Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

±1±: Now is the time Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose Order Today!

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Jun 16, 2010 05:39:01

The visionary CEO of Zappos explains how an emphasis on corporate culture can lead to unprecedented success.

Pay new employees 00 to quit. Make customer service the entire company, not just a department. Focus on company culture as the #1 priority. Apply research from the science of happiness to running a business. Help employees grow both personally and professionally. Seek to change the world. Oh, and make money too.

Sound crazy? It's all standard operating procedure at Zappos.com, the online retailer that's doing over billion in gross merchandise sales every year.

In 1999, Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay) sold LinkExchange, the company he co-founded, to Microsoft for 5 million. He then joined Zappos as an adviser and investor, and eventually became CEO.

In 2009, Zappos was listed as one of Fortune magazine's top 25 companies to work for, and was acquired by Amazon later that year in a deal valued at over .2 billion on the day of closing.

In his first book, Tony shares the different business lessons he learned in life, from a lemonade stand and pizza business through LinkExchange, Zappos, and more. Ultimately, he shows how using happiness as a framework can produce profits, passion, and purpose both in business and in life. (edited by author)

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±1±: Best Buy When Tony Hsieh, CEO of [...], Inc., tested his entrepreneurial genes with a worm business in his youth, he soon embraced Thomas Edison's philosophy, "I failed my way to success." Hsieh failed pretty good. At age 24, he sold LinkExchange to Microsoft for 5 million. Then as CEO of 10-year-old Zappos, he negotiated a stock exchange in 2009 between Amazon and Zappos valued at over .2 billion. But (and this will shock you), it was never about the money. Tony and his team of 700 still run Zappos.

Zappos is an online retailer of shoes, clothing, bags and handbags, housewares and other products. They provide free shipping (both ways, in case your shoes don't fit) and a 365-day return policy. Their niche is customer service, customer service, customer service.

So what can you learn from Tony and his team? Tons!

As CEO of LinkExchange and after hitting the snooze button for the seventh time one morning, it dawned on him: he dreaded going to work. The energy, the passion, the fun was gone. "It was more like death by a thousand paper cuts, or like the Chinese water torture" Tony writes. "Drop by drop, day by day, any single drop or bad hire was bearable and not that big a deal. But in the aggregate it was torture." After he sold the company, he had this epiphany: "I didn't realize it at the time, but it was a turning point for me in my life. I had decided to stop chasing the money, and start chasing the passion."

So, with his new venture capital fund, he invested in Zappos--a struggling online shoe store, and ultimately became its CEO (long story, frequent close-to-the-edge turmoil). There he discerned that building a culture was foundational to building a brand. One customer, duly impressed with receiving an order sooner than promised suggested they start Zappos Airlines.

He invested in his people. They built a resource library in the lobby with over 100 business and management books. "Many of the books would eventually become required reading for our employees to help them pursue growth and learning, and Zappos would even offer classes to go over some of the more popular books." (Three cheers for the Book Bucket!)

To ensure that "we continued to hire only people who would fit into the Zappos culture," they asked employees to meet with prospective new hires and describe the uniqueness of the work/family environment. Eventually, they put it in writing and self-published their own Culture Book, editing only the typos--thus allowing employees to tell it like it is. Zappos is big on transparency. For a free copy of the Culture Book, just email the company and include your physical mailing address. (Three cheers for the Culture Bucket.)

In my book, Mastering The Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Non-profit, and my Management Buckets workshops, I recommend you limit your core values to five or less, because team members can't remember (or live out) more than five. Zappos may be my only exception. Their 10 core values are driven deep into the company's DNA. "Over time, our recruiting department developed interview questions for each and every one of our core values, and we test our commitment during the hiring process." Their core value, "Be Humble," affects their hiring decisions the most. (Sounds like a company I could work at.)

The Zappos mission is "To live and deliver WOW." Their 10 core values include: Deliver WOW Through Service, Embrace and Drive Change, Pursue Growth and Learning, Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication, Do More With Less, and five more. The book includes a color commentary for each core value, written by various team members.

There's no stuffiness here. Instead, the practical examples and lessons learned jump off the page. "Over the years, the number one driver of our growth at Zappos has been repeat customers and word of mouth." What about social media and integration marketing? "As...low-tech as it may sound, our belief is that the telephone is one of the best branding devices out there."

Whether you're a new attorney, a new accountant or a new customer loyalty team member at Zappos, your first month is invested in a four-week orientation course, including two full weeks of taking customer service calls. Yet at anytime during that orientation period, Zappos has a standing offer to give you ,000 (plus your regular pay) to quit on the spot. That's brilliant!

Zappos invests in three key areas: customer service, culture, and employee training and development (be sure to read about their Pipeline team). They quote Jim Collins who says, "If you have more than three priorities then you don't have any."

"Jenn," who explains their Culture Book, describes the sum total as the "gestalt of Zappos." She adds, "By sprinkling in images of what the Zappos family does from morning to night--Marshmallow Peeps® contests, happy hours, Zolidays, the annual vendor party--we give readers a true sense of the brand in a non-obtrusive way. These aren't ads--these are pictures from our lives."

Zappos clearly believes that hoopla! is a critical part of their "Zappos Family Culture." One of their core values is: "Create fun and a little weirdness." (Three cheers for the Hoopla! Bucket.)

Three cheers for Zappos! (I just ordered some shoes. I couldn't resist experiencing their customer service.)

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