Jenn Lim Interview CEO, Delivering Happiness

Transcription

1 Jenn Lim Interview CEO, Delivering Happiness Tim Kuppler: Hello, I m Tim Kuppler with CultureUniversity.com and our purpose is to positively impact society on a global scale through culture awareness, education, and action. I am truly excited to have Jenn Lim, CEO of Delivering Happiness, with us today. Delivering Happiness supports their purpose through speaking, coaching, consulting, and products that inspire. They were founded by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh and Jenn Lim. Delivering Happiness is a separate company from Zappos and a true benchmark company in so many ways for those of us that are passionate about the subject of culture. Jenn, thank you for being with us today at CultureUniversity.com. Jenn Lim: Thanks for having me Tim. Tim Kuppler: Let s jump into it. Since I am not sure everyone has heard of Delivering Happiness, what is the purpose of Delivering Happiness? What do you do? Jenn Lim: Sure, I just want to give a little back story if people haven t heard of us. It actually started as a book by the same name - Delivering Happiness - that was launched in Tony (Hsieh) and I thought it was just going to be a launch of a book and check it off the list. Low and behold there was a demand for happiness in the world and we saw it on many levels mainly on the company side but also on the personal and individual side so that s why we decided to evolve it into its own company. Our purpose is to continue the path that we started with the book and to continue inspiring passion and purpose for a happier world. That s basically what we are trying to do from a company perspective in helping companies increase the strength and capability of culture, but also from an individual perspective. From what we heard of people really taking this whole aspect of positive psychology and the science of happiness to heart in a way that they really want to make changes in their life from it. Whether big or small but essentially prioritizing this sense of sustaining happiness in their life or in the workplace Tim Kuppler: So why is happiness so important for organizations and maybe even our world? Jenn Lim: I think it s been interesting because I feel we hit a tipping point of people understanding what this concept of happiness is. It s interesting and ironic because it s not a new concept in the sense it s in our Declaration of Independence - the pursuit of happiness, but also it started way back when. Aristotle back in 200 B.C. said happiness is the purpose of our existence but more interestingly he said that happiness is dependent on ourselves. Yet, when I travel the world talking about the subject, I always ask one question at the beginning of

2 Page 2 of 9 my talk which is: how many people in the room feel that they understand how to sustain their personal happiness in their life? It never fails that between 1-5% of the room raises their hand no matter where I am in the world. Actually, now that I went to Beijing two weeks ago, I can now say 0-5% in the room raises their hand. What s so startling is that here we are, an advanced society, we have all this technology, we have all these benefits from sacrifices made by our ancestors in the past but why are we still a fundamental unhappy global society? I think people are realizing it s not just a nice to have anymore, this whole notion of happiness is an expectation. We know there is more to life than the money, title, and status. That s what the tipping point is that I have been seeing. People are realizing this and they want to do something about it. Tim Kuppler That sounds very similar to what we see with culture in general. There s been a lot of awareness about the subject of culture and now more of a movement to translate that to action. How do you parallel the tipping point on happiness with what you are seeing about general awareness of people understanding culture and the importance of culture in organizations? How are things the same or are there some differences? Jenn Lim: I think there s a lot of similarities and I think at the end of the day you can look at this whole tipping point whether it s on the happiness side or awareness and interest on culture and what that really means for organizations. I think it can be, if you want to be really old school about it, you can look at it from a business perspective how do we retain our employees, how do we minimize our cost / maximize our bottom line? All those types of things but I think because of the shifts in society we re seeing it come from a more holistic point of view. We are no longer really seeing it as oh, yeah let s be happy because that s a nice to have but we re actually seeing it and being more aware of it. It s actually more of a competitive advantage and no longer a nice to have but a necessary thing in order to keep innovating and to keep up with what s happening in the marketplace. Going back to what I was saying earlier, the expectation of people in the workplace of what they want out of it I am not just talking about millenials, I think everyone across generations have this sense of - yes there is more to life than work so what is it? I think there are a lot of similarities there from the old school perspective but where we are today it s more holistic with what we think life is and not just work but how we can really integrate them into one and the same because at the end of the day it s just life. Tim Kuppler: You have also talked about how happiness can be a business model. You referenced it being a competitive advantage. What do you mean by happiness being part of your business model? Jenn Lim: At the end of the day we come to a simple equation. We believe that if you have happier employees you will actually have happier customers and then you will have long term, more sustainable companies / brands. By focusing on what might be counterintuitive in the past, but focusing on the people in your organization and thinking about it along the lines of what that actually means. If you have happier employees what does that mean? It increases productivity, it increases creativity, it increases engagement and this is a big buzz word right

