There’s nothing inherently wrong with the list, the concepts are good, but there is a lot wrong with the accompanying commentary starting with the adjectives.
According to the article bosses who don’t embrace these eight in the way described are average bosses.
More accurately, the descriptions of the actions and attitudes attributed to the “average boss” belong, by and large, to the toxic boss category.
Based on the categories Jobs is average, by the descriptions he’s toxic.
Tony Hsieh comes to mind as fitting the description of ‘extraordinary’, although I doubt you would hear him describe himself that way.
Apple and Zappos are both highly successful.
The take-away is nothing is black and white; things that look great at first glance need to be thought through before you embrace them.
Option Sanity™ helps think things through.
Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock allocation system. 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.
Part of the allure of starting a company is the idea of being your own boss and creating the kind of place in which you always wanted to work.
That’s what drives Tony Hsieh and thousands of others.
The problem is that in order to accomplish that goal you will have to go far beyond your comfort zone; much further, in fact, than you would working for someone else.
I just started working with “Tomas,” a new founder, and during our first conversation he described himself as an introvert who preferred not to respond to questions or comment until he had time to process the conversation/information.
OK, it’s frustrating and makes conversations very one-way, but I bided my time to see what the impact would be.
It didn’t take long to find out.
First, I sent an introduction to “Bill” who was willing to share expertise that Tomas badly needed; Bill responded immediately, asking when Tomas was available, but Tomas didn’t write back.
The next day Bill went ahead and called, although he hadn’t heard back. His feedback to me was that it was a non-conversation and he thought he might even have offended Tomas in some way.
None of this made sense to me. I had spoken to Tomas the evening of the day he got Bill’s response and he said he would respond to is as soon as our call ended.
We talked again yesterday. When I asked why he hadn’t sent the email when he said he would he said that he hadn’t had time to “craft the email.”
There was more and after hearing him out I told him the problem (as I saw it) was that along with being an introvert he is a perfectionist and doesn’t want to make a move until he is sure he is right. He also prefers to proceed linearly.
Tomas’ response? He said I knew him well.
I told Tomas that as an entrepreneur he will have to get out of his comfort zone.
He will not always have the luxury of a day or more to process conversations or craft perfect emails.
He needs to practice thinking and responding on the fly—especially on the small stuff.
I said that he will make mistakes and that’s OK; they can be corrected.
Tomas’ vision is brilliant; it solves a problem faced by millions and holds the promise of making their lives better.
I will do everything I can to help Tomas succeed, but only he can choose to leave his comfort zone.
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.
What is innovation? Is it really embodied in a good deal playing Farmville on Facebook for hours? I found an excellent definition of innovation in a fascinating article about Bell Labs and Mervin Kelly, who, over the course of 34 years, worked his way up from researcher to chairman of the board (something few people today would consider doing—assuming they could even find a company in which to do it).
By one definition, innovation is an important new product or process, deployed on a large scale and having a significant impact on society and the economy, that can do a job (as Mr. Kelly once put it) “better, or cheaper, or both.”
“On a winter day the ball is cold, which makes the rubber harder, the air in the ball denser, so the ball doesn’t really expand and contract off the bounce,” said Ruben Acosta, 32, a hotel concierge who is known on the court as Superstar. “Boiling the balls gives them back their zing.”
While not all innovation makes money they do make waves. When large-scale corruption is uncovered it receives plenty media coverage, but how to address the endemic petty corruption that millions of people face around the world is a tougher question. In 2010 Swati and Ramesh Ramanathan and Sridar Iyengar started ipaidabribe.com, a site that collects anonymous reports of bribes paid, bribes requested but not paid and requests that were expected but not forthcoming.
Now, similar sites are spreading like kudzu around the globe, vexing petty bureaucrats the world over. Ms. Ramanathan said nongovernmental organizations and government agencies from at least 17 countries had contacted Janaagraha, the nonprofit organization in Bangalore that operates I Paid a Bribe, to ask about obtaining the source code and setting up a site of their own.
