Tony Hsieh has a dream to fix the world’s cities one by one, starting with Las Vegas, and he believes it can be accomplished via culture, just as it is at Zappos.

Two Q&A responses in the interview caught my eye, because they get to the crux of great culture.

Q. What is Zappos’ greatest threat?

HSIEH. Probably ourselves. The fundamental premise behind Zappos is culture. The belief is that if we get the culture right then most of the other stuff like doing great service, building a long-term, enduring brand or business will just be a natural byproduct of that. Most companies, as they get bigger, the culture goes downhill. Not only do we want to prevent that, but we actually want it to scale and get stronger and stronger which, generally, I think has never been done before. That is a challenge. The only way we have been able to think of to achieve that is if every employee views living in and inspiring the culture as part of their job description.

Great cultures are envisioned in the broadest strokes from the top—Hsieh wanted a happy place to work—with the visionary enabling people at all levels to contribute to and protect the resulting culture.

Q. If you are not there to do that, will there be someone there to do that?

HSIEH. It kind of goes back to it is everyone’s job to protect our values and to grow the culture. I guess we don’t really have an explicit succession plan. But I can also tell you that the only compensation I’m getting from Amazon is $36,000 a year with no chance of bonuses or stock options or anything. So, in theory, I could walk away at any moment but I haven’t. In a weird way, that only gives me more leverage over Amazon, because they know the only thing keeping me at Zappos is my happiness, and what makes me happy is us being run independently and maintaining our culture.

The bolding is mine and every boss at every level should commit it to memory.

The concept of leaving if not happy is applicable to every person who works no matter the size of their paycheck.

Not everyone can walk on the spur of the moment, but if they aren’t happy eventually they will walk.

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So very true. I once worked at a company where one of the Vice Presidents took obviously sadistic pleasure in torturing people below him in the company hierarchy.

He even said to me once in private, with a smirk on his face, “I love scaring the hell out of people. Watch how I can make them shake when I threaten their ability to support their family. It feels good to have this much power.”

Adult bullying—particularly in the workplace, where people are often terrified of losing their source of income—is a serious problem and society has to stop ignoring it. You may be “the boss” but that does not give you the right to brutalize and abuse the people who work for you. –Father and Husband, Seattle

This comment is from an NYT op-ed piece on about bullying and Lady Gaga’s official unveiling of her Born This Way Foundation at Harvard.

Sadly, the comment isn’t outlandish or even a recent phenomenon.

A memory dating back to the late Seventies is of a VP whose favorite pastime was forcing the managers under him to run layoffs a few days before Christmas; he really got off on that.

Last year Stanford prof Bob Sutton published Good Boss, Bad Boss about how power makes us focus more on our own needs and wants and less on others, also to act like the rules apply to others and not to us.

Based on new research Sutton has added more material on what he terms “power poisoning” to the recently released paperback version.

“Alas, recent developments suggest that staying in tune with the people you oversee is even more difficult than this book suggests. And the other disturbing effects of wielding power over others are even worse than I thought.”

Worse than Sutton thought? That, indeed, is a scary statement and one that should get your attention.

Bad Bosses are the source of bad cultures; there is absolutely no way to separate them.

Bad cultures are the source of bad results; there is absolutely no way to separate them.

This makes it simple for you to know if you have a case of power poisoning, as well as how severe it is.

Look at the results of your organization, whether team, department, division or company.

Just yours, not in combination with the rest of the company or in light of the economy or any other of the dozens of rationalizations available.

If you can actually do that you are at least half way to being able to counter the poison and reading Good Boss, Bad Boss will actually be worth your time.

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This list is from a columnist at China Daily in response to reducing high turnover and improving retention.

Six essentials employees want in their jobs

1. A great boss
2. Trust and respect
3. Appreciation and recognition
4. Career progression
5. Corporate culture
6. Communication

The list doesn’t differ much from dozens of similar lists you’ve seen under the title of “What Millennials Want’ or descriptions over the decades of what most US workers want.

And I’m willing to bet the list applies to any workforce in any country on Earth or elsewhere in this or other galaxies.

These are universal desires of both educated and uneducated people; what changes is their ability to articulate them.

It’s a list that managers and management should take to heart, because it isn’t going away.

The six are constants that every manager had better understand and provide or be prepared to staff a revolving door.

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I don’t think I’ve ever watched a show on TLC (a unit of Discovery Channel), but I plan to this spring; even more surprising to me is that it’s a reality show.

