Happiness a path to profits hsieh tony

The commitment part was the most challenging part. As I mentioned in my “Your Culture Is Your Brand” blog post, a lot of corporations have “core values” or “guiding principles,” but the problem is that they’re usually very lofty sounding and they read like a press release that the marketing department put out. A lot of times, an employee might learn about them on day 1 of orientation, but then the values just end up being part of a meaningless plaque on the wall of the corporate lobby.

We wanted to make sure that didn’t happen with our core values. We wanted a list of committable core values that we were willing to hire and fire on. If we weren’t willing to do that, then they weren’t really “values.”

We eventually came up with our final list of ten core values, which we still use today: 1. Deliver WOW Through Service 2. Embrace and Drive Change 3. Create Fun and a Little Weirdness 4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and OpenMinded 5. Pursue Growth and Learning 6. Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication 7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit 8. Do More with Less 9. Be Passionate and Determined 10. Be Humble Integrity was a value that had been suggested by some employees, but I made a conscious choice to leave it out. I felt that integrity would come from us actually committing to and living up to our core values in everything we did, not just referring to them when it was convenient.

Over time, our recruiting department developed interview questions for each and every one of the core values, and we tested our commitment during the hiring process.

Be Humble is probably the core value that ends up affecting our hiring decisions the most. There are a lot of experienced, smart, and talented people we interview that we know can make an immediate impact on our top or bottom line. But a lot of them are also really egotistical, so we end up not hiring them. At most companies, the hiring manager would probably argue that we should hire such a candidate because he or she will add a lot of value to the company, which is probably why most large corporations don’t have great cultures.

Our philosophy at Zappos is that we’re willing to make short-term sacrifices (including lost revenue or profits) if we believe that the long-term benefits are worth it.

Protecting the company culture and sticking to core values is a long-term benefit.

Once we had our final list of our ten core values, I sent an e-mail to the entire company describing each of them in more detail. We still refer to the original e-mail today. In fact, when new employees join the company, they are required to sign a document stating that they have read the core values document and understand that living up to the core values is part of their job expectation.