On a totally different scale is Tony Hsieh, whose dream is to fix the world by fixing cities, starting with Las Vegas, not as dictator, but as facilitator. According to his friend Sarah Nisperos, “But he wanted all these things based on happiness and merit and how nice you are. I said you shouldn’t build a strip mall, you should be downtown.”
Hsieh’s working through Downtown Project, a company he created with $350 million to spend, to seed technology startups, invest in education and attempt to build a walkable, vibrant downtown.
“You can’t dictate what the neighborhood is going to look like. But you can definitely help support and accelerate people’s dreams and visions,” Hsieh says. “That is really our belief as to what drives our culture. It needs to be organic.”
But never before has it built a citywide system integrating data from some 30 agencies, all under a single roof. It is the handiwork of an I.B.M. unit called Smarter Cities…
Innovation often borrows from the existent to create something new; that process is especially thrilling when something relatively frivolous is used to make something with the potential to truly change the world. Such is what is happening as MMOG expands to MMOC. This is one link to share with everyone you know.
Welcome to the brave new world of Massive Open Online Courses — known as MOOCs — a tool for democratizing higher education.
As I said then, the thing that sets Hsieh apart is security.
Hsieh is comfortable in his own skin; secure in his own competency and limitations, so he doesn’t need to be the font from which all else flows.
Entrepreneurs can learn from this.
Startup hiring usually comes in waves as the company progresses.
While most founders will listen to their initial team and first few hires, those hired later often find it difficult to get their ideas heard.
Unfortunately, this behavior often sets a pattern, with the ideas and comments of each successive wave becoming fainter and fainter and those employees less and less engaged—and that translates to them caring less and less about your company’s success—call it wave deafness.
Wave deafness is costly.
Costly in productivity and passion, but even more costly in lost opportunities.
As Hsieh points out, there is no way he can think of as many good ideas as are produced if each employee has just one good idea in a year.
And not just from certain positions. I never heard of a manager, let alone a founder, admit to hiring dummies for any position, no matter the level.
So if you hire smart people and don’t listen to them, who is the dummy?
Option Sanity™ rewards creativity.
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.
It’s not often that I unequivocally recommend a book, but Richard Branson’s Screw Business As Usual meets all my criteria.
It’s not a do-gooder book, per se, although Branson is passionate about “doing good by doing right.”
I realize that his take on entrepreneurism will fall on deaf ears for anybody who starts a company with the prime motivation of getting rich, but even they might reconsider after reading it—Branson started Virgin so he could afford to make a difference.
And there is prime proof that doing right pays.
“Companies that consistently manage and measure their responsible business activities outperformed their FTSE 350* peers on total shareholder return in seven out of the last eight years.”
Branson believes that the right focus is your employees and your customers; take care of them and the rest will follow.
The people, stories and advice in Screw Business As Usual are about, and dedicated to, entrepreneurs, business people and anybody else who believe that there is more to work and business in the 21st century than making money.
What worked in the past isn’t going to work in the future, from top-down, command and control management to companies whose policies destroy people, resources, etc., in the name of profit.
The doing-good-by-doing-right bandwagon is picking up steam, fueled by a vocal new generation that is disgusted with business as usual and older generations (maybe not as noisy) with the same feelings who are learning to vote with their feet—as US banks so recently found out.
Business needs to recognize that if they want to keep making money they need to do it responsibly—assuming, of course, they need both workers and customers to succeed.
In other words, screw business as usual.
*FTSE 350 is the British version of the Fortune 500.
Entrepreneurs: Screw Business As Usual (book review)
I rarely read book that I unequivocally recommend, but Screw Business As Usual meets my criteria.
It’s not a do-gooder book, per se, although Branson is passionate about “doing good by doing right.”
I realize that his take on entrepreneurism will fall on deaf ears for anybody who starts a company with the prime motivation of getting rich, but even they might reconsider after reading it.
