One company that is getting a lot of well-deserved attention these days is (duh) Zappos. So when my complimentary copy of Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose arrived in the mail, I was excited to dig into Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh's (pronounced Shay) story. As the e-commerce upstart matured, its CEO was able to foster and preserve a culture of innovation, fun and customer service.
From a human capital perspective, this book is thought provoking. It has implications for how recruit, develop, engage and retain talent. For example, one of my favorite sections of the book focuses on the ten corporate values of Zappos. Among these values is "Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded." At first, it seems a little vague (not unlike many corporate values I could name) but Hsieh makes his point with an anecdote in one of Zappos' recruiting manager's own words (a blog post specifically).
Christa F. joined Zappos as an HR Generalist and ended up, to her dismay, charged with designing a recruiting and screening process. Because of the cultural atmosphere of open-mindedness and creativity, what had at first seemed like a boring and tedious project resulted in the infamous Zappos "speed dating" job fairs among other innovations. Christa realized that it was not the idea of recruiting that had filled her with dread, it was the idea of recruiting in the way that she had been told to in her previous job within a stagnant, bureacratic structure.
This idea of the old, command structure, bureaucratic way of getting things done in an organization versus the flexible, creative culture that companies like Zappos encourage is not a new one. Most anyone who has worked at a start-up in the past 20 years can tell you as much. The difference is that, Zappos worked incredibly hard to preserve the culture that had served them so well as a company with less than 100 employees all through their climb to over $1 billion in gross annual merchandise sales. On the other hand, many of the most exciting, passionate startups will lose their entrepreneurial spirit the bigger they get.
This leads me to another crucial point in the book. During the meteoric rise of his first major venture, LinkExchange, Hsieh notes that by thousands of tiny degrees this dotcom startup had become hateful to him. Though it had begun with Hsieh and a friend from college, LinkExchange grew so quickly that poor cultural and hiring decisions were made.
"How did we go from an "all-for-one, one-for-all" team environment to one that was now all about politics, positioning, and rumors? ... I couldn't think of a single point in time when things started going downhill and it became less fun for me. There wasn't a specific employee I could point to who had single-handedly caused the company culture to deteriorate." writes Hsieh.
Hsieh's realization that LinkExchange had been ruined for him is an important one because it made him determined to not let it happen at Zappos. This focus on company culture proves how important it is to define and refine principles while devoting oneself to them. Behind each of the ten Zappos values, there is a story of an employee whose life or career changed because of that value.
Be sure to do two things this month: register for our webcast The Zappos Family of Companies on Social Media: It's About Culture on our Social Networking for Recruiting learning track and pick up a copy of Delivering Happiness.
