Simon Sinek talks culture with Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh

she's welcome to simon Sinek so uh Simon asked if you can make a cameo so you want to just get up here to do a little Q&A or I don't know we'll just talk and have fun right ahead up thank you okay so Simon just showed up what did you have another yeah event or something yeah answer speaking to accountants sounds fun they were lovely we had a week and then uh and so Simon said you would come by for a little bit and happy birthday everyone yeah twenty years old [Applause] I was made okay so yeah we celebrated last was it yeah it was last week and twenty years yeah we're now you've moved from thinking outside the box to thinking on the bubble yes when that went over about it my Joe what um what made you decide to come say hi well I love you guys I mean I mean it's always a joy every time I get to visit your office and I talk about you all the time and I brag about you guys and when I found out that I was gonna be here and you were doing this I called you up and said I want to come and so you can say you got me a seat so yeah so last last week we celebrated the result of I don't know if you saw the video there's all this confetti and and so on and then I it was super hot out and there was a 10 and most people in the tent couldn't hear what I was saying so but part of what I said was talking about over just reflecting over the last 20 years I think if I only learned two things I think the two most important things I learned over the last 20 years about what separates apples from other companies is number one most companies don't see their employees as more than just whatever job position and don't understand all the potential and talent that is like there right within their own organization and then the second thing I've learned is that most people actually don't even recognize that in themselves of the potential to they're put in those oh yeah you know in the situation where they have to afford out they think about how many people define themselves by their jobs like you know that you're you're in sales or you're an accountant or you're a doctor or whatever it is and then you retire and you stop doing that and then you people go through an identity crisis when they either stop working or change jobs or if if they lose their job it's like they have no more identity and I always want to be defined by who I am not what I do when I when I give little blurbs and things for books I always insist that they call me optimist and author you know the stuff that I've done has to come second Who I am and how I see myself and what I view myself in the world and it is the thing that I think is so magical about you you know you and I are both out there preaching that businesses need to see that business is a human Enterprise fun first it's called a company it's like a group of people literally and and we view people simply as as just for their hands but not for their hearts or their heads or anything they can contribute as their as human beings so what advice would you give to we have visitors from other companies like what advice you know we're doing things completely I can't remember how much you and I have talked about what we're doing in terms of market-based dynamics and having a you know from the beginning my goal has always been to help employees find the you know magic wand is every employee has found the intersection of what their passion about what they're good at and what adds value to the company and so I remember when in the early days that was when we were fifty or even a hundred people was very easy to for someone to and we encouraged this to being saved working at the front desk wasn't for you then go try out merchandising yeah that wasn't for you then and we've literally had employees be in eight or 10 different departments over their time at Zappos and but as we got bigger it's not as easy you need a system to do that and so that's the goal of market-based dynamics is to build a system that enables circles to employees to search for that intersection what their passion about what they're good at and what adds no you the company but it's kind of a weird system yeah so for standard hierarchical companies what would you recommend well I mean look there you represent somebody who's willing to go to the extreme to make the point to test out the theory and you know the other exactly the other extreme is sort of unfortunately what is normal in business today you know where we used mass layoffs to balance the books on an annualized basis and we and and and we rank and yank people and and we all of these horrible things were shareholder supremacy all these horrible things is the other extreme and it doesn't mean you have to be you know there is a middle ground but I always think that we the thing that we the most the easiest thing to do for any company is to help people be their best versions of themselves to help them be human you know I hate this concept of soft skills you know we call hard and soft skills like soft actually sounds tough you know it's hard skills and human skills and everybody knows that if you want someone to do a job you have to teach them how to do their job like if you're in sales we'll teach you how to use the computer and we'll teach you how to use the phone system and we'll teach you how to like what our process is if you're in if you're an accountant you go get a degree in accounting and you learn how to do the job and when we're junior we have to be really good at our jobs that's that is our job and if we're good we get promoted and we eventually get promoted to a position where we're now responsible for the people who do the job we used to do and nobody teaches us how to do that and so we don't teach leadership we don't teach the skills that are required to take care of people which is all leadership is and the amazing thing is is regardless of our rank and regardless of our position these are skills that we all need organizations can do bet a much better job of teaching us listening and effective confrontation and how to give and receive feedback and empathy and patience and all of these things that if you're going to be a parent you better start learning them but if you're gonna be a human being you should probably learn those too it helps us interact with each other better with customers better with vendors better and at the end of the day we're more confident in ourselves because we're bringing all those skills back home to our families and our friends and yeah and the best part about it is when an organization gives that kind of education and teaching and training to their people their people the the net benefit is people feel like the company cares about them as individuals not as simply somebody who fills a job function and that's what breeds loyalty and love for our companies it's I it's so common sense like it's it's it's and it doesn't actually require a lot of money either it it you can do these things for for a shoestring budget or sometimes even for free it's it's so what would be the next step for one of the external companies that are in the audience right now and what would you suggest for next step for us to find a book that teaches these skills and have a book club where everybody and everybody in the team reads a chapter and you come and spend one hour per week do it over lunch if you like and you talk about it and and what'll start to happen is people will start to have ideas and allow people who have a passion for this to innovate you know one of the biggest mistakes companies make is they they stop passionate people you know somebody comes you guys I love leadership I read all these books I've seen all these TED Talks I've studied all these companies I would love for our company to build a leadership training program I will totally volunteer to do it they go oh fantastic what we really need you to do is develop this training program because you're so good at developing training programs and they go okay you know why would you stand in the way of a passionate person because the great thing about passionate people is not only will they do all the work because they want to and they're learning but if it doesn't work so well the first time which it probably won't they're passionate which means they'll try again and again and they'll get all the kinks out and they'll figure it out and and if you there are passionate people in all of our organizations who care about listening and empathy and new ways to develop incentive programs give those people a long runway and let them try things out and experiment on us you know and we don't have to force anybody to do it we can ask for volunteers who wants to be the first to go through their training program and then early adopter mindset we're all in it together we're okay we know that it's imperfect but what ends up happening is we make things better and better and better and better and better and it's all homegrown it cost zero you know so one of the things you know I remember when we were fifty or hundred people and now at fifteen hundred people I would say the vast vast majority of sapless employees are all very well intentioned if not all of them and so what I noticed was if I don't think it was anyone's fault and one of our core values is to build a team and family spirit but from the beginning it was about consensus building and that just doesn't scale it's just a function of the number of people in in the structure and so one of the things that we're trying to do is go from this org chart that's hierarchical to one that's more networked and as a result of that under a hierarchy someone with the passion you need to get your managers of all your managers so all it takes is one no for an idea to get killed yeah whereas in the future state all it'll take is one yes cuz any of the several hundred circles yeah can decide to you know also be passionate about a pain idea that yeah I think we you know cuz I love your thinking and I love what you're doing and I think language sometimes gets in the way and we talk about non hierarchical you know the fact of the matter is human beings are naturally hierarchical and it's it's not a bad thing nobody's offended by it like nobody is morally offended by the fact that somebody who's more senior in the organization makes a higher salary gets a better parking space we may think they're an idiot but we don't we're not offended by the fact that they're given certain perks or advantages because of their because of their rank you know and and in any population we're constantly assessing and judging and we'll defer to those who sort of take a more alpha role and where we are offended is because the role of an alpha the role of a leader is to take care of the team is to protect right the responsibilities of leadership is is to is to is to take care of those around us and see those around us rise and the closest analogy to great leadership is parenting there is absolutely a hierarchy in a family mom and dad are absolutely higher up than the children and it's not a democracy you know however okay from the from the mother in the room right and we all know this which is parents that attempt to be equal with their children and attempt to be their best friends and it actually fails as a parenting strategy but but at the end of the day a parent's responsibility is to love and care for that child just desperately and that does it that you can still discipline someone you can still correct someone you know all of these still things still exist and the same is true in any population including in an organization where there's still hierarchy so if somebody says I'm gonna take responsibility for this project right this is the team and if things fail it's on me there's still a hierarchy and my job as the leader of the group with the team whether it's anointed or voluntary is that I'm gonna see that the team has all the skills and support that they need so that our project can be a success and as the leader I'm not responsible for the results I'm responsible for the people who are responsible for the results yep and I guess to clarify we have this concept called circles and so what for each circle I know I know I know your thing but my boys when we say what like I when we say we're anti hierarchy what were you saying you know Tony asked me before we came logical just yeah well just Tony Tony asked me before I came out if if I mind it if he touched my butt I was just flattered that he asked asked asked all right so one joke kind of went over will and we had one good one they liked it when I did the running thing up the up the side which by the way I was really excited that was spontaneous because it's a high box and I thought what a perfect to me while I was running up the box this is Cirque du Soleil is staged like how perfect to do that because there's always a funny never mind is it's a circus there's a funny character so we don't have much time left but uh I should I talk about weed stop trying to make joke you want to talk about our lunch in New York the few years ago or you want to talk about something else sure a few years ago we had lunch in New York it's fine I I think I had the salmon and I asked him why it was a fun conversation I decided to Tony one I don't know what his but for those of you don't know he has a book called start with why and I actually resisted reading it for the longest time because because your deck mostly because in literate you know Jen our friend Jen and know mostly what she asked me I was like I could think I kind of get the idea from the title yeah like just start with wine so yeah this oh here's a funny thing a lot of people in your position and I've talked to a few who are in your position more visionary leaders or more sort of evolved way they think about business and I say do you know what you're wise they go yeah I know I'm like well have you ever tried to put it into words they're like don't need to there I'm like why like everybody knows there's this assumption because it's crystal clear to you in your gut that it's automatically crystal clear to everybody and it's not always well that's why we had lunch together so so yeah and so it wasn't a formal session but because you do these discover your why workshops for companies humans and companies and and so we were just talking over lunch and and he was asked me about my earliest childhood memory or something like that and I actually was born in Illinois and moved to California when I was five but the only memory I really have is like catching these fireflies and mason jars at night and then they say that was like my portable flashlight and the question that I asked when you tell me the story is of all the amazing and wonderful beautiful things that you did as a child what do you think was is it about that memory that stands out to you what is what is it that makes that memory why would you even tell what is so important about that memory that you would tell me about that now or them because you asked for the earliest memory no I know but you'd but there are many other things that happened and you chose to tell that one and what is it about that one that stands out to you that makes it special I think it was just the I know like fireflies are already cool they do their things but then this was a way of like creating or inventing in my mind I had invented it and no one else had ever done that before and so it was just I know here's what fun and here's why I ask questions like that because because how Tony sees the world and how we all see the world we are products of our upbringing we're products of the experiences we had when we were young that make us who we are and that it forms our worldview and so if you Tony when he is at his best and more importantly the organization that he that he's trying to help build is he sees everybody as a firefly he sees the entire world as people with bright lights he doesn't distinguish you know who the bright ones and who are the dim ones everybody has a bright light and everybody's out there doing their thing and what Zappos is as a container for bright lights and if you can build your fire if you can build if you can take all these wonderful fireflies that all by themselves beautiful and fantastic but if you put them in a container where all of their brightness comes together you create a flashlight you can actually light a path for somebody else and I and I firmly believe that when you are at your best that is what you are doing with Zappos Zappos is the jar and the people that are in in this company which is all of you you are lighting a path not only for the people you serve internally the people you serve externally but you're showing the rest of us how a business should be built and if quite frankly you were doing the exact same thing now as you're doing when you were five thank you I didn't realize that that had so much meaning and and it now then because of the why Tonys why is actually the why of the company and even I debated this it is now everyone's job that all of you not only fireflies in the jar that we call Zappos but every single one of you has a responsibility to build a jar yourselves and find the fireflies to put in whether they're customers you're talking to and you create a bright light together or they're federal or team members and your circles like the everybody has to take responsibility for the maintenance of the jar and make sure that all of the the fireflies inside are burning bright so we all have a macro or micro responsibility yeah and the I think the draft purpose statement that we came up with by the end of the lunch was the exact which is something like to space for creative people to shine or something yeah like like have the canvas for people's that unlocks people's creative in potential and they can create wonderment I think he used you came up with one more nice I think we should use the word light they can create light cuz at the end of the day that's you know it's a it's a it's a nice metaphor that doesn't sound so a business hackneyed you know with like so many other terms that go in these things but creating light is you are a bright spark in the world of business you know business is dark and you guys are bright and it's lovely

Channel: Simon Sinek

Views: 86,873

Rating: 4.8921833 out of 5

Keywords: simon sinek, sinek simon, sinek, zappos, tony hsieh, company culture, leadership, people first, passion, innovation, start with why, the why, find why, find purpose, positive culture, business

Id: uqUx4BJ1ENY

Length: 19min 44sec (1184 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 01 2019