Book SummaryDelivering Happiness, by Tony Hsieh

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Delivering Happiness

According to Tony Hsieh, the former CEO of online clothing retailer Zappos, happiness is good for business. Happy employees work harder and more efficiently, and happy customers spend more money.

So how can you make your customers and employees happier and maximize profits? In Delivering Happiness, Hsieh says the answer lies in implementing three principles: Encourage a healthy business culture, provide great customer service, and invest in continuing education. In this guide, we’ll explore these three guiding principles that made Zappos a successful company.

Foster a Healthy Culture

While Hsieh never provides a concrete definition of company culture, we’ve used his discussions on culture to define it as follows: Culture is the standard behaviors and beliefs that employees maintain both in business settings and in their personal lives.

For example, many companies nurture the cultural belief that customer satisfaction is a priority and encourage employees to behave respectfully toward colleagues and customers. These behaviors eventually become cultural workplace habits, and employees start applying them in their personal lives as well, considering other people’s needs before their own and treating everyone respectfully.

It’s important to have a culture that reflects your business’s mission so that your employees will habitually behave appropriately to advance that mission. For example, Google’s mission is to make information universally accessible. Behaviors and beliefs that fit this mission include encouraging curiosity and valuing transparency. Employees with these traits will approach their jobs with open minds and determination to innovate and improve information accessibility, advancing Google’s mission. However, if Google’s culture didn’t reflect its mission, instead prioritizing profit over customer satisfaction or accessibility, employees might suggest and implement policies counter to the mission (such as putting information behind paywalls).

Company Culture’s Disputed Definition

Most people agree that corporate culture involves the behavior of a company’s employees, their beliefs, or as Hsieh argues, both. Those who prioritize behavior say it doesn't matter what employees believe as long as they behave in a way that supports the company’s mission. Those who emphasize belief argue that it doesn’t matter what specific behaviors employees engage in: As long as they believe in the company’s mission, they’ll act in accordance with that mission.

Hsieh’s definition is the most comprehensive, including both behavior and belief as important factors in achieving a company’s mission. This is fitting given that people are composed of both their beliefs and behaviors, and the two are interlinked: for instance, certain beliefs encourage certain behaviors. Thus, aiming to influence just one of these factors through company culture is arguably reductive.

The Importance of Protecting a Healthy Culture

According to Hsieh, a company's culture grows organically from its employees. As such, you must hire people who improve and uphold the desired culture. Employees who don’t uphold the company's culture can change or damage that culture.

Hsieh says most businesses encounter this problem because they hire employees that’ll bring them high profits without considering how these employees will impact the company’s culture. Most of these employees only focus on making money, rather than supporting their coworkers and the company. This influx of money-focused employees degrades the culture from a supportive, enjoyable environment to a miserable one.

(Shortform note: Companies that focus too much on profits rather than developing a healthy culture develop "toxic cultures” that push employees to meet impossible standards of profit and efficiency. To meet these standards, employees take shortcuts and illegal actions, such as lying on balance sheets to make the company seem more profitable than it really is, thus making the culture even more toxic. When these illegal actions are exposed, the company usually blames individual employees instead of the culture. They distance themselves from the issue to save face and refuse to acknowledge the larger, systemic problems: the lack of support and toxic culture that inspired the employees’ actions.)

How to Assess and Nurture a Healthy Culture

If culture grows naturally, as Hsieh maintains, how can you assess what your culture currently is? Hsieh suggests asking your employees. Because everyone involved in a company influences its culture, gaining every perspective on that culture is important.

(Shortform note: While Hsieh says it’s important to gain every employee’s perspective on culture, he doesn’t say how to ask all employees for this feedback. Some HR experts argue that surveys are the most effective method of gaining employee feedback. Use comprehensive yearly surveys and short weekly or monthly surveys to gain perspective on your entire company’s culture. Yearly surveys let you track large-scale problems, and shorter, more frequent surveys let you track smaller issues and catch problems before they...

