full of analysts who had serious doubts about his organization's future. They had done the math. Their biggest competitor, Amazon, had grown to 13 times his company's value. Just yesterday, another competitor, Macy's, announced another 100 store closures. The conversation inside quieted as Brian came to the door. Two hundred pairs of eyes tracked his movement to the podium. Oh man, I love chapter five. Brian, by the way, is CEO of Target. Chapter 14 is one of my favorites. It's called Movement, Not Motion. Here's one paragraph. Weeds sprout from cracks in the asphalt, like nature reclaiming what industry abandoned. Broken windows stare across the Mississippi Delta, reflecting nothing but emptiness. This parking lot once held thousands of cars belonging to workers who built America's washing machines and dishwashers. Now it hosts only windblown debris and the occasional scavenging bird. Inside the cavernous facility, machinery sits frozen mid-assembly as if workers vanished overnight, leaving behind the industrial archaeology of a more optimistic time. A single figure walks across the cracked pavement, boots crunching on broken glass and years of accumulated debris. He's not seeing the decay or mourning what was lost. He's seeing the future of AI. You all deliver why some leaders get results and most don't. I am so stinking proud of every one of those 380 pages. You can get it on Amazon if you want a bulk order for your event, a sales conference, a manager conference, all the managers and your organization. We've got one company that just ordered 1,200 of them. If you want 30, 20, or just one. Well, if you're going for one or two or three, go to Amazon. If you want more than that, look us up. Uh go to LoneRock.io and we'll get you a bulk discount. Okay, welcome into the Leadin30 podcast. In less than 30 minutes, we give you something to think about to implement in the way that you lead others. Nothing impacts your future, your lifestyle, your legacy, everything more than your ability to lead others. My name is Russ Hill. I make my living coaching, consulting, senior executive teams at some of the world's biggest companies. I love what I do for a living. That doesn't mean that there aren't some really sketchy days, some days that are, I mean, I'm feeling the weight right now. I'll be honest with you. At the time I'm recording this, we're getting close to wrapping up the first month of the year in 2026, and it has been a record-breaking month. It will be a record-breaking month for our organization. I'm proud of it. I can't believe how much we've got going on. And uh, and yet I'm driven. And so all I can see is the future and what we need to fix and what we need to adjust and what's what needs to be um done differently in order for us to scale faster. You're probably the same if you're driven. If you're listening to podcasts like this, then then you're driven too. And I appreciate you being um that you've got the AirPods in and that you're listening to some thoughts from My Little Corner of the World. You can go to LoneRock.io to find out more about our leadership uh training company and our executive consulting firm, Lone Rock Leadership's the name of our little corner of the world. Okay, some of you are up to date on these headlines. By the way, can I just say something about headlines? You all, I talked in one of our previous episodes about the um 2026 leader reality report that we've got coming out. Um we're just getting the details arranged on how we're gonna announce it, how we're gonna put it out, and um we just put on the agenda for our upcoming executive summit for L D and HR leaders that we're doing in Scottsdale, Arizona at the end of February. Um, and right at the beginning of the session, like like within the first couple of hours, I'm doing a 30-minute presentation on this report. I'm super excited for us to uh to send it out to the world. And and if you listen to like two or three episodes ago, I walked you through it. You already got like an advanced audio copy of it, and you don't have all the inner workings of it or all the details in it, but you you you got the gist of it. And if you listen to that episode, you know that volatility is the number one issue that organizations are dealing with, and it's certainly the number one issue that most of us in our lives are dealing with. If you look at the headlines on a consistent basis around the world right now, um you don't feel good after doing it. You you you don't read the headlines and go, you know what, it's nice to live in such a tranquil, calm, peaceful, um, collaborative world. You don't you don't think that. Um and and so just a word of of caution to you. You you you can do whatever you find to be most effective for me. Um I really limit how much uh I stay up to date, I've got to, um, with what's going on around the world internationally, uh here in the U.S. as well. Um I I I I touch or consume as little political content as I can because I just I can't stand the world of politics anymore. And uh I think I think uh almost everybody involved is is well the you're self-interested, right? It's just like life. And so um you you're you're self-interested, and then and then these politicians make money from yelling at each other and arguing their position, and I think half of them don't even really agree with what they say. Um that's from my days working in the media world and interviewing a lot of politicians and watching the difference when you turn the microphone off um to when you have it on. And um, and so anyway, I would my my my takeaway is just if if it's disturbing you to the point to where, and I'm not talking about just kind of just everything in the world's disturbing me right now, but but it and that's not true. There's