Ever try to replicate Amazon’s famous Weekly Business Review (WBR), only to find it eats up hours and yields little action? You’re not alone. A WBR can be a game-changer when done right. But without the right structure, ownership, and preparation, it quickly becomes yet another meeting everyone dreads.
Below are the most common reasons WBRs flop—and how to turn them into a true driver of business results.
Why WBRs Fail
Lack of Clarity Teams don’t have well-defined OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), leading to confusion about what success looks like.
No Metric Ownership When everyone “owns” a metric, no one really does.
Excessive Pre-Prep A single team (often Analytics or Data Science) scrambles to pull data—unsustainable over time.
Reviewing Every Metric Meetings get bogged down in endless details instead of focusing on key variances or anomalies.
Poor Context Attendees don’t prep beforehand and end up skimming through dashboards live (wasting everyone’s time).
Wrong People in the Room Critical metric owners are missing, stalling key decisions.
How to Fix It: Your Action Plan
Clarify OKRs Align each team’s goals with the company’s objectives so everyone knows what really matters.
Assign Single-Threaded Owners Give each metric one clearly identified owner—no ambiguity, no confusion.
Zero In on Variances Skip the metrics that are performing as expected. Focus your meeting on what’s off-track or unexpectedly spiking.
Prep Asynchronously Share dashboards or notes 24 hours in advance, so the live discussion is short, sweet, and to the point.
Invite the Right Folks Make sure the people who can explain metric variances or make decisions are actually at the table.
Standardize Data Sharing Everyone should have easy, unblocked access to the data needed.
Track Follow-Ups Each discussion point should have an owner and a due date to ensure accountability.
Encourage Open Dialogue A culture of candor and curiosity drives deeper insights—and better decisions.
A Streamlined WBR in Practice
15 Minutes (Async): Attendees review metrics, anomalies, and context in a shared dashboard.
30 Minutes (Live): Discuss only the most critical variances—why they happened and what’s next.
This structure lightens the prep load and keeps the live session laser-focused on solutions, not just data regurgitation.
Final Thoughts (and a Personal Note)
As a data leader who spent nearly 5 years at Amazon, I’ve seen firsthand how a well-run WBR can transform an organization. Since leaving Amazon, I’ve helped multiple teams turn around broken WBR processes—driving cultural change, instilling real accountability, and freeing teams from time-draining meeting overload. That journey is the inspiration for this post.
The WBR isn’t a magic wand. It’s part of a broader operating rhythm—annual planning, monthly reviews, innovation mechanisms, etc. But if you nail these core principles (clarity, ownership, variance focus, accountability), you’ll transform your WBR from a dreaded meeting into a powerful driver of action.
Resource
My favorite resource on this topic is written by former Amazon Executives Colin Bryar & Bill Carr . If you’re looking for deeper insights on how Amazon structures its WBR, check out their user manual: Working Backwards WBR User Manual
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