Jeff Wilke, CEO of Amazon’s global consumer company, will retire in the first quarter of 2021, the company announced in a statement filed Friday.
Dave Clark, who is senior vice president of retail companies, will succeed Wilke after he retires, Amazon said.
In a memo to staff, titled “Hanging the flannel”, CEO Jeff Bezos called Wilke “an incredible teacher for all of us” and said Clark is well placed to take on the role of Jeff early next year.
“Ever since Jeff joined the company, I have been fortunate to have him as my teacher,” Bezos said. “Jeff’s legacy and influence will live on long after he leaves. He’s just one of those people without whom Amazon would be completely unrecognizable.”
Wilke has been with Amazon for more than two decades, joining the company in 1999 to lead global operations. Since then, he has risen through the ranks and oversees the core e-commerce and physical retail business. Wilke is one of the closest executives to report to Bezos and is a member of his S-Team, a tight group of more than a dozen senior managers. He was widely considered a potential successor to Bezos should he ever step down.
Amazon declined to comment further on Wilke’s plan to retire.
Read Bezos’ full letter to Amazon employees below:
Fan: Jeff Bezos
To: Amazon Global Employees
Subject: RE: hang the flannel
Date: August 21, 2020
After more than two decades, Jeff Wilke plans to retire with Amazon early next year. I have attached below the heartfelt remark he just sent to his organization that shares that news.
Since Jeff joined the company, I have been fortunate to have him as my teacher. I’ve learned so much from him, and I’m not the only one. He has been an incredible teacher for all of us. That form of leadership is thus utilized. If you see that we care about customers, you can thank Jeff for that. And there’s this important point: in difficult moments and good, he’s just fun to work with. Do not underestimate the importance of it. It makes a difference.
Jeff’s legacy and influence will live on long after he leaves. He’s just one of those people without whom Amazon would be completely unrecognizable. Thank you, Jeff, for your contributions and your friendship.
Jeff also set us up to succeed in his absence. I can ‘t think of anyone better suited to take on the role of Jeff than Dave Clark. Those of you who have worked with Dave know his incredible passion for serving customers and supporting our employees – I am excited for him to lead our teams and innovate for customers.
I would like to congratulate our new S team members Alicia Boler Davis, John Felton, and Dave Treadwell as well. I look forward to finding out with you.
Jeff
Here is the memo that Wilke sent to employees:
From: Jeff Wilke
To: Global Consumer Employees
Subject: Hang the flannel
Date: August 21, 2020
During my 22nd holiday season at Amazon, I once again look at the flannel shirts that fill my closet rack. This holiday with Amazon will be different in several ways. And it will be my last.
In December 1999, I spent most evenings at work – along with most of my colleagues from half of a Key Tower floor that housed the entire team of business executives – to the Seattle Distribution Center to pack boxes and gifts. We also traveled to our buildings in Nevada, Kentucky, and Kansas. I have always packed flannel shirts for these trips to colder parts of the country. Our main goal was to make sure we shipped all customer orders in time for the holidays. But we benefited in other ways from these visits. We got to see how the physical operations are connected to our digital store, and I had to personally inspect our security culture. We make new friends (and some of these friendships lead to marriages). And, perhaps most importantly, we gained enormous respect for the dedication and customer focus of our fellow employees who worked away from headquarters.
A few years later – with the help of a focus on operational excellence built on Lean, statistical process control, a clear understanding of our bottlenecks, and software with purpose-built software) – we no longer need to send employees to companies to follow-up centers (FCs) to add much needed bandwidth to support our employees. Everyone cheered our improving operational capacity, but I noticed that something was lost. Holiday conversations in our sly, yet comfortable, offices in Seattle are increasingly turning to holiday parties and eggnog, and away from the stories of FC heroes. I did not hear the same parts of respect for the work that was being done in our FCs, and I was busy reconnecting the business staff with operations.
We made Customer Connections so that every new employee spent time in an FC as a Customer Service. I dedicate myself to representing our Operations team in the business environment, including starting each meeting with a safety tip. And I started wearing my flannel shirts every day of Q4. The flannel gave me the opportunity to talk about our operations and remind everyone how dedicated and customer-oriented our colleagues in the field were as well.
COVID-19 has taken me back to my roots in operations, as I work with the teams to build anti-testing capabilities, which we will first deploy to our frontline staff. I am so proud of the dedication our people have shown as they pick, pack, ship and deliver to hundreds of millions of customers around the world who depend on us. These employees deserve every ounce of our attention to ensure their safety, which is why we have spent so much time and money to keep them healthy and safe. This test work is very much in the spirit of flannel, and is the latest example of our commitment to the people in our follow-up centers.
I plan to retire in Q1 of next year. I do not have a new job, and am as happy and proud of Amazon as ever. I appreciate the deep relationships we forged when we grew this business. From Jeff Bezos and my colleagues from the S-team to the hundreds and hundreds of leaders across Amazon who apply every Leadership Principles every day. We have worked hard. And we had a blast. So why leave? It’s just time. Time for Dave Clark to step in and lead the organization as CEO Worldwide Consumer. Time for Russ Grandinetti and Doug Herrington to extend their already great influence on the culture and performance of our company. Time for me to take time to explore personal interests that have taken a back seat for more than two decades.
As part of this transition, we are also adding John Felton, Alicia Boler Davis, and Dave Treadwell to S-Team. This has taken years of trying to develop incredibly capable leaders in our consumer business.
John started as a senior financial analyst at Retail. He stepped through the funding ranks to eventually serve as head of finance for Dave Clark’s WW Operations team. In 2018, Dave asked John to jump from Finance to Operations. He did so enthusiastically, first leading Global Customer Fulfillment, and now Global Delivery Services, which includes our highly successful AMZL expansion.
While at General Motors, Alicia and I were introduced by a mutual friend and agreed to have lunch. We knocked it right away. I was so impressed with her leadership experience, technical acumen, and especially her dedication to the workers on the shop floor. She did not wear a flannel, but I was sure we shared the same instincts. She is off to a great start with Global Customer Fulfillment.
I met Dave Treadwell during our New Year’s college year. He was already much better at writing code than I was. After going through the seniors at Microsoft for almost 30 years, I asked him if he could join Amazon. He was intrigued, and I jumped at the chance to hire him. “Tread” has led our eCommerce Foundation tech teams since joining Amazon, and driven tremendous architectural change through Rolling Stone and our transition to native AWS, along with a major improvement in our infrastructure costs. Dave has an unusual mix of deep technical acumen and empathic leadership, and he will be a great addition to the S team.
I did not hire Dave Clark. Our MBA recruiting team brought him on board months before I signed up. But shortly after my arrival at Amazon, I knew he was special. He had a unique mix of raw intellect, systems thinking, sharp knowledge, and tons of leadership courage. I tested him. I “asked” him to go to Tokyo to start our first Japanese FC (which he did after getting his first passport). I “asked” him to go to Campbellsville, KY, to take on a Senior Manager role. I hope Dave would one day be my successor leading Operations, but I knew he would need significant plant management experience to complete his mental models. After helping to dramatically improve operations in Campbellsville, I asked him to take on the role of General Manager at our Delaware FC. The operations there were relatively simple, so the leadership challenge was more about leading people than optimizing process. Dave kicked out again. From there, Dave returned to Seattle to stay, assuming several roles in Operations that included the design of our next generation FCs. Seven years ago, he took over the leadership of WW Operations and joined the S-team. Dave thinks and leads freely. He is the Big Thinking energy behind the scale of Amazon Robotics, our Prime Air fleet, and AMZL deliveries. In the last two years, we have moved Prime, Marketing, and the Stores organizations to Dave, giving him an opportunity to expand his leadership beyond operations. Dave is now ready to lead WW Consumer, and I will be proud to hand it over to him early next year.
We have an important holiday season ahead, as customers will be more dependent on us than ever before. We have so much to do in the coming months, so I’m not leaving yet. After this holiday season we will have time for high fives of Chime and social celebration thanks and farewell, and I cherish each of them.
Thank you very much for caring about our customers and about each other. Amazon is a very special company, and it is my honor and privilege to help lead it a little later.
JAW
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