a lot I I've never been more optimistic, I've never been more excited, I've never had more energy around the world that we live in. I've never been more bullish, more, more energetic about it, and yet there's a lot of disturbing headlines out there, and so I I just think you have to be careful. And um you know my perspective, you listen to this podcast uh for a long time, that you know, the the the the smaller your world, the the lower your blood pressure. And the bigger your world, um the the bigger the issues, the bigger the challenges, the more the the indigestion, the more the you you can get to rage, you can get to anger really quick, and it doesn't serve you well. That's my opinion. You can view it differently, and um the reality is my kids can be happy, my family can be happy, we can be productive, we can we can um have the lifestyle we want, we can be surrounded by the people that we love and operate just how we need to, and uh and and and be and and do that by shrinking our world and um and you know trying to positively impact the world around us, focusing on the things that we can control, and then the rest of what's going on out there. Um good luck with it. You know what I mean? So anyway, just a just a quick thought. Um, okay. Speaking of the world and volatility and all the the the noise out there, um the um what one of the economic headlines, and boy, are there a lot, and again, I don't know about you, but I mean I'm reading the same headlines, I'm seeing all the same things, I'm looking at what's happening in the markets, and I'm insanely bullish. I could not be more optimistic. I'm not, I could not be more energetic. You all, if you've lived for more than a minute, you know these things go in cycles, and you know that organizations and individuals and departments uh can make money and grow in any economic condition. It doesn't matter what's happening. Yes, it can make it harder or easier, but you know what? You weren't made to just glide through life. You were made to climb it, to figure it out, to overcome, to cut through, to strategize, to build the puzzle, to figure out what to do when pieces are missing. That's what that's what keeps you sharp. That's what makes you use your mind, that's what gets you out of bed in the morning. You can either be bitter about it because you have to work to figure it out, or you can be motivated and energized by it, right? So don't complain. Like, yeah, there's complexity out there. There are winds that are blowing against you, but there are also winds that are blowing for you. And there are things that you are prepared for this moment. You've got all that you need. You you've got access to amazing information, amazing individuals, all kinds of wisdom, all kinds of experience. Just unlock it, figure it out, and and conquer what's in front of us, right? So one of the headlines is around um job cuts. And we work, one of the things I love about what we do is we're on the phone or in a Zoom meeting or a Teams meeting or whatever, or in person, uh people in our firm every day of the week in a different place in a different industry. So you get a really good handle on overall vibes, if you will, to use a modern term. And the vibes coming from most organizations are really, really healthy. Yep, there's all kinds of complexity, volatility, ambiguity, and versatility, like we talked about in the 2026 Leader Reality Report episode. Those are all real, and yet people are cranking and things are going well. And and and so the tech industry, more than any other, has been reducing jobs recently. So in the month of January, just in the last uh few days at the time I'm recording this, uh, Amazon announced their latest uh cut, 16,000 corporate jobs. And you you look at that headline, and if you're not seasoned, numbers like 16 or 20 or 30, freak you out. If you're seasoned and you've been around for a minute, they don't phase you because you know Amazon's got more than a million employees, and they added over half a million in one calendar year. And and how much attention did that get? Yeah, you didn't even know it, did you? Amazon was blue was just uh um increasing their their employee count massively, especially during the pandemic. But you were more concerned about masks and shutdowns and and and uh what do they call those things? Um the pills that you have to or the injections you have to take. Um the uh gosh, I'm not thinking about the oh, vaccines. Well, you were more concerned about mass lockdowns and vaccines and arguing and debating that and your own livelihood and all that, to even notice that in the midst of that, Amazon was like building a fleet of jets. They bought all those vehicles and and built a delivery company and added, you know, uh over a half million employees in one year. Can you imagine the HR nightmare? The hiring, the interviewing process, the onboarding of a half million people in 12 months? It's insane. It's unbelievable what they accomplished. No one paid attention. Nobody was watching it. The business media is just so bad. The media in general in our world is just so bad. The clickbait is out of control. You realize half those headlines in your news app are just designed to get you to rage, right? It's just like the pictures and the algorithms in social media apps. The idea is to get you to look. The idea is to get you to scroll. They're gonna show you the most outlandish, the most clickbait images in all of those social media apps. They're gonna show you the most outrageous statements, the most controversial, the most out of control in your in your apps like Twitter or X. And the same thing's true of the media. They're gonna put whoever's making the most noise, whoever's being the most outrageous, whoever's doing things that are the most controversial, they're gonna put that into the headlines. They're gonna try to get you riled up, they're gonna try to get your blood pressure out of control because you stay in the news app longer. You send the article to somebody, you screenshot it. And the reality is, again, if you've been around for more than a minute, you realize all this stuff calms down. It all goes away. You can't allow anyway. So you the media, and especially like the business, like all of it, the political media, I'm I'm done. The business media, I'm like, okay, yeah, if you read the business media, you think the entire economy is gonna collapse every day, right? And uh, and so we just we're calm and our blood pressure is low, and we know how to, we know how to curate all this stuff and and and we don't overreact to any of it, right? Because we know the game. And so you see these headlines of yeah, Amazon cut 16,000 people, but why weren't you writing articles when they were adding 500,000? You you with me? And so what's going on, and and the the what what and yet there's a bigger trend here that I do want to acknowledge and I want to talk to you about it because it has implications on you. And it needs to affect the way you're thinking. Whether you're in a large corporation or a small organization, this is there's a principle here that I'm gonna walk through with you that I really want you to think about because it impacts the way that you lead. You lead your team, you lead your organization. So Amazon announced 16,000 job cuts January 2026. People are freaking out about it. In October, so the the the most recent announcement by Amazon follows an announcement of 14,000 corporate jobs being cut uh by Amazon in October 2025. So really you've got 30,000 job cuts in the space of like one quarter, right? I mean, if we're if maybe four months. Now they aren't the only ones. Other other companies like Meta, which is Facebook, right? Some other companies have been reducing um company uh their their job sizes. Well, a lot of it's in tech. And here's a reality tech overhired, right? So this is just an ebb and a flow. And and and so this is just them reducing it. Now, at the same time, why are they doing it? What's causing them to think that they're bloated? And and and if you read these headlines and it's clickbait, when you see that these jobs are being job cuts right now are driven by AI, there is no organization, or if there is one, there are very, very, very, very, very few that are eliminating jobs due to AI. It's not happening yet. Now, is it gonna happen? Yeah, of course it is. Are there maybe are there some cutting edge, some some companies that are out at the front end of that that are that are doing that a little bit? Maybe, but not much. So again, if you think, oh my gosh, these job cuts are dead. No, nobody's got the technology in place yet. In order, I mean, we're in these companies. You all I like I I don't claim to be the end all be all, but we're in these factories. We're interacting with these with all these different companies, or at least a lot of them, enough in each industry, to feel really confident to say the machines aren't replacing the human jet. It's not happening. It's not happening. Now, will it happen? Yeah, of course it will. And and and and that's the principle I want to get to, but it's not about AI. It's about what Amazon was seeing and what other organizations are seeing that's causing them to reduce um the employee count a little bit. And it's the same thing you're experiencing, is my guess. Depending on where you're at, 90% of you are seeing this in your organizations, and the word is bureaucracy. So I'm gonna read a quote from the the the big conference at um in Switzerland at Davos was just uh within the last couple of weeks, right? And um, and it well it well, it was at Davos. And so this is where all the political and all the tech companies and a bunch of the CEOs, they all gather there and they they hobnob and network in the month of January. And this is something that uh Andy Jassy, the CEO, most of you don't know his name. Um he he's not high profile compared to you know, somebody like Jeff Bezos was when he was CEO of Amazon. But Andy Jassy, this is a quote he said at Davos last week at the time I'm recording this. So January 2026. Listen to this. This was before they announced the layoffs. Jassy said, quote, you've got the pre-meeting. For the pre-meeting, for the meeting. People don't show up with recommendations anymore because they know that the decision's going to get made three meetings later. So Andy Jassy's in this conversation with a business journalist and he's talking to them about the bureaucracy that exists in organizations right now. We are moving too slow. It's driving people insane. It's driving you insane, it's driving your team insane, it's driving it's happening in every organization. And the reality is we are driving. Too big. Most organizations have gotten too big. Not everywhere. There are departments and areas where we need some additional people, but the amount of conversation, the amount of coordination before anything actually gets done is insane. It was my very first takeaway. Here I was. I mean, the largest company I had worked for when I went to work in the consulting industry, the largest company I worked for up to that time was a media company that had a few thousand employees. That was it. And then I left that media company that was located at proper media properties across the U.S. And I worked in a few of the different markets. And uh and and I mean we were in big markets like LA and Washington, D.C. and Seattle and Phoenix and Chicago and St. Anyway, we we were we were we were well um we were well represented in a lot of