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Adjusting My Fit… Courtesy of a Conversation with zappos – Part I of III « I2I – Incentive Intelligence
by paul hebert This is post 1 of a 3 post discussion with Jamie Naughton – Cruise Ship Captain at zappos. Parts II and III will be forthcoming. Part I is the setup and big picture, Part II is the specifics of some of the engagement programs conducted at zappos and Part III is where I “adjust my fit.” Every once in a while you need to adjust the fit of your thinking. Think of the show “What Not To Wear.” But advice is only half the equation – change is also dependent on the target’s willingness to “adjust their thinking” and consider the input they are given. That’s what I needed the other day. Zappos… For those just coming back from your walk through Tibet – zappos is the darling of the employee engagement world. I connected to zappos through a friend (@femelmed) who had a connection at zappos and I asked if she could introduce me to someone at zappos to talk about the way the reward and recognize their employees. I’ll say this right now – BUY from zappos. My Goal… And I was mostly wrong.
Craig McBreen
Why I Sold Zappos, Page 2
The first time Amazon.com tried to buy Zappos, we said no without even thinking. It was the summer of 2005, and Zappos, the start-up into which I'd poured the past five years of my life (and almost all of my money), finally seemed to be on the right track. Zappos sells shoes and apparel online, but what distinguished us from our competitors was that we'd put our company culture above all else. We'd bet that by being good to our employees -- for instance, by paying for 100 percent of health care premiums, spending heavily on personal development, and giving customer service reps more freedom than at a typical call center -- we would be able to offer better service than our competitors. Better service would translate into lots of repeat customers, which would mean low marketing expenses, long-term profits, and fast growth. At the time, we made almost all our money selling shoes, but our hope was that we'd eventually go into all sorts of other businesses. Still, I had plenty of concerns.
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Are Wall Street Suicide Epidemics Real?
Last week, German investor Adolf Merckle, a multibillionaire who lost a fortune on shorted Volkswagen stock, threw himself under a train. Two weeks earlier, Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, an heir to French aristocracy and the co-founder of an investment fund whose money vanished in Bernie Madoff’s alleged pyramid scheme, told the cleaning crew at his Madison Avenue office to clear out, sat behind his desk, and slashed his wrists with a box cutter. Five days before that, in London, a hotel worker entered a $750-a-night suite at the Jumeirah Carlton Tower to find the body of Christen Schnor, HSBC’s head of insurance, hanging by a belt in a closet. Reports of financial professionals taking their own lives after suffering steep stock-market losses are as old as trading itself. National suicide statistics by occupation have been kept only sporadically over the years, and the studies that have been done aren’t especially comprehensive. Not sufficiently depressed? Have good intel?
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Recognition and Rewards – The zappos Way Part II of III « I2I – Incentive Intelligence
by paul hebert Continuing my thoughts on the conversation I had with Jamie Naughton – “Cruise Ship Captain” at zappos… See intro post here. Doing it Different – Almost Wrong? The net-net for me after listening to Jamie talk about the engagement initiatives at zappos is this… A strong culture, recognized regularly, decreases the need for specific performance-based incentives. Again – I’ll caution all who read this site – zappos is an outlier – a positive deviant. First of all – they do have incentives…and they have recognition… and they have merchandise awards. Incentives, Recognition, Zollars and Swag (Oh My) At zappos they have created a reward currency called “zollars” (not sure the exchange rate with Shrutebucks) that is redeemable for logo-identified merchandise from their company store. So zappos uses “zollars” as their award currency redeemable for logo-identified merchandise. Zollars are distributed by Managers and employees. After The Fact – Not Before (Most of the time) Specifically…
billdorman
Google AdWords: A Brief History Of Online Advertising Innovation
All innovation looks inevitable, except while it’s happening. Google’s search advertising model didn’t spring forth fully formed. It was iterated, and many of the key concepts were borrowed — something many people don’t realize. But a few key market-defying decisions, and one stunning insight, made it all work. Here is a brief history to inspire, taken from John Battelle’s The Search (required reading for anyone who wants to innovate anything on the web): In late 1999, Google began testing a program to sell ads on a CMP basis, the dominant ad model of the time. But instead of using banner ads, the dominant ad format of the time, Google decided to sell only unobtrusive text ads. Advertising first appeared on Google.com in January 2000 — text ads were sold by a sales rep on a CPM basis. “It didn’t generate much money.” – Sergey Brin But then the bubble burst in Spring 2000, and the online ad banner market crashed. Instead, Google introduced a breathtaking innovation. As Battelle put it:
