Polle de Maagt 
Polle de Maagt
The question is whether anyone with the power to change them is listening.
Story.
In September 2024, Andy Jassy sent Amazon employees a message about strengthening the company’s culture and teams.
The message covered changes to management structures and a return to working in the office five days a week. Alongside those bigger announcements was a smaller idea: a “Bureaucracy Mailbox”.
Employees could send examples of bureaucracy or unnecessary processes that had crept into the organisation. Jassy made an important distinction:
Companies need process to run effectively, and process does not equal bureaucracy.
The target was unnecessary and excessive process. And he made a personal commitment: “I will read these emails and action them accordingly.”
The mailbox was simple. The promise behind it was not.
What they did.
Amazon gave employees a route to report obstacles directly to the top of the company.
Not a general invitation to be more efficient. A place to send concrete examples of things that made work harder than it needed to be.
The CEO attached his own attention to that channel. At least in its stated design, a signal would not have to travel through every layer of the organisation before reaching someone with authority to act.
That is what makes the idea worth examining. Not another inbox, but a shorter route between noticing a problem and having the power to remove it.
Why it works.
Or, more precisely: why the mechanism is promising. The announcement establishes the channel and the commitment. It does not, by itself, prove that the mailbox made Amazon better.
But the design addresses a familiar problem. People closest to the work encounter friction every day. People with the authority to change the system may not see it. An approval that no longer protects anything. A report nobody uses. Two teams entering the same information into different systems.
A direct channel can make those obstacles visible. Senior ownership can make them actionable.
The weak point is what happens next. If people keep reporting the same problems and nothing changes, the mailbox becomes one more piece of bureaucracy. It collects frustration instead of removing its cause.
The useful loop is not “report and acknowledge”. It is “report, decide, change and explain”.
Try it yourself.
Do not start with a company-wide launch.
Ask one team to name the rules, approvals or recurring tasks that slow them down without adding clear value. Ask for a recent example, not just a complaint.
Choose one obstacle. Give it an owner who can actually change the process. Check what the rule protects before removing it: some friction exists for good reasons.
Then simplify, remove or keep it. Explain the decision to the people who raised it. Repeat. The credibility comes from what changes, not from how many suggestions arrive.
Ask your team: “Which rule or approval would you remove tomorrow, and why does it still exist?” Pick one answer and make a decision within two weeks. Tell the team what changed, or why the rule stays.
Sources: Amazon’s message from Andy Jassy, 16 September 2024. Spotted through a LinkedIn post by Friederike Niehoff. The practical application is an adaptation, not a description of Amazon’s internal process. Related: The CIA guide to sabotaging companies.
