Zappos is a company that recently came upon my radar -- after learning their corporate values I knew that they had something isnpiring going on. Although it has been around for a little over a decade, for me, its presence was eclipsed by other giants like Amazon and Google. I would always ogle at the google office and think about how much more productive I would be if the office was like that, if the people were as creative or if the food was free. wink. But beyond their achievements, what their office, cafes and restaurants looked like, I didn't really know what google as a company stood for. Having been a banker for 6 years, core values and corporate culture were pounded on our heads...empowerment, integrity, truth.... but all these were in the head and not necessarily translated to what we did in our everyday. It was something I heard during townhall meetings and ra-ra-ra sessions. I don't think our corporate culture was very empowering -- you could only do so much and under the watchful eyes of people from the region who in turn were under the watchful eyes of people in the NY head office. There wasn't always truth because we were rocked by a scandal that included a deposed Philippine president. So there were a lot of gaps between what was written on paper and passed around to the newhires and what was actually happening in the office. This was fine by me, I didn't expect anything better or worse I just took it for what it was and I guess for a multinational company, there are tougher problems to hack than living and breathing the corporate culture. And with that, I stopped thinking of corporate culture. Until now.
Delivering Happiness is the book written by Zappos' CEO, Tony Hsieh. In here he details his path to Zappos, from his earliest entrepreneurial endeavors (worm farm), his life in middle school, Harvard (where he was, what you would call, a bum) then finally on his way to making his millions, eventually losing them and getting on track again. Through his storytelling he peppers the book with what he's learned as a kid with a head full of money-making schemes, as a delinquent college student , as a bored millionaire, as an aspiring poker player, as an investor and finally and most importantly, as the CEO of Zappos.
Most of the book talks about how Zappos came to be and how it is what it is now. What struck me the most is how they evolved from a company that was selling shoes online to a company that vowed to deliver the best customer service in the world. And they did it simply by striving to be as happy a workforce as possible. They are committed to WOWing their customers -- and by customers they mean everyone. Their partners, people buying from them, people selling to them, etc. They were just sincerely nice to EVERYONE. Now how do you do that?
The second thing that struck me was that from the ground up, they came up with their own company culture and they made sure that they did it every single day. They all took part in it. There was no memo handed down from upper management to the staff, they all put in their two cents worth and had a hand in it. I don't even remember exactly what those 10 were but if you can go thru your company's culture with a confidence and conviction like that then I suggest you go write a book too.
What Zappos did and continues to do is remarkable and inspiring. I recommend it to everyone, bosses and foot soldiers alike because it talks about working not only with passion but with purpose and I should know that if you have those 2 then getting up in the morning on a Monday won't be hard at all to do.
