What We Can Learn From Tony Hsieh’s Take On Business Culture

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – NOVEMBER 28: An LED sign outside the D Las Vegas displays a tribute to tech entrepreneur Tony Hsieh on November 28, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Bryan Steffy/Getty Images)GETTY IMAGES

Tony Hsieh, the wildly successful, highly eccentric Vegas entrepreneur, died prematurely in November, shortly after retiring as the CEO at Zappos. While the cause of death was smoke inhalation from a house fire, reports suggest he was battling addiction problems. But that’s not what this article is about; it’s my second about Hsieh’s business lessons.

In December, I read Delivering Happiness, Hsieh’s anime-memoir describing how he built Zappos. Here I cover what I learned from the second half of the book – Hsieh’s meta-lessons about business culture.

Hsieh wasn’t just trying to deliver happiness to the customer. He believed the key to that was hiring the right kind of people, training them the right way – everyone would have a customer service focus – and making them happy at work.

Long before Zappos, Hsieh’s first successful startup was LinkExchange – Internet ad pioneers. But he grew unhappy, so disliking the job that he walked away from a lot of money rather than stick it out for a few more months.

“I don’t claim to be an expert in the field of the science of happiness,” Hsieh admitted in Delivering Happiness. “I’ve been reading books and articles about it because I find the topic interesting.”

Hsieh read and cited psychologist Abraham Maslow, who posited a five-tier human “hierarchy of needs” ranging from basic survival like oxygen, water, and food to increasingly higher needs like safety, social belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. Taking our lessons from Hsieh’s fate, we can perhaps take these lessons not as a key to personal fulfillment, but business fulfillment.

What is your goal in life? Why? Many of us find these two deceptively simple questions devilishly difficult to answer. Hsieh believed defining and understanding the goal and the why behind it would reveal our values and also begin to chart a path through life. Again, easier said than done.

Read more: www.forbes.com