The Zappos Way: Clarity of Character and Fewer Boundaries

This week on my radio show, we talk about a new leadership and management style that is beginning to gain popularity. This style has been made famous by online retailer Zappos- and there is no denying their success with the billion dollar sale to Amazon. This leader organization style is called- loosely coupled and highly aligned- and with all the internet tools that make it seamless to work together anywhere in the world- it seems to be gaining popularity.

We talk to a series of guest about what does this actually mean and how can you can implement this in your business.

Camille Preston, the founder of AIM leadership talked about her work with Zappos and what their success is based on:

1. A Clarity of Character in the leader (Tony Hsieh) is about being aligned with who you are and communicating this with your company. It must pervade the culture even if you are not in person.

2. Building Trust in a distributed workforce by having clear values.

3. Be adventurous and creative (from Zappos) and know where the (fewer) boundaries are.

Camille talks about what trust costs us both positively and negatively.

Ray Salemi, author of “Leading after a Layoff” talked about how easy it is for relationships to be destroyed over a long distance as a result of miscommunication. We never make up postive stories. He talks about when you should use email or when to pick up the phone.

John Dallas, the Chief Alignment Officer at Hillview Partners talked about the importance of being strategically aligned to a stated destination (but not having to agree all the time).

Jared Reynolds, Innovation Officer at Zenagen discussed how his company practices this style of management for a comfortable, but not lazy organization.

Listen now!