Apr

28

Few more thoughts on Zappos

Filed Under Culture, Customer Service, Innovation, Management | Comments

On the May cover of Inc. magazine right now is an article called “Why Everybody Loves Zappos“. If you are a blogger or just very active online, you have probably already been hearing a ton about Zappos and their CEO, Tony Hsieh. The main reason I enjoyed this article is because it gives us a more in-depth look into the company culture and Tony’s personality. You know a company is consistently innovating when you find yourself learning something new every time you read or watch something about it. Did you know that Zappos managers are required to spend 10-20% of their time messing around with the employees they manage?

To get an even better idea of what Zappos looks like on the inside without reading up or taking a tour of their headquarters in Las Vegas, take a look at their YouTube Channel (where most of the videos are employee generated). At the moment, I can’t think of any other company that is empowering employees to use social media in this way (like Twitter). I already knew about the employee parades, but who knew they had a head shaving day? I think there is obviously a lot to learn about this approach of running a fast growing company with such a high level of transparency and giving employees this much freedom.

I wonder if Tony predicted how much attention and consistently great PR Zappos would get for operating the way they do. Why is it that I have blogged about them not one, or two, but three times now? It’s well known that they hit $1 billion in revenue last year and only recently have they started to actually spend money on TV advertising.

Make sure to read the full Inc. article here. Also check out my other post Happy employees get their own book and Robert Scoble’s recent post summarizing his visit to the company’s headquarters.

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Oct

28

Incongruities in Business

Filed Under Books, Innovation | Comments

In Peter Drucker’s book “Innovation and Entrepreneurship”, Chapter 4 is dedicated to incongruities. He defines an incongruity as a discrepancy, a dissonance, between what is and what “ought” to be, or between what is and what everybody assumes it to be. In regards to business, an incongruity is a symptom of an opportunity to innovate.

In the book, he goes on to provide some good examples of incongruities in business and how they were resolved. He ends the Chapter by stating:

The incongruity within a process, its rhythm or its logic, is not a very subtle matter. Users (or customers) are always aware of it. What is lacking, however is someone willing to listen, somebody who takes it seriously what everyone proclaims: That the purpose of a product or a service is to satisfy the customer. If this axiom is accepted and acted upon, using incongruity as an opportunity for innovation becomes fairly easy-and highly effective.

The only limitation is most incongruities are identifiable to people only on the inside of a certain industry or service, and someone on the outside will not even be aware of it. It is up to an entrepreneur to identify it and take action in coming up with a solution to exploit the incongruity.

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