“Pursuit of Perfect” by Tal Ben-Shahar, the famous professor of the even more famous Harvard university that taught the largest course at Harvard on “Positive Psychology” and the third largest on “The Psychology of Leadership”—with a total of over 1,400 students. In this book Ben-Shahar explains how perfectionsim might prevent you to be happy in your work as well as private life and how sliding from perfectionism to optimalism might bring you happiness and success.
“Delivering happiness” from Tony Hsieh, the CEO and co-founder of Zappos, the first online shoe store in the world, recently purchased by Amazon for about a billion Euro, is providing probably the best example of a new way to manage a company. First define your values, create the right culture and the rest will follow.
As an example, here are the 10 Zappos familly values:
Deliver WOW Through Service
Embrace and Drive Change
Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
Pursue Growth and Learning
Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
Do More With Less
Be Passionate and Determined
Be Humble
One of the result of this approach is likely the quality of Zappos customer service. Do you know a lot of companies where you can return your purchased good within a year (the Wow effect) but also one where the customer support agent will send you flowers and a card, on the company’s name after you called to ask for the refund of your recently deceased husband Shoes? Happy customers through happy employees, that is very likely the best marketing you might ever have.
You probably already know the famous book of Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson, the founder of 37Signal, the small company that generate 150 millions$ of benefit with 15 persons in their staff. If it is not the case yet, go get it now or at least visit their website (http://37signals.com/rework). The book is easy and quick to read and might change your ideas on how to do the things right in your company.