Delivering Happiness: The Key to a Great Company Culture

In Memory of Tony Hsieh

By: Scott Pansky

In 2010, Zappos founder Tony Hsieh published “Delivering Happiness.” I was given the book at an MDC event in New York, and I brought it home and sat on it for a few months. One weekend afternoon, I picked it up and noticed 10 reasons why to read the book. The 10th caught my eye: “If you don’t like this book, you can use it as firewood.”

That made me smile, and I read through Tony’s tome in about three hours.

To this day, it remains one of my favorite culture books. Tony was able to clearly articulate the importance of core values and truly living and bringing them to life. I later reached out to him, as if I were the only one to read his book. Several of his team members followed up. Allison+Partners was about to celebrate its 10th anniversary, and with our fast growth came cultural challenges. We had to get back to our roots.

One of the most important things Tony recognized was how important it was for everyone at Zappos to embrace their core values:

1. Deliver WOW through service
2. Embrace and drive change
3. Create fun and a little weirdness
4. Be adventurous, creative and open-minded
5. Pursue growth and learning
6. Build open and honest relationships with communication
7. Build a positive team and family spirit
8. Do more with less
9. Be passionate and determined
10. Be humble

Tony had trained his team well. And, I had the opportunity to meet with one of his Delivering Happiness  team members, Robbie Richman.

After a great tour of Zappos, Robbie and I sat down and began discussing different ways to address and build culture. He asked me numerous “why” questions about our agency’s growth, client retention and acquisition, and retaining and hiring great talent. If we could positively see the agency come together and grow, I would be fulfilled. According to Robbie, if Tony saw that success, he would be “happy.”

Then, Robbie asked me what I would do next. I told him that we would regroup, revisit and focus on our core values. As agency founders, we discussed hosting a retreat – an Allison University – with our junior staff. We began re-building our culture with a bottom-up approach. We bought everyone in the agency a copy of “Delivering Happiness” and made it mandatory reading to give us a foundation to start our new journey.

We looked at and better defined our core values:

1. Be Enthusiastic
2. Nurture a collaborative environment
3. Exceed expectations
4. Be an entrepreneur
5. Empower others

Tony’s “Delivering Happiness” became a lightning rod to reignite and focus us on our core values. Ten years later, the agency has grown more than five times its size with more than 30 offices around the globe, nearly 500 people, and some of the biggest brands and coolest startups around the globe.

Tony’s spirit lives on through people like Robbie and Jenn Lim at Deliveringhappiness.com. Tony made a big difference in thousands of people’s lives at Zappos, but he also helped many others enhance their companies.

RIP Tony.

Scott Pansky is a co-founder of the agency and leads Allison+Partners’ Social Impact group. Scott has extensive experience providing communications and crisis counsel to education, corporate and nonprofit organizations.

Categories: Consumer BrandsCorporate