Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010
I just finished reading Tony Hsieh’s new book, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose. After seeing Tony and the Zappos team on CBS Sunday Morning a few weeks ago, I knew I had to read this book. The philosophies presented on the show were too in-line with my own philosophies and those we practice at Broad Ripple Animal Clinic and Wellness Center to miss the opportunity.
The book actually seems like three smaller books, in one. The first part of the book is a look back at Tony’s childhood and early adulthood and how he came to be the CEO of Zappos.com, Inc. It’s a very lively and interesting collection of stories that helped me connect with Tony’s sense of entrepreneurship.
To me, the real meat of the book can be found in the second part, which is Tony’s take on best business practices and truly cultivating the culture of your business, which I’ve written about here before. I felt I was reading a book about Broad Ripple Animal Clinic and Wellness Center, as I read through this section! I came away with a lot of validation for the way we do things, but I also found some great gems I was able to implement right away with our team:
- Culture Book: Zappos created a book about the culture of their workplace based on contributions from the entire team of employees. This book is given to every employee and new hire. I also believe it is revised each year. We went right to work in creating our BRAC Culture Book after reading this section.
- Core Values: Zappos has defined 10 core values for their employees to follow and use as a guide in their day-to-day decision-making and workday flow. We posted these 10 core values in a staff meeting and read through them. We felt we were describing our team! After some discussion, and “tweaking”, we developed our own Core Values, inspired by Zappos!
The third part of the book addresses Tony’s reason for writing this book to begin with: to inspire happiness and inspiration in work and in life. I highly recommend this to anyone who wants to improve the quality of the culture within their veterinary practice. You will find inspiration, which will lead to happiness.
