Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
By Tony Hsieh
You can view this book's Amazon detail page here.
I don’t usually read business books. For the most part, I’m skeptical of the author’s agenda and the broad applicability of what they have to say, prove or pat themselves on the back for. This book, though, is a bit different. It’s more of a story of Tony Hsieh’s life so far. Not only is it autobiographical, but apparently, Hsieh wrote it without an editor. The first part of the book opens with his early successes and is annoying frequently as he clearly expresses his disappointment in how long success was taking to arrive – all when it appeared to be coming pretty damned fast. This comes off more as unreasonable impatience than a thoughtful questioning of his actions and results. It made me think of many people I know who grew up as the internet and world wide web came to life and thought that they deserved a slice of the success others were getting . . . and deserved it right now.
As the story turns to Zappos, though, Hsieh portrays himself as a different person. One who puts literally everything he has – financially, time, energy, focus – into making Zappos a success. Zappos, like many “overnight” successes was on the brink of failure for several years before catching on and becoming an actual success.
It’s a shame, he glosses over some juicy stuff about investment rounds and board control other than to say that problems arose.
Hsieh spend a lot of time discussing the impact of culture on the organization of Zappos. At times, he made it sound like he created the idea of culture as a corporate driver, although there is plenty to indicate that he likely doesn’t totally believe that. There was a long discussion on the culture book at Zappos. An interesting idea that would be very hard to pull off – employees, customers, suppliers were all involved in its creation. It’s a tribute to Hsieh and company that they can do it, although I question whether it could work in a company that didn’t grow as fast as Zappos.
The book concludes with Hsieh’s treatise on the science of happiness and the statement that this is his new personal mission – discovery, teaching and preaching about delivering happiness. A little interesting, but mostly preachy from my point of view.
A few interesting points from the book:
- Brand = Culture
- If your serious about culture, you’ll eventually lose control of it
- Moving the company to Vegas from San Francisco was really hard, but fit the kind of customer-centric people they needed. Gutsy move.
- Taking control of their distribution early (and almost drowning in the decision as they chose a bad partner). Gutsy and certainly one of the reasons they pulled it off.
- Hsieh was an early investor, not really a founder per se. He eventually took over as CEO, but stuck with the original team that started Zappos. Worked out well.
- It’ll be interesting to see if Amazon can keep their acquisition promises if things don’t go well. It’s not the most efficient structure . . .
- Started reading:
- 25th July 2010
- Finished reading:
- 1st August 2010