The Jeff Bezos prediction for OSS

If we start to focus on ourselves, instead of focusing on our customers, that will be the beginning of the end … We have to try and delay that day for as long as possible.”
Jeff Bezos
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Jeff Bezos recently predicted that Amazon is likely to fail and/or go bankrupt at some point in time, as history has eventually proven for most high-flying companies. The quote above was part of that discussion.

I’ve worked with quite a few organisations that have been in the midst of some sort of organisational re-structure – upsizing, downsizing, right-scaling, transforming – whatever the words that might be in effect. Whilst it would be safe to say that all of those companies were espousing being focused on their customers, the organisational re-structures always seem to cause inward-facing behaviour. It’s human nature that change causes feelings of fear, job security, opportunities to expand empires, etc.

And in these types of inward-facing environments in particular, I’ve seen some really interesting decisions made around OSS projects. When making these decisions, customer experience has clearly been a long way down the list of priorities!! And in the current environment of significant structural change in the telco industry, these stimulants of internal-facing behaviour appear to be growing.

Whilst many people want to see OSS projects as technical delivery solutions and focus on the technology, the people and culture aspects of the project can often be even more challenging. They can also be completely underestimated.

What have your experiences been? Do you agree that customer-facing vision, change management and stakeholder management can be just as vital as technical brilliance on an OSS implementation team?

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