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Then, relief: Discussing the session that afternoon with my supervisor, she says that, despite my clumsiness, I did just fine. I’d sat with Michelle in her suffering, which for many people can be an unusual and powerful experience. Next time I won’t worry so much that I have to do something to stop it. I’d been there to listen when she needed to unload the burdensome secret of her depression. In the parlance of therapeutic theory, I’d “met the patient where she was”—history-taking be damned. Years later, when I’ve done thousands of first sessions, and information-gathering has become second nature, I’ll use a different barometer to judge how it went: Did the patient feel understood? It always amazes me that someone can walk into a room as a stranger and then, after fifty minutes, leave feeling understood, but it happens nearly every time. When it doesn’t, the patient doesn’t return. And because Michelle did, something had gone right.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
Lori Gottlieb
But it was clear that more and more companies would develop or acquire these capabilities, and they eventually would become an undifferentiated commodity. That is exactly what happened. Today, building the capability to store and retrieve millions of photos could well be a homework assignment for a college student taking a computer science class. In several of the Working Backwards documents for the early AWS products, the PR/FAQ stated that we wanted the student in a dorm room to have access to the same world-class computing infrastructure as any Amazon software engineer. That powerful metaphor in the PR/FAQ document really helped crystallize the thoughts and ideas of the AWS product development teams. There were a number of factors that influenced Amazon’s decision to start the foray into web services that would ultimately become AWS. We had several proofs of concept in the Amazon Product API and the Amazon Seller API demonstrating that the area was worthy of attention. It was simply a better way to build software than the traditional methods used at that time. There was a relatively clear roadmap on what was needed since the software building blocks were known, but hadn’t yet been offered as web services. We also knew our unique capabilities would not be unique for very long, which provided a sense of urgency. (The first company to offer a robust set of general-purpose web services wouldn’t be guaranteed to win in the long run, but the head start sure would help.) That sense of urgency is codified in Amazon’s Bias for Action leadership principle. It states, “Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk-taking.”
Working Backwards
Colin Bryar and Bill Carr
In my experience teaching in a hyperselective grad program, pretty much any truth written deeply and with enough clarity and candor to allow emotional range winds up fascinating me. I’m not sure just any scribbler could win my praise writing lived experiences, but our students seem fairly adroit at cobbling up unique voices that hold me in thrall.
The Art of Memoir
Mary Karr
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