Delivering Happiness Summary Shortform Introduction

Happiness is good for business, Tony Hsieh, the former CEO of online clothing retailer Zappos, explains in Delivering Happiness. Happy employees work harder and more efficiently, and happy customers spend more money.

So how can you make your customers and employees happier? Delivering Happiness describes three important steps: Encourage a healthy business culture, provide great customer service, and invest in continuing education. Hsieh explores the theory behind each step before describing how he implemented them at Zappos. Hsieh also shares details from his own life, including additional lessons in business management that he learned through trial and error and later applied to Zappos.

About the Author

Tony Hsieh was an American entrepreneur and former Zappos CEO. Born in Urbana, Illinois in 1973, Hsieh expressed an interest in pursuing entrepreneurship at just nine years old, experimenting with small business ideas such as worm farming, selling buttons, and writing a newsletter. He attended Harvard University and graduated with a degree in computer science in 1995.

Shortly after graduating college, Hsieh founded LinkExchange, an internet-based advertisement...

Delivering Happiness Summary Part 1: Zappos’s Principles of Success | Chapter 1: Foster a Healthy Culture

According to Tony Hsieh, the former CEO of online clothing retailer Zappos, happiness is good for business. Happy employees work harder and more efficiently, and happy customers spend more money.

So how can you make your customers and employees happier to maximize profits? In Delivering Happiness, Hsieh says the answer lies in implementing three principles: Encourage a healthy business culture, provide great customer service, and invest in continuing education.

In Part 1 of this guide, we’ll cover these three guiding principles that made Zappos a successful company, beginning in this chapter with what company culture is and how to nurture it. In Part 2, we’ll explore the autobiographical elements of Delivering Happiness and how Hsieh’s personal experiences influenced his management of Zappos.

What Is Company Culture?

According to Hsieh, a healthy company culture is one of the most important elements of a successful business. While he never provides a concrete definition of company culture, we’ve used his discussions on culture to define it as follows: **Culture is the standard behaviors and beliefs that the employees of a company maintain both in business settings...

Delivering Happiness Summary Chapter 2: Zappos’s Culture

In Chapter 1, we examined what culture is and how to nurture it. In this chapter, we’ll cover how Zappos developed and nurtured its own culture.

Zappos sets itself apart from its competitors through a culture devoted to making its employees happy. Hsieh believes that by making its employees happy, Zappos will naturally fulfill its other objectives of great customer service and continued success.

(Shortform note: Both Zappos’s own success and other authors support Hsieh’s dedication to employee happiness. In The Infinite Game, Simon Sinek agrees that happier employees work harder and create better results: By prioritizing your employees over profits, you inspire them to care for the company in return. This means they will freely devote more time and effort to making the company successful.)

Zappos began nurturing its culture early in the company’s life. Shaping the culture at this stage was easy, Hsieh explains, because **Zappos had a small group of employees who joined...

Shortform Exercise: Nurture Your Company’s Culture

Hsieh says culture is made of the standard beliefs and behaviors that guide employee interactions. These behaviors can either help your company achieve its long-term goals, or damage its attempts to do so. Thus, nurturing your company’s good cultural qualities is a vital step to creating a successful business.

Describe your company’s long-term goal or mission. Why is that goal or mission important to you?

Delivering Happiness Summary Chapter 3: Provide Great Customer Service

Now that we've covered culture, we'll move on to the second vital component of a successful business: providing great customer service. According to Hsieh, great customer service is being so supportive and adaptable in every customer interaction that you have a positive emotional impact on the customer. This positive emotional impact is the first step toward forming a healthy and profitable long-term relationship with that customer.

(Shortform note: Hsieh sees a positive emotional impact as the root of good customer service, but how do you generate this positive response? It doesn’t necessarily mean going beyond your customer’s expectations with free perks and bonuses: Studies show that most customers are happier with simple, quick solutions to their problems. Prioritize problem-solving before worrying about dazzling your customers.)

In this chapter, we’ll explore the ways good customer service can make your business successful. We’ll also look at how Zappos used good customer service to become a billion-dollar...

Delivering Happiness Summary Chapter 4: Invest in Continuing Education

The final important element of a successful business is continuing employee education: in other words, constantly providing your employees with training and learning opportunities. This training shouldn’t only apply to the skills the employee was hired for, Hsieh adds. Rather, employees should learn about a variety of different skills and areas of knowledge so they can more easily innovate and adapt to new situations.

In this chapter, we’ll explore the importance of continuing education and how Hsieh introduced it at Zappos.

Why Is Continuing Education Important?

As discussed, Zappos makes it a top priority to keep its employees happy. Hsieh states that employees are happier and more willing to work when they’re learning and improving themselves, so helping employees do so is an important part of fulfilling this goal.

(Shortform note: How does learning make you happy? Raph Koster explains in A Theory of Fun For Game Design that [“fun” is a burst of [restricted term] you receive when learning something new or mastering a...

Delivering Happiness Summary Part 2: Hsieh’s Principles of Success | Chapter 5: Hsieh’s Life Lessons

Now that we’ve covered the three main principles that led to Zappos’s success, we’ll examine the general life lessons Hsieh learned and applied to his work at Zappos.

Hsieh says he expressed an interest in pursuing entrepreneurship at just nine years old. While his parents expected him to become a doctor, he wanted to make his own choices and direct his own life. He believed directing his own life would make him happy, and that to direct his own life he needed to make money. Thus, Hsieh experimented with various business ventures throughout his childhood and young adulthood.

(Shortform note: Directing your life is important for your overall happiness, as Hsieh believed as a child. However, having money isn’t necessarily the key to doing so. Rather than focusing on money, picture the best, happiest version of yourself and plan how to attain that goal. One of the steps to becoming your ideal self may be to improve your financial situation. However, that shouldn’t be your only goal, because it’ll only give you a temporary boost in happiness. The happiness from growing as a person and using your skills to...

Shortform Exercise: Learn From Your Mistakes

Hsieh learned business management through trial and error. Instead of giving up, he learned from his mistakes and gradually improved his business sense. This determination let him develop his unique style of leadership that turned Zappos into a billion-dollar company.

Describe a mistake you made in the past, whether in managing a business or in your personal life. Be specific: What happened? How did the mistake affect you and your company? (For example, you may have lost an important opportunity because you rushed into a decision.)

Delivering Happiness Summary Chapter 6: Hsieh’s Theories of Happiness

Now that we’ve covered the main principles that led to Zappos’s success, as well as the life lessons Hsieh used to develop those principles, we’ll cover Hsieh’s final thoughts on happiness. As discussed throughout this guide, Hsieh believes that if you focus on happiness as your guiding principle, you’ll succeed in the business world. Happier employees work harder and happier customers become repeat shoppers. For this reason, the same theories that describe how to increase happiness in individuals can help companies succeed by showing them how to make their employees and customers happy.

In this chapter, we’ll examine three theories of happiness and how they relate to business.

Theory #1: Four Elements of Happiness

The first theory Hsieh covers posits that happiness revolves around four elements: control, progress, relationships, and purpose. If you optimize each of these elements, you’ll be happy. Let’s take a look at each element:

1. Control. According to Hsieh, people who feel in control of their lives are happier. At work, this translates to being able to make decisions about your tasks or schedule. Even making minor decisions about your work life gives...

Shortform Exercise: Use a Happiness Theory to Improve Your Company and Happiness

Hsieh believes encouraging happiness at your company leads to success. The three theories of happiness he presents look at happiness in different ways, but all of them have applications for both individuals and business owners. In this exercise, use the theories of happiness to help your company succeed and increase your personal happiness.

Which of Hsieh’s three theories of happiness is your favorite? Why?