The Difference Between Culture and Values This topic has been bugging me for a while, so I am going to use the writing of this post as a means of working through it. We have a great set of core values here at Return Path. And we also have a great corporate culture, as evidenced by our winning multiple employer of choice awards, including being Fortune Magazine’s #2 best medium-sized workplace in America. But the two things are different, and they’re often confused. I hear statements all the time, both here and at other companies, like “you can’t do that — it’s not part of our culture,” “I like working there, because the culture is so great,” and “I hope…
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Book Short: Culture is King
Book Short: Culture is King Tony Hsieh’s story, Delivering Happiness (book, Kindle), is more than just the story of his life or the story of Zappos. It’s a great window into the soul of a very successful company and one that in many ways has become a model for great culture and a great customer service model. It’s a relatively quick and breezy read, and it contains a handful of legendary anecdotes from Zappos’ history to demonstrate those two things — culture and customer service — in action. As Hsieh himself says in the book, you can’t copy this stuff and believe it will work in your company’s environment as it does in Zappos’. You have to come up with…
The Best Place to Work, Part 2: Create an environment of trust
Last week, I wrote about surrounding yourself with the best and brightest. Next in this series of posts is all about Creating an environment of trust. This is closely related to the blog post I wrote a while back in my series on Return Path’s Core Values on Transparency. At the end of the day, transparency, authenticity, and caring create an environment of trust. Some examples of that? Go over the real board slides after every board meeting – let everyone in the company know what was discussed (no matter how large you are, but of course within reason) Give bad news early and often internally. People will be less freaked out, and the rumor mill won’t take over Manage like…
Building the Company vs. Building the Business
Building the Company vs. Building the Business I was being interviewed recently for a book someone is writing on entrepreneurship, which focused on identifying the elements of my “playbook” for entrepreneurial success at Return Path. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a full playbook, though I’ve certainly documented pieces of it in this blog over the years. One of the conversations we had in the interview was around the topic of building the company vs. building the business. The classic entrepreneur builds the business — quite frankly, he or she probably just builds the product for a long time first, then the business. In the course of the interview, I realized that I’ve spent at least as much energy over…