Delivering Happiness

Cultivating the Culture Book by Jenn
If you had to describe your company’s culture in two or three
paragraphs, what would you say? If you asked your co-workers to do
the same, how similar (or different) do you think their answers would
be?
When Tony first talked to me about creating a culture book, my
interest was piqued. It was such an unusual idea—one that no one
had ever done in quite the same way. What Tony was contemplating
was counterintuitive and somewhat risky.
At the young age of five, Zappos had just begun focusing its
attention on brand and culture. The 10 Core Values weren’t fully
established yet, but a culture book seemed like a powerful way to
focus the company on the core values—because all of the content
would come from the source of those values, the people who worked
at Zappos.
The original idea was simple. We would ask employees to write,
in a few paragraphs, the answer to the question: What does Zappos

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culture mean to you? Except for correcting typos, we would leave it
unedited and publish everything in a book.
Completely unedited? That’s crazy!
A few seconds (and probably a vodka shot or two) later… Yeah,
let’s do it!
For Zappos, it was a risk worth taking. If the company was truly
going to stand behind its culture and core values, there couldn’t be a
better way to see if Zappos was doing it right.
What began as an off the cuff idea five years ago has now
become something bigger. It started as a medium where employees
could freely express themselves, and a way everyone could get a
pulse of where the company’s culture and core values stood. Over
time, we asked vendors, partners and customers to contribute their
perspectives too.
Today, it’s become a book of reference for anyone remotely
interested in Zappos, be it as a job applicant, a small business owner,
or a future entrepreneur. Above all, because the company believes
culture is an essential part of its business, it has become the brand
book.
Over the years, I’ve always seen Zappos put its money where it
matters most (even when it was incredibly scary), and the Culture
Book is a great example of that. I can’t think of a company that both
talked and walked the same line as consistently as Zappos, taking
risks on ideas before they were proven, before it was a billion-dollar
company.
In an age of transparency, when Twitter can contribute to a
company’s success or its downfall, is there anything more
compelling than exposing your company’s DNA to the world?
Because of this, people wonder whether creating a culture book
makes sense for their organization. If you’ve thought about it too,
here are a few things worth considering: