Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, explains his unique approach to employee empowerment

When I asked Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, what he considered his #1 job as CEO, Hsieh said “Thinking about how I can empower my employees to be a part of the growth and innovation of the company.”

Hsieh explained that as CEO, even if he came up with one good idea each day, that would be only 365 ideas in a year. But if he can empower his thousands of employees to come up with ways to improve the business and each comes up with only one idea each year, then those add up to thousands of ideas that would improve his business exponentially.

“Most CEO’s who look at their corporate culture from the top-down are really preventing their company to grow faster, better, and more profitably. Some of the best ideas come from places a CEO would never have thought of.” Hsieh told me.

That’s also why he wrote his book, “Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose“. “I wrote it primarily for entrepreneurs so they had a better idea of the ups and downs of building a business, and describe the lessons I learned. If you focus on developing a corporate culture that puts customers first, and empower your employees to deliver your products or services in a way that makes them feel good about what they’re doing, the happiness is a natural by-product that leads to profits, passion, and purpose, for the individual and the company”

Find out more about Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s unique business approach in our video interview.

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