What Leading Teams at Amazon and NASA Taught Me About Innovation

As a first-time founder and CEO, one of the beauties of launching your own company is building something on your own terms -- while implementing the lessons you’ve picked up along the way. 

One of Jeff Bezos’ philosophies taught me the importance of mechanisms; working at NASA showed me the value of taking bold risks; and growing Amazon’s Portland office from four to over 1,200 employees taught me that the team you craft is the most impactful thing you’ll do in your career. 

I’ll dive further into each of these lessons shortly, but let’s first acknowledge the massive amount of pressure leaders are under today. In addition to their daily tasks, modern leaders are expected to do more with less, keep employees motivated, meet goals, avoid burnout, and -- of course -- accelerate innovation. 

To achieve these objectives, leaders must strike a balance between staying on track and simultaneously pushing the envelope by taking risks -- and they need the right team to make it all happen. 

That being said, here are my three pillars for driving innovation as a leader. 

1. Establish mechanisms to stay accountable 

Jeff Bezos notably said, “Good intentions don’t work, mechanisms do.” It’s a truth that has stuck with me throughout my career. We all want to do better: Most of us have sat in meetings where we discuss the fact that we need to improve certain areas of the business. We leave feeling energized and hopeful that things will get better, and that’s usually where it ends.  

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Without mechanisms in place to follow through, meaningful progress isn’t possible. It’s not enough to want to do better: Leaders need to take concrete steps to hold their teams accountable and move the needle.  

There are many different mechanisms companies can adopt to support innovation. One that our startup uses to stay on track is a weekly operational metrics meeting. Every Monday, we come together to review all of our dashboards, identify anomalies, and look for things that may have gone awry in our operations. We talk about it as a team from both the service side and the engineering side, and it helps us maintain a culture of operational excellence.  

Other mechanisms companies might consider implementing include a corrections of error process to address failures (Google calls this a blameless postmortem), or key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress and keep teams aligned. Whatever the mechanism, the goal should be to promote healthy, consistent improvement across operations. 

2. Don’t shy away from taking calculated risks 

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True innovation isn’t possible without bold risk-taking. I learned this firsthand while working for NASA. The organization can be, understandably, conservative when it comes to implementing new technology: reliability is of the utmost importance, space-related missions generally have long development cycles, and budgets are tight. Because of these factors, NASA tends to rely on tried and tested technologies. 

But every once in a while, we had the opportunity to take a risk and branch out. For example, I am involved in a project where we used a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip set (that’s the same chip in most Android phones) to fly a small helicopter around on Mars. The result? It exceeded its mission and advanced science in the process.  

I was once again reminded of the importance of taking risks when I decided to found a startup. I had the safety of a reliable paycheck and a fast-growing career at Amazon: Why would I let that go? What if I came to regret it? Eventually, I realized that it’s often riskier to not take risks than it is to take them. If we don’t take chances, we’re sitting on loads of unrealized potential. This is why I always encourage leaders to be bold and take risks -- it’s the best way to learn and fuel innovation.  

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3. Put in the time and work required to build the right team 

To say leaders are busy is an understatement. When you’re being pulled in several different directions at any given moment, it can seem like there’s little-to-no time to focus on building your team. But taking the time to handcraft your team is vital: the success of the company depends on it, and you’ll be directly measured on your team’s performance and output. Building a solid team requires grit, patience, and a substantial amount of work. 

My advice to leaders looking to grow their team? Take pride in the craftsmanship of building your team instead of simply delegating recruiting to an outside agency or even your recruiting team. Recruiting teams are a great catalyst for initiating the process, but you own the outcome of building an incredible team -- and that requires deep investment throughout the recruiting process. 

While growing the new Amazon Portland office, I ensured that my leadership team was serving recruiting as opposed to the other way around. We sat down weekly with the recruiting team, did our own sourcing to augment their efforts, responded to candidates, and did sell calls. This resulted in us hiring an incredible handcrafted team, and there were two other side effects. First, the sell calls and deep engagement instilled pride in our work. It reminded us of the impact of our product and why we are doing what we are doing. Second, it made us deeply invested in the individuals we hired. Throughout the sell calls, interviews, and the offer process, hiring managers built personal relationships with the soon-to-be team members. This allowed us to think longer-term about building a successful career for each individual as opposed to just making them successful on this year’s project.  

At Momento, my co-founder Daniela Miao and I have personally recruited the vast majority of our employees from the pool of people we worked with previously or great candidates we found ourselves on LinkedIn. We have the passion for each person in the team, and we are deeply invested in their success. There is no better predictor of a leader’s success than the caliber and passion of their team, so take the time to do it right. 

In today’s highly competitive and fast-paced business landscape, supporting innovation is a top priority for every leader. By establishing mechanisms to stay on track, taking risks to push the limits of what’s possible, and building the right team to drive it all, leaders will be well on their way to making breakthroughs in their market.