Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh

A couple of weeks ago I finished reading “Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose” by Tony Hsieh. It’s a great book and I recommend it to anybody curious about Zappos or on how to build a culture within a company.

I found the book refreshing in its honesty. I was surprised with Tony’s poor ethic as an Oracle employee and many more revelations about his character and Zappos’ history.

It clearly explains his journey through life, what influenced him, what occupied his mind and his mistakes. It’s truly a classic 3 act hero story. Throughout the book I really felt for him and his company and recognize that the emerging group, the people made it through the downturns and stuck with it, are really the reason Zappos is such a great company. Their experience must be, emotionally, pretty close to that of war veterans. Those people must have been like a band of brothers/systers. In my mind, without those hard times, Zappos would have not bred the current culture. Fortunately, with the help of this book, you won’t need to go through a long war-like period to breed a culture in your company. You can just gain the wisdom from Zappos’ experience.

My only critique: there is a small section of the book, about 20-40 pages that I though it could have been written differently to seem less like propaganda, but overall the book was outstanding.

It’s a quick read, with lots to learn and I suggest it heartily.