not just a company – more like a way of life

“Spilled Coke on left leg of jeans, so poured some water on right leg so looks like the denim fade.” – a multi-million $ company CEO, Twittering.

Hsieh makes his entire business revolve around one thing: happiness.

Head of Zappos, the most successful online shoe retailer ever(ywhere), he doesn’t buy employee loyalty: he designs its culture.

For some inspiration on company (un)management, read on, or go to where I got inspired myself: Inc.’s senior writer Max Chafkin’s ‘The Zappos Way of Managing’ (well worth it!).

‘Most CEOs make their companies in their own image; Hsieh seems to have designed his company to behave the way he wishes he could.’

Growing so quickly, Hsieh was having trouble with infusing Zappos’ company culture into its new people. So he wrote an e-mail to the whole company asking for help. He compressed the responses into 10 core values. But I really like this one: ‘then he assigned and collected short essays from every employee on the subject of the company’s culture and published them, unedited, in a book that he distributed to the staff.’

Every year, all employees – new and old, contribute a fresh essay to the book. Hsieh uses it to get them thinking about the meaning of what they’re doing – and to show the outside world what he’s built.

mastering the company

All new Zappos people get 2 weeks of classroom training., followed by two weeks of learning how to answer customer calls. At the end, they’re offered $2,000, plus time worked, to quit.

Why? Hsieh: ‘”Our training team had gotten good at figuring out who wasn’t going to make it, and we were thinking, How do you get rid of those people?”‘ Paying people to quit saves Zappos money. It weeds out people looking to bail out anyway – and those who stay make a public statement of commitment.

investing in leadership

Here’s for a more comprehensive curriculum: employees working at Zappos for 2 years or less, get more than 200 hours of courses (in work hours!) and mandates that students read nine business books. Another level up are classes in public speaking and financial planning.

‘”The vision is that three years from now, almost all our hires will be entry-level people. (…) We’ll provide them with training and mentorship, so that within five to seven years, they can become senior leaders within the company.”‘

inside the office

Zappos creates slightly different expectations when hiring. Candidates are to pass an hour long “culture interview” before being handed given to whatever spot they’re applying for. One question: “On a scale of 1 — 10, how weird are you?”

The company’s call operator department does’nt keep track of call times, and no one’s reading from scripts. Sales reps are encouraged to make decisions on their own, like one did by buying flowers for a customer whose husband died just before she could give him his new Zappos shoes (read the full article for that one).

But they’re also supposed to send a dozen or so personal notes to customers every day. It’s all about P-E-C: Personal Emotional Connection with the customer.

Zappos’ long workdays used to spill into late-night social hang-outs, so Hsieh formalized it: managers have to spend 10 – 20 % of their time goofing with the people they manage.

‘”…if you get the culture right, then most of the other stuff follows.”‘

brilliant

This stuff really inspires me. Makes me think of Ricardo Semler’s ‘Maverick’, but going a bit further in the goofball department. Check out Zappos’ blog to get an idea of what keeps everyone up (at night and away from their desks), and have a gander at an office video below.

(photos by ShashimBellamkonda on Flickr; also check out his Zappos office set)