Happiness as a Business Model

The Zappos Way of Managing, an article in the May issue of Inc. Magazine, describes how Zappos.com leader Tony Hsieh "uses relentless innovation, stellar customer service, and a staff of believers to make Zappos.coman e-commerce juggernaut - and one of the most blissed-out businesses in America."

The article attributes the online shoe store's success to Hsieh's obsession with customer and coworker happiness. Not satisfaction, or adherence to industry standards, or comfort or efficiency or economy, but personal, individual happiness. This man is a genius.

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Categories: Corporate Culture | Creativity | Customer Service | Leadership | Competitive Advantage

1 comments - Posted by Paul Orfalea at 11:39 PM

Don't Think Too Much

Each month, a woman who owns a little coffee shop allows local artists to hang their works in her business. It's a very busy café, so the artists get a lot of exposure. But every time a new artist is offered the space, he or she bombards the owner with a long list of questions and concerns about the hanging process. Eventually, she has to tell the anxious artist, "Just show up with your pictures and a hammer. We have ladders. If you don't think too much, it will all come together just fine."

"Analysis paralysis" hobbles giant corporations and sole proprietors alike, so I like the café owner's advice to not think too much. Instead, she wants people to think about the right things.  In a way, this fulfills management's primary responsibility to remove obstacles for coworkers. Thinking about the right things reduces distracting anxieties and lets her coworkers - and guest artists - think clearly and, more importantly, take immediate action.

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Categories: Corporate Culture | Creativity | Management Skills | Entrepreneurialism | Leadership

2 comments - Posted by Paul Orfalea at 12:46 PM

The Entrepreneurial Artist

by Dean Zatkowsky

In the April 12, 2009, issue of The Boston Globe, James Reed wrote that "a growing number of musicians are looking to fans, not record labels, to help fund their albums and tours."

I was already aware of this trend, because two of my favorite artists are in the vanguard. Fans funded Jill Sobule's new record, "California Years," while Amy Correia is currently soliciting support for a record she'll be recording this summer. Correia is using blogs, Facebook, Myspace, and email to communicate directly with her fans.

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Categories: Creativity | Entrepreneurialism | Leadership | Optimism

7 comments - Posted by Dean Zatkowsky at 6:53 PM

What's Your Story?

By Dean Zatkowsky

Storytelling shapes human culture; it is arguably the most human activity. If you want to know a people - or a person - learn their stories. In business, government, academia, art and religion, our greatest leaders have typically been our greatest storytellers. They simultaneously preserve a culture while inspiring listeners to discover something new within themselves. Societies - nations or companies or hobby clubs - disintegrate when they lose their stories.

Throughout history, we have cherished the keepers of stories, whether they carried them in buckskin medicine bags, printed them on ornate, gilded pages, or projected them on silver screens.

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Categories: Corporate Culture | Creativity | Education | Management Skills | Leadership

6 comments - Posted by Dean Zatkowsky at 2:01 PM

Dumb Time is Smart Time

Because of my business success, I'm privileged to receive frequent requests for advice. One of my recommendations - that people engage in some pure "dumb-time" every day - often draws incredulous stares from audiences. Fortunately, Scientific American recently published an article that explains how unstructured playtime improves our creativity and reduces stress.

While I've always believed that play benefits adults and children, The Serious Need for Play provides important news for hovering "helicopter" parents who over-schedule their children for fear of educational competition: "Relieving stress and building social skills may seem to be obvious benefits of play. But research hints at a third, more counterintuitive area of influence: play actually appears to make kids smarter."

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Categories: Corporate Culture | Creativity | Education | Leadership

2 comments - Posted by Paul Orfalea at 6:55 AM

One Secret to Better Concentration

By Dean Zatkowsky, coauthor, Two Billion Dollars in Nickels

Business meetings are almost universally hated for being lifeless, tiresome time-wasters, and at school, only the most dynamic teacher or professor can escape the "boring" label. For many of us, conference rooms and classrooms symbolize excruciating visits to purgatory, as we struggle to overcome feelings of distraction and boredom. But why is it so hard to sit still and concentrate?

We now know that contrary to what our parents, teachers and bosses have believed and taught for generations, concentration has little to do with sitting still. In fact, struggling to sit still presents a serious impediment to concentration for many people.

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Categories: Corporate Culture | Creativity | Education | Disabilities

1 comments - Posted by Dean Zatkowsky at 7:04 AM

NEW BOOK!

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Categories: Corporate Culture | Creativity | Customer Service | Education | Nutrition | Management Skills | Disabilities | Entrepreneurialism | Finance | Economics | Ethics | Competitive Advantage | Optimism

2 comments - Posted by Paul Orfalea at 9:13 AM