And there is prime proof that doing right pays.
“Companies that consistently manage and measure their responsible business activities outperformed their FTSE 350* peers on total shareholder return in seven out of the last eight years.”
Branson believes that the right focus is your employees and your customers; take care of them and the rest will follow.
The people, stories and advice in Screw Business As Usual are about, and dedicated to, entrepreneurs, business people and anybody else who believe that there is more to work and business in the 21st century than making money.
What worked in the past isn’t going to work in the future, from top-down, command and control management to companies whose policies destroy people, resources, etc., in the name of profit.
The doing-good-by-doing-right bandwagon is picking up steam, fueled by a vocal new generation that is disgusted with business as usual and older generations (maybe not as noisy) with the same feelings who vote with their feet as US banks so recently found out.
Business needs to recognize that if they want to keep making money they need to do it responsibly—assuming, of course, they need both workers and customers to succeed.
*FTSE 350 is the British version of the Fortune 500.
People tend to take their role models whole; kind of an all or nothing approach, which isn’t a very smart approach. A few weeks ago I wrote that in some ways Steve Jobs isn’t the greatest role model. Take a look at some others better taken piecemeal or even not at all.
Graham B. Spanier did an amazing job growing Penn State into a powerhouse, but threw up defenses at the first hint of criticism. Says close-to-retiring anthropology professor E. Paul Durrenberger, “If you’re always focused on promoting the brand and there’s no scrutiny, that leads to covering up.”
On the surface Eric Lefkofsky, co-founder and chairman of Groupon, may look like a great role model, but due diligence is as important when assessing role models as investments.
Lefkofsky’s track record, reflecting failures and successes, bears certain hallmarks: rapid revenue growth accompanied by big losses, a penchant to sell stock early on, and lawsuits filed by investors, lenders or customers who feel they have been wronged. … Lefkofsky and his family have already cashed out $382 million from Groupon before the IPO filing.
Successful founders are considered excellent role models, but is there a down side when they stay?
Visionaries are fantastic, but their companies are often notoriously hard to run. Sometimes, these leaders cling to dated visions and stifle innovation. And sometimes, they simply won’t get out of the way. Promising executives with new ideas get fed up and leave.
Many entrepreneurs are known for the size of their egos and none more so than those from Russia, but not all of them buy a sports team, larger yacht or another home. Several years ago Vladimir Kekhman, who made millions in bananas and other fruit, left his company to focus on the local ballet company; he just pulled off another “first” by pirating two premier dancers from the Bolshoi.
And Mr. Kekhman, at age 43, recently gave up all of his day-to-day responsibilities as a major owner of Russia’s biggest fruit company to focus on the Mikhailovsky. “I have a new profession right now,” he said. “And this profession has brought a new life to me.”
Finally, good health role models lurking in a place you would never expect to find any—long-haul truckers.
“I’m being stupid if I don’t lose the weight,” she said, “because I’ll lose my job.” — Jill Garcia, 50, a driver from San Antonio
Bosses; today we’re going to start with the very negative and move forward to the very positive. Have you (or someone you know) ever worked for a boss who you thought was nuts? You might be surprised at how accurate that “diagnosis” actually is.
One out of every 25 company high-flyers is believed to have the mental disorder but disguises it through their high status, charm and manipulation in the workplace.
Speaking of nuts, have you ever read a story where you couldn’t figure out which boss qualified as such?
A businessman at the centre of a £10 million High Court battle involving claims of drunkenness and lewd behavior among senior staff at Microsoft in Britain is the victim of a “boardroom ambush”, according to friends.
What comes between very, very bad and very, very good? It depends on who you ask.
And that brings us to Carol Bartz, who was fired by phone to avoid rumors, AKA board leaks. More interesting is the difference between the email to employees sent by the Board and Bartz’s blunt, honest comments in an exclusive interview; blunt in spite of probably costing her as much as $10 million for violating a non-disparagement clause.
