Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos is all about the heart when it comes to decision making.
Speaking on Thursday at the Economic Club of Washington on Thursday, Bezos described his attitude to business.
"I believe in the power of wandering," he said.
"All of my best decisions in business and in life have been made with heart, intuition, guts... not analysis.
"If you can make a decision with analysis, you should do so. But it turns out in life that your most important decisions are always made with instinct and intuition, taste, heart."
Jeff Bezos remembers 'like yesterday' what it was like to hope to afford a forklift
Bezos spoke more specifically to Amazon's success, citing customer care as its keystone. "The secret sauce of Amazon [...] the number one thing that has made us successful by far is obsessive compulsive focus on the customer as opposed to obsession over the competitor."
Amazon currently has about 500,000 employees, but Bezos said he keenly remembers when Amazon was still small and had 10 employees. "It's hard to remember for you guys, but for me it's like yesterday I was driving the packages to the post office myself, and hoping one day we could afford a forklift."
"I like treating things as if they're small, you know Amazon even though it is a large company, I want it to have the heart and spirit of a small one."
You can watch Bezos talking about his decision-making and Amazon's past at 8:36 in this video:
