Archive for the ‘Leadership’ Category

CMMI Institute to Help Companies around the World Elevate Organizational Performance

Tuesday, December 3rd, 2013

Delivers Process Improvement Frameworks with Proven Business Results

Entinex is a proud partner of the CMMI Institute. We have been using CMMI and its predecessors to help elevate performance for over 16 years and have seen the value of the models to deliver measurable business results for our clients. We look forward to working with the CMMI Institute to extend the reach of the CMMI frameworks to enable individuals and organizations to reach their goals.

Our Founder, CEO, and Performance Jedi, Hillel Glazer continues to be the pathfinder for bringing CMMI, lean and agile practices together. He furthers his involvement by playing a critical role in helping the CMMI Institute formulate its strategies and carry out several important projects, including providing important input to the success of their SEPG conferences and foundational material for CMMI’s product suite in the agile market.

(Also, see this article on CMMI in SD Times.)

November 20, 2013 09:00 AM Eastern Standard Time
PITTSBURGH–The CMMI Institute announced today its strategy to extend the reach of the CMMI model to enable businesses of every size in every industry to elevate performance and to provide tools that equip CMMI practitioners to begin and to grow their journey with CMMI.

The CMMI Institute, established by Carnegie Mellon University, is home to the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), a gold standard of excellence in software and systems development. The Institute will continue to help this market to solve business problems while advancing the use of the model to new industry sectors around the world.

CMMI is used by some of the world’s most admired and innovative organizations, including Samsung, Accenture, Proctor & Gamble, and Siemens. CMMI adoption has been a powerful differentiator for businesses and a catalyst for economic growth in regions that invest in its broad adoption.

“To compete in the global market, leaders must build organizations that can consistently deliver quality and value in products and services,” said Kirk Botula, CEO of CMMI Institute. “The CMMI Institute enables organizations committed to excellence to achieve measurable results in the facets of their business that matter most to their goals. CMMI provides a framework of practices that can help organizations to identify and address key challenges to improve performance and the bottom line. We all know work is not the way it is supposed to be—CMMI helps make it better.”

The CMMI model was developed at Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute (SEI) through collaboration of government, industry, and academia to help the Department of Defense and its contractors like Raytheon, Northrup Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing improve their software engineering capabilities. Widely trusted as a mark of reliability, many organizations require CMMI adoption as a pre-requisite for bidding on contracts.

Thousands of companies across multiple industry sectors in 94 countries have adopted its practices to elevate performance and have been appraised for capability and maturity using CMMI methods. The CMMI product suite includes product development, service delivery, procurement, and staff management—making it a worthwhile investment for any business. Carnegie Mellon University founded the CMMI Institute in order extend the benefits of CMMI beyond software and systems engineering to any product or service company regardless of size or industry.

KK Raman, Partner Business Excellence, KPMG India says, "Carnegie Mellon is a pioneer in developing best practices and transitioning them to industry, and this is reflected in the global adoption of the CMMI. KPMG is one of the premier organizations around the world with over a decade long partnership with CMU. We help use the CMMI Institute product suite—frameworks, training, certifications, and appraisal methods—to achieve organizational goals by enhancing processes."

Extending the Benefits of CMMI

The global adoption of CMMI is supported through a vast network of partners who guide organizations in the successful adoption of the CMMI models. As part of today’s news, CMMI Institute is advancing the practice of CMMI with an online self-assessment tool as well as new professional credentials for practitioners.

  • CMMI Self-Assessment Tool: A new online tool that allows organizations to begin their journey of elevating performance as well as to diagnose their existing implementation by assessing the current state of their organization. By answering a brief set of questions, users will gain critical insights that provide an analysis of an organization’s strengths and weaknesses as well as solutions to improve the capability of their organization.
  • CMMI Associate and CMMI Professional Certification: The CMMI Institute will be offering certifications to help individuals translate their experience with CMMI into professional development opportunities. CMMI Associate and CMMI Professional Certifications will provide confirmation of an individual’s knowledge of basic and advanced concepts in CMMI and demonstrate to current and prospective employers they are dedicated to excellence and have valuable skills to help elevate organizational performance.

"As a professional who uses CMMI daily in my work, I am committed to advancing my understanding of the models and to helping my clients and my organization position themselves to successfully meet their goals. The practitioner credentials will not only provide a clear path for my growth, it will also help me to communicate and validate my skills to my clients as well as my organization," said Capri Dye of Hubbert Systems Consulting, Inc.

The CMMI Self-Assessment Tool and Practitioner Certifications will be available in early 2014.

About CMMI Institute

The CMMI Institute, a subsidiary of Carnegie Mellon University, is dedicated to elevating organizational performance through best-in-class solutions to real-world challenges. The Institute is the home of the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) for Development, Services, and Acquisition; and the People Capability Maturity Model which are process improvement models that create high-performance, high-maturity cultures. The models are used in thousands of organizations worldwide to deliver business results that serve as differentiators in the global market.

About Entinex

Entinex, Inc. is an aerospace engineering firm bringing the same skills and critical thinking used every day in aerospace to solve complex business problems. The creative, technical, and audacious characteristics of aerospace are leveraged to create elegant, inspiring, and break-through solutions to real business challenges to companies throughout the world in many fields and industries. The company’s approaches see through hairy, complex business problems with x-ray-vision-like clarity and accuracy and designs, explains and implements solutions with amazingly powerful yet easy-to-apply simplicity.

A Tale of Two Companies

Sunday, June 26th, 2011

Earlier this month I had the utmost pleasure to visit one of the most innovative, successful, ground-breaking and thought-provoking companies on the planet.  I really wanted to immediately blog about them but was having trouble coming up with something more than an "I <3 ____" entry.

Earlier this weekend I had the utmost disappointment to patronize a company that provided me with such a contrast to the first company that I immediately had sufficient content to do justice to a blog post with something constructive.  Little did I know that as I was amidst my experience and formulating this entry in my head, the latter company would be generating the exact sort of "proof" to support predictions I had planned to make about the company’s performance.  As I write this, events are unfolding to practically word-for-word demonstrate my points for me.

I’m sorry this entry is very long… but you’ll see why soon.

The former company is growing at lightning speed in size, revenues, and profit.  In The latter company has already pulled out of several markets and scaled back operations in others, is adopting tactics known to disenfranchise customers and seems utterly oblivious to it’s operation’s lack of efficiency.

Sadly, chances are the latter company will continue to make decisions that will negatively affect their outlook while the former company could easily be turning the latter around if the latter would bother to pay even the slightest attention the the cause-and-effect of their actions.

The former company, to a person, is keenly aware of what makes a satisfied customer.  Their policies, hiring practices, operating values and reward systems are all consistent with and fully cognizant of what makes people (employees and customers) satisfied.  Their people exhale good will and sweat fun.

The latter company seems to have scraped up some dusty "how-to" manual — probably chiseled in a cave somewhere — full of the best ways to be oblivious to the desires of humankind.  Their policies — as evinced by the tactics and activities of their people — clearly convey that those who wrote them haven’t thought-through what people want or how people think; their operations manuals were written without ever considering how the people who’d have to follow them would feel about behaving as set-forth in those procedures.

The former company wouldn’t give a second thought to treat a customer with a level of service above and beyond what the customer may have paid to expect at any almost cost, while the latter company goes out of it’s way — to the point of introducing gross inefficiencies — to separate levels of service along artificial lines of "classist" service levels.

Finally, the former company would encourage its employees to invent ways to simultaneously raise good will, raise the customer experience and raise the overall efficiency of the business.  At the former company, every employee understands the value of relationship capital as much as they understand the value of the company’s performance.  Meanwhile, at the latter company, instead of looking at the negative effect of cost of delay, the negative effect of not offering their best "deal" up-front, and the negative effect of blatant classism, they artificially construct a workplace where employees are more worried about being "stingy" with what they offer customers, and then flaunt their lack of service with cold reminders of the service they’re not giving and go out of their way to be patronizing about the limited service they do provide.

So… Now for the reveal.

The first company is Zappos.  I blogged about Zappos and CEO Tony Hsieh’s book, "Delivering Happiness" about a year ago.  Let me tell you in pictures about my visit to Zappos and why I’m so impressed with them.  The descriptions to go along with those pictures tell the rest of the story.  There’s so much to tell, and these shots don’t tell the half of it.

Photo Jun 07, 8 59 43 Starting from the moment you walk in the door at the reception area, you know you’re not in a typical operation.  The space is raucous.  The guys behind the desks are handing out bottles of water, playfully joshing the guests on anything they can quickly turn into fun, running friendly competitions among the visitors and staff, and cutting the ties of unsuspecting (but should have known better) visitors.  In a sitting area behind where this photo was taken is the company library where a QR code will take you to their recommended reading list.

Photo Jun 07, 9 18 51 While our effusive, outgoing, bright-eyed tour guide, Renea, happens to be in the middle of this shot, she’s not what I’m actually focusing on.  It’s what happens to be directly behind her head.  The office of the company’s goal coach.  You have a goal?  The goal coach’s job is to help you reach it.  Personal?  Professional?  Educational?  No matter.  The goal coach’s job is just that: coach people to help them achieve their goals.  No bounds, no strings, no pre-set expectations.  Just positive goals.

Photo Jun 07, 9 21 03 Real life doesn’t have a "pause" button.  Zappos gets that.  So, to help with "real life" while work life intrudes, Zappos has a continually evolving set of services it makes available to its employees to help minimize the inconvenience of being at work when "real life" must go on.  Notice that most (if not all) of these services are not necessarily free.  But they are convenient, and in some cases, they are discounted through group negotiations.  Whether any are actually subsidized by the company, I don’t know, but that’s not important. 

One thing to note, however, is that the company cafe is highly subsidized with all but hot, prepared foods being free or nearly free, and the hot entrees are very inexpensive.  All with as much attention to nutrition and dietary needs as to taste and convenience.  I don’t have a picture of the cafe.

Photo Jun 07, 9 24 05 This shot might just about say it all, if you really read into the statement being made at the company.  Many companies have a hallway where they post their ongoing achievements.  Zappos has such a wall, but theirs has something you don’t see everywhere.  The top row of framed images are various financial (usually sales) achievements (pretty common).  Also on this top row are included related achievements such as volume of transactions.  In particular, phone call orders processes in a single day — in total, when supplemented by people whose primary jobs are not to take calls (not as common).  The bottom row of framed items are copies of the company’s annual "year book".  Only at Zappos, this year book is about the company’s culture.  Every employee, every year, is encouraged to submit an original work in any format describing their experience with the Zappos culture.  Good, bad, or pretty, or ugly.  Everything is open and transparent and everything is published unedited.  (Not common at all!)  This is why I said that this shot might "say it all".  The company celebrates its ongoing cultural achievements with the same enthusiasm as it celebrates its financial and operational accomplishments.

Photo Jun 07, 9 25 04 To me, the fact that the incredible accomplishment noted on the left-hand-side of this picture is still nothing more than something printed on office paper six months after the event tells me that their celebration of success is both understated and not so high a priority — as in many other businesses — as to cause anyone to go out of their way to rush a costly picture onto the wall.  You can also see here that this accomplishment is celebrated as much — if not more — for its reflection of the work put into it as it is for the financial results it caused.  Also visible in this shot are a couple of the author-signed books given to Zappos CEO on behalf of the company.  They’re not in his personal collection.

Photo Jun 07, 9 29 30 Every work team at Zappos is encouraged to decorate their spaces in their own way.  Groups typically decide on a theme and the themes change from space to space.  This image is of the team of people who work to decide what products to sell at Zappos, ("merchandising").  If you look in the center of the image, you may see what appears to be a dark green area.  That’s the short row of cubes where the C-level executives of Zappos have their desks.  Called, "Monkey Row", the next image is a close-up of this area. 

The anthropomorphic glove sits on the divider between the executive assistant’s Photo Jun 07, 9 32 40area in the foreground, and the CEO’s cube, behind the glove.  The COO and CFO’s spaces are on the right with a conference room in the back.  This day, all the C-levels are elsewhere.

These chicken heads are the company’s Photo Jun 07, 9 38 02"retail systems" group.  A QR code on the outside wall instructed me to ask them to put on their masks and take a picture to win a prize.  The caped, masked rubber bathtub duckie wasn’t nearly as priceless as this photo.  One might wonder whether such disruptions were deleterious to productivity.  In fact, the opposite has been found.  The tours are scheduled, not ad hoc.  The employees are encouraged to take a break, interact and be friendly and welcoming to the visitors.  There are only four tours a day and only on certain days, and the entire "disruption" lasts a few minutes.  Fun and weirdness are both important and so the company creates opportunities for both.  Zappos is an amazingly productive place.

Photo Jun 07, 9 52 29Communication is at a premium in Zappos.  Here were see an example of a screen where questions and answers are posted continuously on customer and other issues resolved throughout the company.  Nearby, we see an example of one of the many ways in which employees are reminded of the company’s core values.  A new value is chosen for emphasis each month as a means of generating ideas and making progress towards common goals as a group. 

Photo Jun 07, 9 52 45 When you read the company’s list of core values, you see they show up in everything their people do.  They’re not necessarily formally measured by how they "stack up" against these statements, but they are continually grounded in whether or not their actions are consistent with the values.  While promoting a particular value each month may seem hollow, what makes it meaningful is that each employee is encouraged to express their manifestation of these values in however they believe they can contribute — as long as it’s consistent with the other values.

 

Photo Jun 07, 9 54 42 Let’s switch gears to metrics.  One might conclude that a company with the sort of values linked above might minimize or eschew the use of metrics.  One would conclude such things erroneously.  Zappos is famous for, among other reasons, their willful bucking of industry norms by not forcing time quotas for how quickly people are expected to handle phone and text chat inquiries.  Not using quotas and stop-watches running for each call, and not rewarding call-handling in terms of calls per hour may sound like the company doesn’t use metrics, nothing could be further from reality.  The company devours metrics.  They just don’t use them for petty, demoralizing, and customer-infuriating reasons.  They use them to manage capacity and availability.  In other words, they use them to ensure they have enough staff to handle their workload and to keep customer service levels as high as they can push them.  These measures are directly across the entryway to the call-center area, not in some manager’s area.  Besides, the manager would be sitting among the team anyway.  Everyone knows the measures and no one has any reason not to use them.

Photo Jun 07, 9 57 09 This whole area (most of the floor) is called the "CLT" for "customer loyalty team".  They take the calls, operate online chat, and are just about the entirety of the live, human, customer-facing operation.  But the group of desks in this shot are one of the most impressive investments I’ve seen anywhere.  Zappos has a name for them, I believe it’s "Resource Team", but I call them the "slack team".  Very simply, these people have full time jobs to go help anyone else anywhere else for any reason and for any amount of time.  In other words, they take up the slack to keep things running smoothly.  In most other operations, such jobs are "other duties as assigned" to people who already have jobs.  In other operations, this sort of work is why people work late.  At Zappos, these people work a regular work day doing nothing but making sure everyone else can work a regular work day — among other things.

Photo Jun 07, 9 57 22 This is the last of my Zappos shots and the end of my Zappos explanation-by-pictures on just how deeply Zappos internalizes the needs of their customers.  In this view we see an entire team dedicated to responding to inquiries made directly to the Zappos CEO, who’s made his email address, Twitter, and Facebook identities public knowledge.  While Tony reads all his mail, responding is another matter.  These people do nothing but respond to incoming messages for Tony — making no attempt to hide that they’re not Tony as we’ve seen in some businesses.  While Tony does read and sometimes responds to his own mail and tweets, he can’t expect to get to a fraction of it.  This group helps him manage all that.

And now we come to the "other" company.  The second company is an airline.  The pictures give away which one.  There really only need to be the two pictures because just these two convey so much.

Photo Jun 25, 0 45 39 This card was sitting on the arm-rest between the two seats where I was seated.  I guess they reconfigured this plane to two classes because my ticket was bought in the next lower class called "Economy Comfort", but I didn’t see that class of seat on the plane. Only this ("Saga" class, i.e., "business class") and economy.  But it seems this card is designed to warm me that they plan to treat me as though I’m in economy.  In other words, they went out of their way to ensure one row of people — all of 4 seats — knew they were being excluded from the remaining 18 seats in the same cabin! They actually spent money to be inefficient AND lose all credibility with good will and a service attitude!

Photo Jun 25, 0 50 03 In this next image you see that they bothered to put a sign on the headrest in front of this row just in case the card wasn’t clear: "You’re not wanted here and we’ll make sure you know it."  How must it feel to be an employee told to visibly treat people as unwanted directly before their own eyes?!  To offer headsets, champagne, gifts, menus with choices, and hot towels to people then stop short of offering the same to people inches away?!  I’d feel ridiculous and I’d probably go home with an ulcer.

Behavioral and psychological differences aside, do they have any idea how inefficient treating one row differently from the remainder of an entire cabin is?  Clearly not. The transaction costs are obviously unknown. No wonder their banks failed.

What the pics don’t tell is the story of what took place in the terminal for nearly an hour before we boarded late.  Starting 30 minutes before boarding, announcements began to be broadcast seeking two volunteers to give up their seats in exchange for business class seats the following day from a different city — a city the volunteers would have to fly to, presumably the next day as well, and, presumably on the airline’s account but on another airline.

Twenty minutes after boarding was to have started, they began to "sweeten the offer" with adding that the volunteers would receive one round-trip ticket anywhere the airline flew, and meal and hotel vouchers for their immediate over-night stay.  It took another 15 minutes before they had their volunteers, and, I do not know what the actual final "deal" was — whether the volunteers took the announced deal or made a counter-offer.  I do know that had my plans allowed me make such a last-minute change, I would have had a much more appealing offer to counter with.  But that’s neither here nor there.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Is there anything right with this picture?

Does anyone believe there’s no relationship between the failure to make a compelling offer in time to keep the flight on time and the notes and signs and behaviors moments later exhibited on-board?  Does anyone believe there’s no relationship between these events and the misconfiguration of the aircraft for the seats sold?

Did anyone at the company notice that they actually spent money to work-around this known issue rather than to simply go all-the-way and give the "upgraded" seat-sitters the full business-class treatment?  Did anyone there notice how much inefficiency they incurred?  Multiple meals, multiple amenities, multiple passes through the same place for different reasons?  They even handed us different headsets!  The flight attendants from the main cabin had to come through the curtain to give us our drinks and meals!  For ONE row!

What about the sum of all these and the economics of having to divide how a single set of staff split their behavior, their resources, and their services within the confines of the same cabin?  All for the sake of treating a single row of four seats differently from the remaining 18 seats?  Any wonder that they’ve cut routes and scaled back others?  Aircraft space is at a premium.  It would have been much easier, not to mention far more enrolling to everyone, to have the entire cabin treated as the same class. 

What makes this experience noteworthy is just how far out of norms it is.  While many airlines go out of their way to find efficiencies, this one seems to go the other way.  While many airlines take some pride in being able to treat some customers to upgrades, this one goes out of its way to remind customers they’re clearly not welcomed.  Sadly, it’s also noteworthy that there doesn’t seem to be much the staff can do about any of it.  This is clearly how the company wants the operation to run.  They go out of their way to build the system so that it runs this way.

Little did I know at the time, but upon arrival in the country, I learned that some of the pilots of this airline have decided to "strike" and not fly.  Without warning.  Not as part of an organized effort, but on their own.  While in the US, this would never work for companies based there, it seems to be common in more socialist economies like in Europe.  Let’s look at what causes a company’s people to strike: um… problems with their employer! 

As a result, a number of invited guests are not going to make it to the event and other are delayed indefinitely and may miss the events here entirely.  With the experience fresh in my mind (and ongoing), I tapped out most of the text of this post while in flight.  I had not idea about the strike.  But I could not have imagined a more appropriate demonstration of the negative and permeating affects of bad policy.  Clearly, the striking pilots are not happy about how they’re being treated. 

I’m sure there will be executive blow-hards at this company and elsewhere quick to say that they have nothing in common.  That how my experience in the terminal and ob-board have nothing to do with the pilots’ gripes.  I, Zappos, and those of us who see the connection between company culture, employee satisfaction, and customer satisfaction would vehemently disagree.

Zappos could teach these people a lot.  No wonder people have suggested to Tony that Zappos starts an airline.  Though… there already is one Southwest and both Zappos and I love them.

[Note: lest anyone think that the actions and behaviors and attitudes I note are just me and my "Western sensitivities" to class structures, I should point out a number of things: I fly enough to fly in business and first class a lot-- both by upgrades as well as by purchasing the appropriate fares.  It doesn't bother me when I'm in a more economical class and the more expensive classes get better service.  In those situations, the airlines at least do what they can to separate the service classes, and besides, I know what I've gotten myself into and the airlines don't rub it in my face.  Furthermore, the European guy next to me had the exact same impressions... All the way from the volunteer fiasco to the notes and signs to the differences in treatment.]

Happiness is not an edict.

Monday, June 7th, 2010

I make a living helping companies improve their performance.  Bar none, the absolute hardest challenge is dealing with outdated, defunct, and proven-failed management and leadership attitudes and techniques.  It’s even harder when leaders won’t let go of them. 

Attitudes that don’t account for the emotional needs of people. 

Attitudes that don’t start with the fundamental requirement that tough or large changes require the top-down example and behavior to lead the way.

Attitudes that don’t stand up for what’s right and acquiesce to blatant cognitive dissonance.

Attitudes that fail to realize you can’t lay-out the company’s supposed mission or vision, or the staff’s objectives and goals, and not provide them with the tools or empowerment to make anything happen — or worse, to undermine efforts with behaviors and decisions that conflict with the messages.

Attitudes that perpetually fail to create sustainable results, superior performance, and legendary relationships among the company staff, and between the company and its suppliers and customers; yet they are the same attitudes that failure-destined leaders continue to retread in some insane hope or expectation that everything will work out on its own.

Well, here’s some not-so-profound news (which I’m pretty sure you didn’t need me to tell you): these attitudes are nothing short of leadership’s inability to own up to their responsibilities and accountability for actually doing what they’re there to do: lead

Instead of leading you’ll often find such cowardly executives hiding behind backbone-belying excuses such as "I lead through delegation" (which, when said by these leaders actually means, "I really don’t know what to do to help you get your job done"), or "I trust my people to do the right thing" (which, when said by such leaders, actually means, "I’m lucky my people know what they’re doing because I don’t"), or "I’m serious about quality, I’ve made Joe, here, the company quality sheriff" (which is poser-leader-speak for, "I haven’t the foggiest idea what drives quality in our company and but it’s a problem and I don’t know how to fix it, but getting someone else to blame is a lot easier than getting mixed-up with all that touchy-feely stuff.").

Such leaders are nothing more than overpaid, over-indulged and over-honored paper-pushers whose lack of involvement in day-to-day operations is probably a blessing.  Because, when they do get involved (especially considering their only natural inclination is to micro-manage if/when they bother), they typically don’t make things better.

In a profound way, most companies’ leaders simply don’t "get it", they won’t admit that they don’t get it, and they’re not open to having anyone help them get it. 

One the basic "its" they don’t *get* is that what’s going on in their company is a culture, and because they don’t see what’s going on as a culture, or appreciate the role culture plays in making a business successful, they not only don’t see that what they need is to change the culture, but that in order to do so they must lead the change themselves. 

Furthermore, they don’t see that what it means to change the culture is not to pass down new rules or to disseminate a verbal memo through subordinates, it means to get out and lead.  To behave or simply *BE* the new culture.  How flat does a new, great-sounding idea fall when it’s delivered in the same mechanisms as all the old, not-as-great (dare I say "dumb") ideas?

Do you agree? 

Perhaps you need validation of your way of thinking. 
Perhaps you need an example to follow.
Perhaps you need to crystallize your thoughts so you can pave a path.
Or perhaps you need something to believe in, something to help you find a better way to work, place to work, or how to start making a difference in your work life and work-life balance.

Maybe you’re someone who’s been burned trying such non-traditional ideas and you’re seeking what might have been missing, or a simple reflection on a point you didn’t see or know to look for.

In any case, if you are seeking how to understand and positively influence culture as a primary business driver of positive change and astounding accomplishments, then Tony’ Hseih’s Delivering Happiness is a must read.  Scratch that.  If you’re reading this review this far you MUST read.  Delivering Happiness.  Even if you’re currently not big on culture as a business driver, or, if you think you know about culture and business but secretly, deep down, you really have no clue what it is, how it looks, or how to create the one you want, you must read this book.  If you *know* your business has a culture problem but don’t know what to do about it, read this book.

The amazing things Tony and his team have accomplished by putting _happiness_ at the center of their existence and by making it unmistakably simple to lead by example will leave you wondering why it’s taken anyone this long to put this sort of content together.  There is nothing new in leading by example.  It’s talked about, written about, lectured about in every credible business and management venue anywhere at any time in history.  But, one thing (of many others) unique in Tony’s book is that he actually conveys _what_that_looks_like_.  It’s not just words to him and his team.  It’s how they *are*.  It’s in everything they do and say and consider.  They wanted a certain culture?  They *became* that culture and started every action from there.  It’s in how they treat each other, their customers, their suppliers, their partners and their extended relationships.  They want to sustain that culture?  They *built* and *rebuilt* their existence to continually refine what it takes to generate the culture they want.  Delivering Happiness is like being the ultimate "fly on the wall" to get the insight into answering the question most business books and theories frustratingly fail to answer, "OK, I get what you /describe/, but what did you *do*?!"  This book lays it out.

Delivering Happiness will probably make you wonder why bother with any other business approach, and even why bother with any other business book!  It’s as though all you ever wanted to know about running a business and making people happy (either as one, the other, or both) are in his 272-page first offering.  I’m not saying other business books don’t matter, and that other business books don’t have valuable insights and concepts.  What I’m saying is that Delivering Happiness is so fundamental that it almost makes no sense to start elsewhere.  If business leaders don’t understand the fundamentals of the role culture plays in their success and what to do to generate the culture they want, then little else can help.

Tony’s done great research.  Thanks (or no thanks?) to Delivering Happiness, my reading list has not only grown, but has sprouted an entirely new branch of exploration.  It’s fascinating stuff.  I was so intrigued I rescheduled several days’ plans to finish-up some of the reading I had already started so I could clear my reading time and my mind for the new stuff Tony introduced me to.

Get it here.

Not only does Tony make an eloquent and convincing case for the influence and effects of business culture, but his amazing story about Zappos.com and the insights from places he worked or owned before — as they all relate to _happiness_ http://www.deliveringhappinessbook.com/ — are inspiring and instructive — for anyone with an open mind. 

And… not the kind of "open mind" that rationalizes nonsense, but the kind of open mind that’s open to questioning tradition; asking where a tradition came from and why it continues to exist despite its time having come and gone.  The kind of open mind that’s continually seeking better ideas built on progress and results, not on reactionary fears, theory, or short-term thinking.  And, the kind of open mind that’s ready to make a really big difference in their work, life, or in the world, and not cling to stale thinking born of a time when those old ideas were once new.

It’s time to replace those ideas with ideas built in and for the 21st Century.  It’s time for ideas that deliver results.  It’s time to start Delivering Happiness.

P.S. I received a free copy of the book so that I could read it and write an honest review about it in time for the launch date.  I received my free copy on nothing but the promise that I would write an honest review, and, all I received was the free book.  Other than my own integrity, I had no compelling reason to keep my promise.  I didn’t have to read the book, or write a review, or even write a positive review.  In fact, I could just as easily have written a review (irrespective of whether or not I’d read it) trashing the book — if it were trash.  But it’s not.  I have received plenty of free books to review and even requests to write forewords, summaries, afterwards, etc.  I have written (and had published) unflattering reviews (not something I relish) and I’ve also chosen not to write a review or contribute to a work when, as in the case of reviews, there was little nice to say, or in the case of contributions, I didn’t want to associate with the work.  All this is just to say: this is a very honest, unencumbered review.  There are no strings attached in any way for having written it.  Go read Delivering Happiness.  You’ll be glad you did.

P.P.S.  There’s also a Tweeter (@dhbook) to follow, and a community to join, and a Facebook crowd to like.  If this is your thing, I encourage you do so.