A reality show about great corporate culture in an industry known for the opposite.

“We were interested in working with Southwest,” said Dustin P. Smith, vice president of communications for TLC, “as it is one of the largest airlines in the country and is known for its exuberant corporate culture and for having refreshing and personal customer service that is regarded as unique in the industry.

I doubt that anyone who travels is surprised at the choice of Southwest; and certainly not Southwest.

Ashley Dillon, a spokesperson for Southwest Airlines, said the airline was chosen also because of its tradition of transparency, which relies heavily on the use of social media, blogs and other media.

In a 2009 post citing the airline’s success even during the height of the recession I linked Southwest’s and Zappos’ success to the same core cultural belief—happy employees (one Southwest flight attendant even rapped about its GAAP results).

Contrast all this with the article Sunday abut American Airlines and its “culture of corruption.”

They stowed drugs in secret panels inside planes; stole laptops, lobsters and fine clothing flown as freight; and rifled through passengers’ belongings for perfume, liquor and electronics.

Passenger losses in 2009 totaled 5.3 million dollars and for the last eight years American Airlines was the source of more reports than any other airline.

“What percent of American Airlines employees would you say engaged in this conduct?” a federal prosecutor, Patricia E. Notopoulos, asked Matthew James, a defendant in the case who pleaded guilty and testified for the prosecution. “About 80 percent,” Mr. James answered.

Of course, management claims it’s just a few bad apples.

Over the years I’ve read about and listened to hundreds of reasons why creating a culture that keeps employees happy just can’t be a priority— productivity and profit are the top priorities.

Obviously, they haven’t found the correlation, in spite of the high-profile examples that abound.

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A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

People never cease to amaze me even though I know that what you see isn’t always what you get.

“Pete” is a great example of that.

Pete is an entrepreneur and a friend of mine works for his company.

My friend raves about the great culture. He says it is merit-based, treats everyone fairly and has very little of the politics and favoritism he has seen at other companies. He likes the values and Pete’s attitude to giving back to the community.

The company isn’t new, but it is still private, so when my friend heard that Pete was thinking of issuing stock he sent a link to Option Sanity and introduced me.

Long story short, we had an extensive conversation; Pete talked about his belief in the importance of fairness and merit and giving back and I explained how Option Sanity™ would strengthen his culture and work to ensure the fairness that seemed so important to him.

And because Pete was so emphatic about the importance of giving back I told him about 1% of Nothing, started by Shervin Pishevar and Matt Galligan, with the goal of getting startups to donate 1% of their equity to a charity of their choice.

Pete ended our conversation saying he wanted to think about it and work with the Option Sanity demo.

I just received an email and I thought it ironic that it came on Thanksgiving.

Although he dressed up his response in complimentary language, the upshot of what he said was that both Option Sanity™ and 1% of Nothing were naïve ideas.

He said that he wanted to have complete freedom when awarding incentive stock as opposed to committing to a methodology, even though he structured it. Some employees were relatives or good friends and he wanted the ability to give them more. He wasn’t worried about performance, because he could always rescind the grant or fire them.

With regards to 1% of Nothing, although he planned to give to some of the proceeds of an eventual sale to charity there was a good chance that certain products in development would substantially increase the value of the company.

He had a specific dollar amount in mind for charity and saw no reason to possibly exceed that by giving the 1%.

I was totally floored.

Option Sanity™ is authentic

Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock process.  It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning.

Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.” Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

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With all the research and resulting proof, much of it expressed in dollars, why is it so difficult for companies to execute good cultures?

There is no lack of advice and how-to help available and in a variety of ways, from consultants to books, blogs to videos.

Real-world facts show that good culture is still elusive; one of those ‘should’ actions that are frequently talked about, but often not done.

You create the culture in which those subordinate to you work, no matter your level of management, from team leader to CEO,

CEOs set overall company culture, while subordinates then create, intentionally or not, their own culture that either copies it, is synergistic to it or diametrically opposed to it.

The only guarantee is that whatever culture emerges will accurately reflect its creator’s thoughts, values, beliefs—in other words, MAP.

And therein lies the reason and the problem.

All the cultural intelligence focuses on good culture, with touchstones such as fairness, trust, authenticity, merit, etc.

If those attributes aren’t the bedrock of your own MAP then it’s impossible to implement a culture that embraces them.