Fortune today published an explosive interview with Carol Bartz, who on Tuesday was fired as Yahoo CEO after 32 months on the job. In it, she referred to her fellow board members as “doofuses,” and said that they “f—ed me over.”
Has he been lucky? “Extraordinarily,” he says. It couldn’t have happened without “planetary alignment,” he explains. But luck isn’t all. Bezos’s success also springs from his ideas about running companies and creating innovation. His thinking is farsighted and intuitive. … “It’s one thing to be a data junkie who just looks at history, but Jeff takes a prospective view. He takes risks and he changes and changes.”
Yammer started in 2008 and now has 100,000 companies and organizations, including over 80 percent of the Fortune 500, as customers.
But that isn’t why I’m writing about it.
I read an interview with David Sacks, Yammer’s founder, chairman and C.E.O. Of course, the interview started asking all the standard ‘leadership’ questions, but Sacks responses were all about culture. (Fantastic information, I hope you take time to read it.)
“You’ve really got to create a company culture that people want to work at. And so you try to give them a voice, give them a sense that they influence the direction of the company, and try to avoid unnecessary process and hierarchy — things that might frustrate employees. … I think you’ve got to create a culture in which dissent is valued.”
Sacks’ responses forced (my interpretation) the interviewer to focus on Yammer’s culture as opposed to Sacks and his ‘leadership’.
I find these interviewers interesting. They seem always to focus on the person, looking for the accepted responses and attitudes towards ‘leadership’ and comments that have ‘I’ in multiple places.
When the responses don’t fit that profile the interviewers seem a bit incredulous—or maybe it’s just me and my own prejudice on the leadership thing.
Watch this interview with Tony Hsieh (sorry, the Washington Post doesn’t provide embed code), but keep your eyes on the interviewer as you listen to the questions and responses, especially at 4:09, when Hsieh says, “I think of myself less as of a leader and maybe more of a protector.”
Check out the interviewer’s facial expressions and then tell me if it’s my imagination or does he register surprise tinged with disbelief.
Although his admirers credit Mr. Hsieh with having created a unique (and unified) culture at Zappos, others point out that what he is doing is actually simple, and perhaps not so original.
I’d like to know who those ‘others’ are.
The best things usually are simple, have often been done before and I don’t think Hsieh has ever claimed his ideas and approach were new—but his execution is.
His approach is simple: happy employees make for happy customers; happy customers spend lots of money and return often.
Of course, if it’s so simple why don’t all CEOs and other bosses run their own organizations that way? Why do they pay $4000 to learn from him? Because the proof is in the Zappos pudding.
I’ll bet that Jack Welch never cared if the people who worked at GE were happy as long as they made their numbers—in fact, I’ll guarantee that no imperial CEO gave or gives a damn; nor do similarly minded managers at other levels.
Hsieh is more proof that great CEOs aren’t necessarily extroverts; don’t seek or require the limelight; nor do they actually fit all those profiles you read.
Rarely do articles focus as much on Hsieh the person as this one does. In terms of analyzing what makes Tony tick, and why others have so much trouble implementing and sustaining his simple approach, this bit of insight seems to say it all.
Then he quietly slipped out from the party. Employees talked affectionately about him after he had gone. “Sometimes I look at him, and I say, ‘He is such a dork,’ ” said Lauren Glassman, a buyer in the action sports clothing division, downing a goblet of beer. “But at the end of the day, we are all dorks.”
Want more on introverted bosses? Check out this post by Douglas R. Conant, President and CEO of Campbell Soup.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Why is it that so many who offer good professional commentary ruin it by presenting it as black and white?
Part of the allure of starting a company is the idea of being your own boss and creating the kind of place in which you always wanted to work.
Tony Hsieh has a dream to 
What is innovation? Is it really embodied in a good deal playing Farmville on Facebook for hours? I found an excellent 
