Finance At Amazon
This is the coffee chat I have with new hires on Day 1
By Charles Kunken 1 Cover Image (Patrick Ewing, 33): landofbasketball.com Cover Image (Chris Childs, 1): Getty Images, Al Bello
Hey there peeps, so this is my spiel. Hey whatsup, here’s some of my background, in a nutshell: It’s the best advice I’ve collected from Finance at Amazon since 2014 some very smart people and used myself. (Finance Leadership Program) MBA New York University, 2014 BS Cornell University, 2005 And now I want to share it with you. I hope it brings you value. ½ of Goodbaby.band Writer. Rider. New Yorker. Charlie Artist.
[email protected] charleskunken.com 2 Ready?
This only took me like 5 or 6 tries.
charleskunken.com 3 1 2 3 4 5 Let’s Go
1. Be Useful Quickly 2. Solve Problems (Don’t Create Solutions) 3. Start With The Micro 4. 1-on-1 Strategy 5. The 3 Buckets
Image (John Starks, 3; Anthony Mason, 14; Doc Rivers, 25, Patrick Ewing, 33; Charles Oakley 34): Photo By Al Tielemans
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Be Useful Quickly Your First Priority
5 1 2 3 4 5 Your first goal is not to solve world hunger.
It’s to actually help someone with something right away.
Reputation. Communicate through action that your presence immediately adds value.
Do this by…
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Finding a very small issue to start with…
That you know you can help solve within a couple of days…
and do that.
charleskunken.com 7 Image: (Allan Houston, 20) NBAE/Getty, Ron Turenne 1 2 3 4 5
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Solve Problems Don’t Create Solutions
9 1 2 3 4 5 “What would be the most valuable thing I can do for you right now?”
Ask your customers, be it your supervisor, your business team, other finance teams, etc.
Work on the problems they say they are actually experiencing.
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Don’t spend months trying to guess solutions on your own without feedback.
Just ask them what’s important.
11 Image: (Larry Johnson, 2) New York Daily News 1 2 3 4 5
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Start With The Micro Thinking Big Requires Knowing The Small.
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I include this as a warning not to start by thinking big at the outset.
As an analyst your value lies in knowing the minutiae of your space.
Learn every single detail of your deliverables. Every input, table, cell, row, column, formula, attribute, data source, etc.
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Knowing how all the puzzle pieces fit together will be your foundation from which you will be able to think big better than anybody else.
If you try starting from the macro…
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…it could end up looking like this.
Image: (Jeff Van Gundy, Suit) G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times charleskunken.com 16 “Before you design waterslides you must understand how the urinals flush.”
-Not A Chinese Proverb
charleskunken.com Image: flickr.com/photos/lordv/ 17 1 2 3 4 5 1-on-1 Meetings A Strategy For Coffee Chats
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I have 2 simple tips for meeting with people. 1. Start Right Away Begin having conversations with people immediately so you can start learning their needs. Don’t wait months.
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I have 2 simple tips for meeting with people. 2. Ask Everybody The Same Thing You will see very quickly which issues are personal vs. systematic problems.
“What keeps you up at night? What is our biggest opportunity? How can finance help?”
These are a few examples.
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And Lastly…
Image: (John Starts, 3; Anthony Mason, 14) Getty Images
charleskunken.com 21 1 2 3 4 5 The Three Buckets A Closing Thought
charleskunken.com 22 If you begin feeling 1 2 3 4 5 information overwhelm just know that everything is going to fall into one of these three buckets.
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2. The People Who does what.
3. The Economics How does the business work. 1. The Data How to get it, how to know it’s right.
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Like a mental filing cabinet.
I don’t know if that’s helpful, I just find it comforting.
Image: (Charlie Ward, 21) Otto Greule Jr / Getty Images
charleskunken.com 25 And That’s Day 1 Hey, thanks for reading!
If even one thing in here proved useful to you, or made you slightly nostalgic for the mid-90’s Knicks then it’s served it’s purpose and I’m happy.
Here are some other ways I’ll try and help…
charleskunken.com 26 1. You can get a video of this presentation here at Finance GuyTV.
2. Or the audio version on our podcast. This should be up very soon in the usual places where podcasts are found. (show description here).
3. This is where all the ideas start. See how mindset and creativity can help you think differently at work. Blog | Subscribe
charleskunken.com 27 And if you have any questions at all you can always hit me up. I’d love to hear from you. [email protected]
charleskunken.com 28 About This Slideshare I grew up on Long Island where I shot a lot of hoops. The mid-90’s Knicks were a significant portion of my upbringing. And so I honor them here.
Image: This my hood where I am still the all time buckets leader. On both hoops. Although no one was watching for most of it.
charleskunken.com 29 20190820