What really stands out to me is the unrelenting commitment to setting the standard to be really good at providing the WOW experience. So much that they consciously created and maintained the culture intentionally. They used their core values as the foundation for all of the decision making and even whether a person was invited to join the company or not.
I feel like this book is a representation of the things I have been working on with Fairin over the course of my contract. We have discussed values, employees, the culture, the importance of empowering employees, freedom to use creativity, bringing fun and play into the conversation, providing the environment that makes the employees thrive and Tony is a living example of doing just that in his company. He had to believe in a bigger purpose and hold the vision. He made the hard decisions and went with his gut (intuition). He had to allow the unfolding to happen and he chose to be transparent and collaborative with the employees every step of the way. This is the embodiment of family and community in business.
It isn’t easy, but the rewards have paid off in the long run. He was never in it for the short term gains, always looking at the long game and using the “something bigger” to pull him forward through each and every challenge.
Nothing happened overnight. It was a constant refinement that was asked of and delivered by the employees. He rolled up his sleeves and did the work too. It was fun and a little weird. The employee retention and loyalty to the company speaks for itself. It wasn’t about flashy things, it was about building and sustaining relationships and putting people at the top of the list over profits and incomes. They focused on growing at every step.
It is also worth noting that there was a core leadership team that was aligned and committed from the get go. They believed when others didn’t and they could then support and lean on each other when things got hard. They may not have had the answers, but they never gave up or quit. They came together and allowed the ideas to drop in at just the right time. This story illustrates the presence that a leader of an organization has and the organic nature of how things can build synergistically as a result of the whole being more than the separate parts.
To be an industry leader that creates change in how others approach business requires walking through initiations and tests. Tony Hsieh was the embodiment of the humble leader and yet he held standards and literally put his money into what he believed in. He didn’t have a safety net. He was all in! He is a special person and the people at Zappos.com were able to experience a heart centered leader.
Zappos.com employees were free to be themselves. They played and had fun. They worked hard. They took risks. They were creative. They were constantly learning and they were a family. They broke away from the boring and burnt out status quo ways of operating. This required leaders with vision to run a business this way. They were humble enough to admit they didn’t know what they were doing and yet they actually did because they listened to their gut or their intuition.
It was really great to join in the story of their journey and to link it to the aspirations 3DR has that are in alignment with Zappos.com
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