So if you are looking to change a non-performing culture or improve a mediocre one, be sure to look deep inside yourself first to know what is possible and what won’t stick unless you change first.

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I am a major fan of HBS professor Jim Heskett; I like his thinking and especially like the questions he poses and the responses they draw.

In 1992 Heskett questioned the impact corporate culture had on success, but in his new book, The Culture Cycle: How to Shape the Unseen Force that Transforms Performance he identifies the missing connective link and talks about it here.

But they ultimately found that what really distinguished good and bad performers was the adaptability of cultures. They concluded that organizations need both strong and adaptable cultures to survive over long periods of time.

Not to minimize Heskett’s research, but from where I sit it seems so obvious.

All living things, especially humans, find ways to adapt to their particular situation; they have to or they won’t survive.

Corporate culture is also a living entity and the desire to preserve it by rejecting change is akin to encasing an insect in amber.

Corporate culture must adapt quickly to global, economic and political happenings or it will die.

All that said, it’s great that someone such as Jim Heskett, who has real clout and academic rigor, has proven it.

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After all that’s been written and discussed it shouldn’t surprise you to know that most people crave a positive corporate culture and an open-door policy, but would it surprise you that this desire isn’t a product of the US or even the industrialized west?

Yesterday I mentioned I would share a universal truth from an unlikely source.

A positive corporate culture (40% of respondents) and an open-door policy (100%) are the two key elements of an ideal workplace, according to a recent region-wide human resource (HR) survey conducted by IIR Middle East.

Employee engagement and transparency were also found to be essential to enhanced employee performance within an organizational culture.

One of the reasons I find this so intriguing is not so much the desires themselves, but the local in which they are found.

Granted, my knowledge of the Middle East is limited, but the prevailing customs and culture don’t seem particularly conducive to the development of that kind of MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) in management

(And this has nothing to do with an Islamic vs. Judeo-Christian sub-text.)

Workers all seem to want the same thing, whether in the Mid-East, North and South America, Europe, Russia, India or Asia.

Of course, the surface results of implementing those desires might look different, but the basic cravings that drive them are the same, as is the main stumbling block—management.

Changes in transparency, door policy, not killing the messenger, etc. require changes in managers’ MAP and those changes can not be ordered or implemented from the outside in.

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A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Do clichés annoy you? There’s a good reason some of the tired, old clichés stay around—namely, they work. They say what needs to be said in a way that isn’t left open to interpretation, like ‘walk your talk’ as opposed to ‘authenticity’.

I was reminded of this after listening recently to an entrepreneur.

Here are the salient points of the conversation,

• he had built a culture based on fairness, trust and authenticity;
• he worked hard to hire the smartest people available;
• salary and stock options were based on necessity, i.e., he did what he had to do to land the best candidates.

I asked him what would happen when people learned of the discrepancies between their package and a peer’s; that the approach seemed to fly in the face of his “fairness, trust and authenticity” statements.

He replied that

• people trusted him to do what was best for the company;
• he was fair to each person based on their individual expectations;
• any effort to implement a uniform compensation (salary and/or stock) policy would hobble his ability to hire stars; and
• it was a non-event because nobody knew anyone else’s package.

I have to admit, the naiveté of his final point cracked me up (I managed to control my hilarity).

Basically, he seems to believe that fairness, trust and authenticity have flexible meanings and that expediency trumps them all.

What do you believe?

Option Sanity™ ensures stock grants walk your talk.

Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock process.  It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning.

Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.” Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

Image credit: kevinspencer

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Company cultures are much like the people who create them, unique on the outside, but similar basics on the inside—good like good or bad like bad. It’s how those basics manifest themselves that the world calls culture.

First up from Forbes is a quick overview of the basics; it’s a long way from comprehensive, but it’s a place to start.

There’s a lot of talk these days about how Millennials are demanding/driving change in corporate culture, but when you look at what they want it’s similar to what most people want. The difference is found more in their attitude—as it is in all generations.

Creating culture is an inside out function—what is inside the boss will form the foundation of what is inside the culture—for better or worse—so know the culture and you know the boss and vice versa.

• Pamela Fields, CEO, Stetson
• Lars Björk, CEO, QlikTech and the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year national winner in the technology category.
• Amanda Lannert, CEO, Jellyvision Lab; Kevin Willer, co-founder, Google’s Chicago office; and Ed Scanlan, founder/CEO, Total Attorneys.

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