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

Deliving Happiness is a fascinating book about how to grow and nurture a company. It is written by Tony Hsieh who is the early investor and the current CEO of Zappos- online company that started out selling shoes and has now branched out to selling clothes, watches, and eyewear. Unlike most CEO, he does not see the sole purpose of the business is to maximize profits for its owners. In this book he talks about how he got be where he is today and how he learned important values and lessons.Before Zappos, he had founded LinkExchange which he sold to Microsoft for $265 million. The reason he gave for selling was LinkExchange was as it grew, it lost culture and felt like it was a different company and it get to the point he dreaded getting out of the bed in the morning to go to the office. After this, he started venture fund from which he funded Zappos’s founder. Initially, Zappos struggle because it fulfilled orders with drop shipments which did not worked well because it did not have accurate information about vendors’ inventory, and because their warehouses were all over the country, delivery times weren’t predictable. Later, he began buying inventory from manufacturers, which was freezing its capital and also relying on a third party to manage its warehouse. He recalled that it never makes sense to outsource call center and warehousing because Zappos’s higher purpose is to provide the best customer service which is only possible when it has pulse of what customer want. He felt that trusting a third party would care about its customers as much as Zappos would was one of our biggest mistakes.In the book, he talks about when Zappos was losing money and could not get any more money to run its operation, they figure out that while cutting marketing expense, only thing they can do is to focusing on the customer service. He sees his company offering the best customer services possible. He eluded couple times that Zappos could get in to many other areas including offering the airline services. Later he talks about how reading book; he learned that great company has a greater purpose and bigger vision beyond just making money or being number one in a market. He would later create a book club where each employee would read a book and discuss about it and apply lesson learned at Zappos. Unlike many businesses that put the need of the investors as the center of the business, he put the need of the customer as the core, yet believes that he needs to meet the needs and desires of all stakeholders. Tony put the best customer service at his end goal, for which he put making his employee happy as his primary target. He believes that his effort to make his employee happy will in turn make his customer happy.Tony Hsieh saw his role as the philosopher. He sold his first company LinkExchange to Microsoft, because he felt that it lost its soul and reach to where he dreaded getting out of the bed in the morning to go to the office. When he invested on Zappos, and then become involved in it, he knew the culture was important. From early on, he develops a culture that he likes. As a CEO, he does not have authority like in the typical American organization. At Zappos, he saw his role as the gardener that allows everybody around him to flourish. Hsieh put the customer’s interest as his end goal. Employees are trained to have lifelong relationship with a customer. And there are growing list of CEO who toured Zappos to learn from Zappos insight and bought his idea and have implemented at their organization.In this book, he talks about creating a culture that would outlast him. He believe that if it get the culture right, then most of the other stuff like delivering great customer service or building a long-term enduring brand or business will be a natural byproduct. Culture starts with the hiring. Zappos uses two sets of interview: one by the hiring manager for the job specific role; and second by HR which is purely for the culture fit. To hire, a prospective candidate has to be pass both. It also fires employee if they are bad for the culture even though they are doing well on their job specific role. At Zappos, they hired only people they would enjoy hanging out with after hours.This book talks about meritocracy system which Hsieh implemented in 2012. It allows employees to self-organize to complete work in a way that increases productivity, foster innovation and empowers anyone in the company with the ability to make decisions that push the company forward. All employees are part of one or more circle. People on the circle can fire another people on the circle. All employees can remove themselves from a circle and move to another circle. As a CEO, Hsieh cannot hire or fire his employee. This kind of system requires trust first. He was able to build trust by developing a culture that stems from intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic motivation. He frees his call center employee in many ways to build a lifelong relationship. One way he empowers customer service reps is by not measuring call times, not allowing them to upsell, and not using a script.It talks about how leader can affect an organization’s future by sharing his values. When things are changing fast, employees need a vision of the destination that lies beyond the horizon; they also need to understand the principles by which they must navigate their course. Without the strong value that is shared and engrained to the culture, an organization will probably lose their direction and fail. Unlike many other companies that may take only senior leadership to retreat to develop company value, he email to all his employees about their input. From all employees’ input, Zappos developed 10 core values. Since all employees have contributed to this value, they embody the company value. One value is to be adventurous, creative and open-minded which displays how his employees have embodied Zappos value.Another value he talks about is to “deliver wow through service”. To WOW, employee must differentiate themselves, which means do something a little unconventional and innovative. Once a year, Zappos ask its employee to write what Zappos cultures mean to them and publish them as a “Culture book” which is an employee review of a company and is a great way to communicate with its employee.That book is fantastic read for all MBA students and those who wants to learn how to manage team.

As the author best puts it "This book is not meant to be a comprehensive corporate history of Zappo or any of the previous business I've been involved in. It's also not meant to be a complete autobiography...The purpose of this book is to give some of the highlights of the path that I took in my journey toward discovering how to find happiness in business and in life."The journey Tony takes the readers on is both very educational and exciting. Along the path, he shares great gems of wisdom that he has collected both on from a personal basis and an organizational perspective. These include but are not limited to: management, leadership, following one's passion, relationship building etc. His passion for vision, values and happiness radiates through and is very contagious and inspirational. Having personally experienced Zappos WOW experience, I can truly say that the material preached by the CEO is truly believed in and practiced throughout the organization. A highly recommended book!Below are excerpts from the book that I found particularly insightful:1- "One of the most interesting things about playing poker was learning the discipline of not confusing the right decision with the individual outcome of any single hand, but that's what a lot of poker players do. If they win a hand, they assume they made the right bet, and if they lose a hand, they often assume they made the wrong bet. With the coin that lands on heads a third of the time, this would be like seeing the coin land on heads once (the individual outcome) and changing your behavior so you bet on heads, when the mathematically correct thing to do is to always bet on tails no matter what happened in the previous coin flip (the right decision)."2- "We learned that we should never outsource our core competency. As an e-commerce company, we should have considered warehousing to be our core competency from the beginning. Outsourcing that to a third party and trusting that they would care about our customers as much as we would was one of our biggest mistakes. If we hadn't reacted quickly, it would have eventually destroyed Zappos."3- "Looking back, a big reason we hit our goal early was that we decided to invest our time, money, and resources into three key areas: customer service (which would build our brand and drive word of mouth), culture (which would lead to the formation of our core values), and employee training and development (which would eventually lead to the creation of our Pipeline Team)."4- "We believe that it's really important to come up with core values that you can commit to. And by commit, we mean that you're willing to hire and fire based on them. If you're willing to do that, then you're well on your way to building a company culture that is in line with the brand you want to build. You can let all of your employees be your brand ambassadors, not just the marketing or PR department. And they can be brand ambassadors both inside and outside the office."5- "The best leaders are those that lead by example and are both team followers as well as team leaders. We believe that in general, the best ideas and decisions are made from the bottom up, meaning by those on the front lines that are closest to the issues and/or the customers. The role of a manager is to remove obstacles and enable his/her direct reports to succeed. This means the best leaders are servant-leaders. They server those they lead."6- "While we celebrate our individual and team successes, we are not arrogant nor do we treat others differently from how we would want to be treated. Instead, we carry ourselves with quiet confidence, because we believe that in the long run our character will speak for itself."7- "Your personal core values define who you are, and a company's core values ultimately define the company's character and brand. For individuals, character is destiny. For ogranizations, culture is destiny."8- "Happiness is really just about four things: perceived control, perceived progress, connectedness (number and depth of your relationships), and vision/meaning (being part of something bigger than yourself)."

Una sorprendente historia de alguien apasionado por sus sueños, aun cuando éstos estaban algo borrosos al inicio. La inacabable energía para hacer que las cosas funcionen y la madurez (a temprana edad) de los fundadores de esta empresa guiados por algunos principios de "Built to Last" pero adecuándolos a su estilo y realidad. Si estás pensando en los valores que deben guiar tu empresa y cómo energizar a tu equipo, este libro te dará una perspectiva útil.

Het geeft idee over success in business, maar ook om hoe een interessant leven te leiden waar business helemaal niet op de eerste plaats staat. En nog een bijzonder informatieve verhandeling over geluk. Lesgevend in business citeer ik dit boek vaak en krijg de klas steeds weer dubbel van het lachen met incidenten.

Compré el libro porque escuché una serie de episodios en el podcast de Brené y como todo lo que viene de ella supera las expectativas. Es un libro para reflexionar y mejorar, para vivir la vida a plenitud. Lo recomiendo al 100%.

Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh is an incredible read. The journey of Zappos is an beautiful one - right from the start to finish and eventual acquisition.The book talks about higher concepts of life such as passion and purpose perfected to discovering our innate happiness! :)What to expect in the book and why I love it :1) Storytelling interesting narrative of how Zappos came into existence.2) Deep, personal stories of employees, stakeholders, vendors and everyone else in the company on how they got together and interacted as a big Zappos family.3) The core culture values of Zappos make things interesting for aspiring entrepreneurs in any field, to apply in the real world of business.Also, the late Tony's personal philosophy alignes with Zappos culture and core values. Zappos has lived through the key area of becoming a customer centric company while delivering happiness. Plenty of takeaways to adopt in business. A must-read :)

Livro muito leve mas de extrema importancia para as empresas de todo o mundo, mas principalmente as brasileiras, que muitas vezes deixam o customer sucess para a ultima de suas preocupacoes