Every once in a while you need to adjust the fit of your thinking. Often we can get into a talk-track that is hard to break out of and it get’s comfortable. Too comfortable. You need someone to give you a third-party opinion and provide some perspective.
Think of the show “What Not To Wear.” In most of the cases – the key to updating and invigorating the style of the show’s target is giving them an “experts” opinion. That’s what Stacy and Clinton do. They provide input (snarky sometimes but input nonetheless.) For those that know me you already know that the only reason I am aware of Stacy and Clinton is because of my wife – you know it’s not ‘cuz I’m that into the whole style thing.
But advice is only half the equation – change is also dependent on the target’s willingness to “adjust their thinking” and consider the input they are given. If they can’t break out of what is comfortable, they will never change – even if it is a little change.
That’s what I needed the other day. And the wonderfully accommodating Jamie Naughton - “Cruise Ship Captain” at zappos - provided me with the needed “fit adjustment.” Before we get to my “adjustment” let’s take a few paragraphs and get the real big picture out of the way.
Zappos…
For those just coming back from your walk through Tibet – zappos is the darling of the employee engagement world. From $1,000,000 to $1,000,000,000 in sales in 8 years (yeah … that’s 10-fold), purchased by amazon in 2009 for over a billion dollars, raved about, talked about and referenced as the new gold standard in customer service. And from my experience they deserve it.
I connected to zappos through a friend (@femelmed) who had a connection at zappos and I asked if she could introduce me to someone at zappos to talk about the way the reward and recognize their employees. Fran shot out a note and within 15 minutes of her doing that I had an appointment set to talk to Jamie.
Now – ask yourself this – how many $1 BILLION companies respond that fast to something as potentially dreary as talking with me? Not many. I’m impressed before even before we’ve talked. That my friends, is customer service. If that is how they treat lil’ ol’ me – you know how they treat their paying customers.
I’ll say this right now – BUY from zappos.
My Goal…
I wanted to talk to zappos in order to understand what they were doing to engage their employees. We all know about the wild costumes and the impromptu parades… but I figured there had to be more.
I was secretly hoping there would be a bunch of traditional incentives programs driving performance with a layer of press-pleasing “engagement” activities as icing.
And I was mostly wrong.
I was hoping for more Glengarry Glenn Ross and got… dare I say it… Dan Pink.
It’s All About The Foundation
Jamie outlined a few of the various ways zappos engages their 1900 employees (1,000 in the KY warehouse and 900 in Henderson, NV.) Approximately 400 are call center employees (about ½ the NV contingent) and the rest are split between Merchandising, IT, Administration, etc. Jamie has been with zappos for almost 6 years and has been witness, and party to, the tremendous growth in their employee base. Jamie noted that when she started working with zappos there was just a hair under 200 employees. So she’s seen 10-fold growth as well.
Zappos is Doing it Backwards – By Conventional Standards
So the question is – “How do you manage that kind of growth and keep engagement high?”
The answer is: By having a strong corporate culture and hiring to that culture. And most importantly – recognize to that culture.
Zappos is famous for their 10 core values and when Jamie and I were talking about them I jotted down a note to make this point…
Most companies create a mission and values statement on what they “want” to be known for and then hire for positions and hope they can convert the new hires to the values prominently displayed in the visitor’s waiting area of the company. Zappos, on the other hand, created a mission/values statement based on what they “are” – and hired people to that standard.
Do you see the profound difference? Zappos “is” something (driven mostly by Tony Hsieh in the early days – and then codified in 2006 or so.) Zappos finds people that match them culturally – instead of just looking for skill sets. The combination of skills and culture is what separates zappos.
Now I recognize zappos is an outlier – an anomaly.
But as we’ve talked before on this site – driving performance requires that you look for positive deviants – those that are doing it different AND getting results. Zappos is a positive deviant.
It’s easy to say these things and much harder to do them. Part II of this series will talk about some specific things done at zappos that prove they walk the walk.
So I’ll end post one of my three-post series with this quote from Jamie…
“You can have all the incentives, recognition and rewards you want, but they are worthless without a foundation.”
And that foundation is a ruthless focus on protecting the corporate culture. I know it’s not news. We can see thousands of tweets a day about culture driving performance. But there is a big difference between saying you’ll go on a diet tomorrow and going on a diet NOW.
To quote management guru Elvis Costello…
But everybody is going through the motions
Everybody is going through the motions
Are you really only going through the motions?
Lip service is all you'll ever get from me
Lip service is all you'll ever get from me
Lip service is all you'll ever get from me
Zappos doesn’t give lip service.
Next post – what specifically did I learn about zappos reward and incentive initiatives?
Paul... Good post about zappos. Interesting how it's all about the company culture first and then skill set. At RAZR we take the same approach - how will someone fit into our company culture and be part of a well performing team. Look foward to parts 2 &3!
John
Posted by: John Cella | August 25, 2010 at 12:22 PM
To me that's the key thing here... they don't mess around and "hope" someone will fit in. Regardless of the person's performance history - culture is first and foremost. Too often companies hire someone with a big resume and forget that they still need to get along and advance the core culture of the company. Thanks for weighing in.
Posted by: Paul Hebert | August 25, 2010 at 12:54 PM