Delivering Happiness:  A Case Study
Best Practices that Really Work
By Bob Moore, CMC, MCC, The Effectiveness Coach®

Word Count:  574
Reading Time:  about 4 minutes

This week a fascinating new book was released, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose  by Tony Hsieh (Hardcover - June 7, 2010). Click here to buy new from Amazon: $23.99 $13.19. The book is an outstanding case study of how a successful company applies the key practices I wrote about last week in the article, “What Are Successful Businesses Doing?”.  The four key practices of companies that prosper in good times and difficult times are:

• Understand what their customers want and need.
• Do the right things to consistently exceed customers expectations.
• Focus on the most important things to achieve these expectations.
• Incorporate these practices into a well defined strategy including people development.

This article, a bit longer the usual, is about Zappos (named after zapatos, Spanish for “shoes”), a company selling shoes on the Internet.   As CEO, Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay) led Zappos from nothing to over $1 billion in gross sales in less than 10 years.  In the book he explains in great detail the 10 core values of the Zappos culture and the results achieved from focusing time, energy and resources into three areas:  customer service, culture and employee training, which directly relate to the four key practices above. 

In Inc. Magazine entitled “Why I Sold Zappos”, Tony emphasized that putting the company culture above all else is what distinguished them from their competitors. He believed that by being good to his employees, they would offer better service than their competitors, which would translate into repeat customers and mean low marketing expense, long-term profits, and faster growth.

However, the board of directors did not agree and saw the company culture as a pet project—“Tony’s social experiments”.  They wanted him to spend more time on selling shoes and less time worrying about employee happiness.  The solution to the growing tension was to buy out the board of directors.  After lengthy negotiations, Tony and Jeff Bezos of Amazon made a deal valued at $1.2 billion.  The terms of the acquisition included a provision that formerly recognized Zappos’s culture and Amazon’s duty to protect it.

At the end of the first quarter of 2010, net sales at Zappos were up 50 percent which made Amazon very happy.  Click here to read the full Inc. Magazine article.

The final section of the book is about applying the science of happiness and includes mention of several books including The Happiness Hypothesis:  Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom and Happier:  Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment.  Both of these books formed the foundation of his research into happiness.  Other books that taught him about company culture include Good To Great:  Why Some Companies Make The Leap...and Others Don't and Tribal Leadership:  Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization.

Marshall Goldsmith, Author of Mojo:  How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back If You Lose It, had this to say, “Tony Hsieh is a wise guy.  Sincerely.  He’s one of the wisest and most thoughtful business leaders of the modern age.  This insightful book isn’t just an enjoyable read.  It’s a wonderful instruction manual for how 21st century companies create value and happiness at the same time.”                                                              

Whether you are the CEO, business owner or independent contributor, I believe you will find value in Tony’s book, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose.  Click here to buy new from Amazon: $23.99 $13.19.

Enthusiastically,

Bob

Bob Moore, CMC®, President
Effectiveness, Inc/The Effectiveness Coach®
Aligning Human Capital with Strategic Objectives

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