America's biggest cities and um and and and but we were a decent sized company but w I mean compared to like what I was talking about with Amazon million people I mean up until COVID there was only one company in the world with over a million employees well one company in the U.S. and that was Walmart and then Amazon joined it during the pandemic as they as they built their delivery company um to to to to be able to fulfill their own orders and then that that ballooned um their workforce and uh and and and so yeah the the size of uh size of firms wasn't quite that big but a lot of you worked for companies with 10,000 15 25 000 50 70 80,000 100,000 200,000 people a good number of you worked for those companies so I worked for a company that and I was an executive at an organization that had a uh a a few thousand people that was the biggest I'd ever worked in then I went to work in entrepreneurial environments went to go work with family in a uh in a company my brother had started that had a hundred employees and we doubled the size of that uh of of um that organization over the next three years as I came in to help him and his business partner develop a layer of uh management so that ultimately they could sell it which they did and um and so I went to work in that organization so small right 100 people and we were growing it and adding you know our first ever chief human resources officer and we were turning it into a into into a uh into a mid-sized company and uh and we did that and that was awesome and uh but it's still really small right from an employee account like way small then I went to work for a a consulting firm that was work working with the world's biggest companies but we were small like 100 150 uh full-time employees and you know a bunch of contractors and part-timers and a whole network of folks beyond that but really small but working with the world's biggest companies and then we started our firm and our our firm when I first started it we had a grand total of one employee it was me that was it right that was what six years ago whenever it was and uh and then we've grown and grown then I got some business partners and we've grown and we're adding and adding and adding our number one strategic priority this year or yeah our number one strategic priority is expand the team right we're just constantly expanding the team we're in growth mode but but so here I am with all of these small organizations and and I I I go into in my first job in uh on a in a consulting company I I walk into a General Motors I walk into a Cigna I walk into a Lockheed Martin I walk into a you know a leadership meeting for Walmart you know they've got over one million employees I'm here at their leadership meeting in Bentonville Arkansas and the meeting can only be held in the convention center in Bentonville. Now the only reason the convention center exists in Bentonville which is not does not look like convention centers in a lot of other cities because Bentonville is tiny um and and just a place that absolutely should be on your bucket list because just the the Walmart Museum and that whole downtown area of Bentonville is remarkable. It's just it's totally worth your time and to see where it where and if you understand the history of of of what Walmart's done and being number one on the Fortune 500 list year after year after year after year. Nobody comes close although Amazon is getting close now. It used to be ExxonMobil and Walmart they were the giants of industry nobody paid attention to Walmart because it's not that sexy of an organization. I mean you go into one of them if you go in to one of the like it's yeah I mean there's all kinds we can make lots of jokes right it's not the most sophisticated um uh uh uh uh uh customer experience and yet there's a ton of sophistication in the background and what they've done to to fend off uh well they haven't fed off Amazon but they've allowed themselves to survive anyway I get into this meeting and it's like holy crap um just thousands and thousands and thousands of um senior leaders and then you go to you know then we flew into Seattle and we're working um on a on a consulting project at at Amazon right as they're exploding and Jeff's still CEO and and and and then you go to these anyway I one of one of my big takeaways in all of that experience was how slow I'd never been a manager. I'd never been an executive I'd never been an employee of a company that big and now here I was with the senior teams and and in a consulting world interacting with these folks and thinking you all move at the speed of a snail it's remarkable you get anything done. I can't believe how many meetings to Jassy's point how many meetings to talk about meetings to talk about meetings to talk about meetings that are going on okay here are the numbers um mid-level managers made up one third of all layoffs in the last few years in the in the last in 2025 41% of employees said now this is asking employees so it's you know this is a report that Corin Ferry put out I I don't know there's some things that I got issue with but but it's still it's still one of those data points out there. 41% of employees say that companies trim down management layers. So they said in our company they were cutting it down. The number of managers according to CNBC again I don't we don't know exactly how good their data is but you just look at all these different data points the number of managers dropped 6.1% in the last few years leading into 2025 hiring for mid-level managers has decreased 43%. That sounds a little extreme to me I don't know if I believe it but but uh since 2022 that's what that stat says here's what I do know that the mid-level manager layer in organizations is shrinking. So Amazon is making headlines because they're cutting all of these corporate jobs. Meta's doing it other technology companies are doing it as well and we're seeing it and not not not to those numbers but we're seeing this exhaustion with bureaucracy. And so the takeaway for you is this are you part of the trend? I'm not talking about layoffs I'm talking about cutting down bureaucracy because some of it does have to do I mean in chapter one of our book Deliver our our brand new book we the the founder mode chapter where um we talk about Brian Chesky and and and his experiences you know the speech he delivered around founder mode that's this pivotal event on the West Coast and in tech circles um it about a year year and a half ago and and and there's massive implicit implications to what he said in that private room that we got you know the the we were able to talk about um and um and and Brian went in and he cut 25% of all management positions at Airbnb. And uh and that a big part of chapter one in founder mode is is how he did that. Now how he did it was a problem but anyway um this need to to become leaner is a universal condition right now. It's a universal reality right now. So there are ways you can do that structurally and some of your organizations do need to do it. Some of you need to do it in your business areas or departments or whatever you're you're taking way too long you've got too many people involved in the process if you really step back and you you you put in the air pods and you played white noise and you tuned out the world and you took a few hours and you really looked at it could you get more things done with fewer people the answer is yes for a lot of you and so well maybe that's two people less maybe that's 20 people less maybe that's a few hundred maybe that's whatever maybe it doesn't apply to you I don't care I'm just telling you that yes I we see it all over the place. So some of this is structural I'm not advocating layoffs or whatever. Some of this could be restructuring or moving to different areas but a good number of you the part of the solution is structural. Another part of it is process this is where we talk about high leverage activities in the latter part of the book deliver, right? We dig into so much of this and and high leverage activities is all about reducing the noise and focusing on high le on on you know high ROI activities. So part of it's structural reducing bureaucracy and part of it is process and mindset and culture and leadership in in in how you're running things what I know is and the point I wanted to make in this episode the main point is that I need you thinking about it. If you're gonna be a leader with high market value in this moment and in the moments to come, efficiency is not going away. The machines are going to play a bigger role in this they're not right now but they're gonna play a bigger role in this in I don't know six months, 12 months I don't know if it's three years out. I don't know how big or small it's gonna be and anyone that tells you that they do is is is mistaken. I listened to Elon Musk I know how bullish he is on it. I know there are other people I've I I put a lot of actual credibility in it because these folks are really visionary in how they think and so they see things in a way that I can't see it. And uh and so I I I do put weight in that I do think that this is ultimately the machines and AI and technology and computers are going to are going to be able to make a lot of this more efficient. It's definitely having an economic impact already it's just not affecting a gazillion jobs yet but will it maybe in six months? I don't think that fast but it could maybe in 12 maybe in 36 months whatever it is the reality is the manager who is focused on efficiency and there are ways to do it. It's not founder mode. It's not slicing and dicing it's not being somebody who doesn't create alignment who doesn't give people time to be heard who doesn't it that's not it. So I'm not advocating this mindset of we're gonna be efficient around here and that means no more meetings and no more discussion. No, you're gonna be left alone or in a world with nobody that's backing up your vision no one that's implementing it. I'm not advocating that I am advocating an efficient mindset. How do we do this faster? What do we need where do we need to trem? Where do we need to reduce meeting count? How do I accelerate decision making how do I create more clarity and get to alignment faster how do I communicate to the organization that we're going to achieve we're gonna hit those checkpoints or achieve those results in a shorter time window. You should be demanding that not demanding it that's the wrong verb you should be pushing for that you should be advocating for that it should be in your vision we need to move faster and I need you thinking about it more because I want your value in the marketplace as a manager a supervisor a director a VP an executive to go up I want your value to go up and that's why I'm doing this particular episode in the pod because I want you thinking about efficiency and speed right and I don't want actually let me restate that I want you thinking about it and then I want you acting on it. So what are you gonna do in the next few weeks the next few months to reduce bureaucracy and increase speed while still focusing on the right environment buy-in creating clarity alignment getting people bought in all of the right things what are you gonna do I want you thinking about it that is what I wanted to talk about in this episode of the Lead in 30 podcast share this episode with a colleague your team or a friend tap on the share button and text the link thanks for listening to the lead in thirty podcast with Russ Hill and Saturday