Jun 27, 2026 · 25 min · 11 segments
Jeff Bezos is an absolute customer obsessed maniac, workaholic, and work machine. He is the founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, and by using a few set of business principles he was able to dominate the…
Nic MunozHost
So when most people think of these big CEOs, people like Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, and even Jeff Bezos, the first question that immediately pops up is, what is it that they actually do? For Jeff Bezos, the answer is extremely clear, and in the book, it actually gives a description of what he does, and it describes it as a person playing a chessboard.
Bezos is like a chess master, playing countless games simultaneously, with the boards organized in such a way that he can efficiently tend to each match.
Bezos spends more time on Amazon's newer businesses, such as Amazon Web Services, the company's streaming video initiative, and in particular, Kindle and Kindle Fire efforts.
In these divisions, stress levels are high, and any semblance of balance between work and home falls by the wayside.
What Jeff Bezos' role in the company actually is, or what any CEO's role is, is to oversee the organization as a whole.
Amazon constantly has multiple projects running at once, and so Jeff Bezos is sort of the overseer of all of these projects, and whichever project he feels needs the most help is where he is at.
You have to oversee everything as a whole, but always have a ground presence at the bottleneck.
And when I say that you have to have a ground presence, I mean that you actually have to have boots on the ground, physical presence right at the bottleneck.
The key lesson here is that as the founder and CEO of the company, your job is to play the chessboard.
You choose where the capital goes, you oversee the entire operation, but you always have to have ground presence at the bottleneck.
So when most people think of these big CEOs, people like Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, and even Jeff Bezos, the first question that immediately pops up is, what is it that they actually do? For Jeff Bezos, the answer is extremely clear, and in the book, it actually gives a description of what he does, and it describes it as a person playing a chessboard.
Bezos is like a chess master, playing countless games simultaneously, with the boards organized in such a way that he can efficiently tend to each match.
Bezos spends more time on Amazon's newer businesses, such as Amazon Web Services, the company's streaming video initiative, and in particular, Kindle and Kindle Fire efforts.
In these divisions, stress levels are high, and any semblance of balance between work and home falls by the wayside.
What Jeff Bezos' role in the company actually is, or what any CEO's role is, is to oversee the organization as a whole.
Amazon constantly has multiple projects running at once, and so Jeff Bezos is sort of the overseer of all of these projects, and whichever project he feels needs the most help is where he is at.
You have to oversee everything as a whole, but always have a ground presence at the bottleneck.
And when I say that you have to have a ground presence, I mean that you actually have to have boots on the ground, physical presence right at the bottleneck.
The key lesson here is that as the founder and CEO of the company, your job is to play the chessboard.
You choose where the capital goes, you oversee the entire operation, but you always have to have ground presence at the bottleneck.
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