Jamie Heywood - Leading Uber, Amazon, & Virgin Mobile by principle

the talktank

The Bits & Bytes Series - Jamie Heywood

Hosted by Laura Calle

Jaime Heywood is passionate about human and social development and has a wide range of international experience as a businessman in both regulated industries and scaling fast-growing businesses. Jamie studied Philosophy and Psychology at Oxford University and is the former Uber Regional General Manager for Northern and Eastern Europe, where he covered more than 70 cities and 12 countries including the UK. 🌏🧳

In Uber Jaime is credited with repairing relations with Transport for London after the regulator refused to renew Uber’s licence. And also, was the prime mover behind the acquisition of dispatch systems provider Autocab and the launch of the successful Local Cab service, through which Uber has expanded into more than 40 UK towns and cities by allocating jobs to private hire operators that use Autocab’s iGo network.👷‍♀️

Before joining uber Jamie was working for Amazon as the Director of their Electronics division in the UK responsible for both the Retail and Marketplace businesses.

And before joining Amazon in 2014, Jamie spent 15 years in telecoms, where he was Managing Director of Virgin Mobile in the UK (2011-14) and launched Virgin Mobile in India and Orange in Thailand. 📞

He was also CEO of Virgin Mobile in China for three years and started his career in Asia working for the Swire Group.

Timestamps:

2:20 - Who is Jamie Heywood? Jamie’s upbringing in Asia

3:42 - Leaving Uber and writing a book

4:15 - Technology shift -> society shift

5:50 - From top-down to bottom-up leadership

7:15 - Jamie’s talk at LSE, leading with principles

9:43 - The secret to Amazon’s scaling success

11:40 - Effort vs. results in leadership

14:00 - Swim, don’t sink! The reality of running a company

14:58 - Cultural differences from leading in Asia vs Europe

19:16 - How to maintain work-life balance

21:22 - Monkey management?

23:04 - Stop inheriting work from others!

24:20 - Virgin Mobile’s failure in China

27:36 - Take off your rose tinted glasses

28:34 - When failure hits your ego

31:45 - We’re all in this together!

33:33 - Life-changing books for Jamie

36:38 - What actually matters in life? Spoiler: it’s not just work

40:05 - Are socially aware introverts secret weapons?

41:37 - Prioritise riding the tech wave

43:26 - Who is Jamie’s dream podcast guest?

Special shoutout to Jessica Ge for producing this episode! ❤️