3 Page 3 of 9 now. How do you engage your employees? What we say is think about their happiness and think about it along the lines of it s not for the sake of making a profitable company, it s for the sake of the fact that if you engage employees to want to show up to work and to want to show up because their friends are there and they want to be engaged with their day to day activities because they believe what they are doing is adding to whatever the greater purpose of the company. All of these things add up to a more successful company because as the studies show, companies are more profitable in the long run and they can have a more sustainable brand because of understanding that higher purpose for the company and then tying it back to the individual. Tim Kuppler: So where do organizations start once they believe in the value and understand the importance? How do they integrate that in how they operate to make some change? Jenn Lim: I believe it comes down to the DNA so the basics of it, and what I say the DNA of the organization, is basically the core values. There was a really interesting article in Wired magazine 6-8 months ago. They did this analysis studying the movement of different species of animals in the world. They looked at bees as an example. If you look at bees and think about how they move in their environment, it s kind of chaotic, they are butting heads but they are getting their job done they are making honey. Then they looked at mackerel in the sea and they saw they would swim faster and faster in circles when they felt endangered. They are getting their job done as well, they are protecting themselves, but they are not really getting anywhere. Then they looked at birds. Imagine birds over the Serengeti flying as a flock. When one bird moves then the whole flock flies in the same direction and then when another bird does it and the same thing happens, they all fly together. What s interesting in the study was that the movement and the calculation of that movement in other words the algorithm of movement was exactly the same except one single variable and that variable was alignment. The bees had no or little alignment whereas the birds had the most alignment. If you apply that to an organizational setting then you think about what it is that keeps all the individuals able to act on their own as we say their weird unique selves while at the same time behaving as a single organism or behaving as a single company all flying in the same direction toward the same goals. So to me it s the DNA that combines that and provides that foundation that connects everyone together so those are the core values in my mind. Tim Kuppler: You ve been focusing on core values for some time with all of your work at Zappos - they are kind of the poster child for culture work in general and happiness with all of their practices related to hiring, culture reviews, and reward and recognition. What are some less known but still very important aspects of a commitment to core values that you see at Zappos that aren t out there in the popular press so much? Jenn Lim: The everyday are of how you implement values. There is the art and science of it. I think it s important to remember there are elements of both. For us, from a delvering happiness standpoint, it s important to be able to measure the correlation between the happiness of your employees and that of productivity and ultimately the success of the company. I also need to remind people there is an art to how you roll out culture and roll out

4 Page 4 of 9 values because you can talk about behaviors and you can talk about how you measure them and that s one way you suck the fluffiness out of happiness in making it real, measurable, and tangible. There s also the art of it and letting things happen on its own. That s when you really see the creativity and innovation of the people that see and do it every day the most important people, the front-line people, that have these ideas and letting those percolate. As an example, I was talking to a company in Chicago. It s a law firm and we know there s a lot of happiness that can be had in a law firm situation (laugh). She said one day one of the employees said I want to start making kale shakes. I want to have a kale shake day every week and we ll just start the conversation from there. She started with this one simple idea of I love kale shakes so I am going to bring it to work. All of a sudden more people said I want to be part of this kale shake thing too. That organic sort of artful way of letting people be who they are and be, as we say, true to their weird self and bringing their passion, all of a sudden started a different form of a water cooler conversation that engaged people, made them more connected, and then also invited more conversation about the work stuff they were all working on. I guess it s the balance between the art and the science of it is what my point is. Tim Kuppler: A lot of people, when they hear about the subject of happiness, might think about celebrations, cool fun and maybe even weird things people do to be themselves at work. How does it tie to the organizations strategies, goals and priorities? When they make a commitment to do something about happiness, how does it impact their strategies, goals, and priorities or does it? Jenn Lim: I think it does. It s interesting because a lot of the time when people think about culture a lot of images come up like back in the dot com days. What we know now more than ever is that culture is not having a fridge full of free Red Bull, it s not about having a ping pong table in the rec room, it s so much more complex and dynamic than that. Every single person walking in the company changes that dynamic as well as every person walking out. We have this title of Chief Happiness Officer. I think it does change the strategy and change the conversation from the high level of business priorities because all of a sudden it changes the conversation you are having around it. If you have this notion of happiness at the top level C-level person that is responsible for culture or happiness, it does change the perspective of what your goals are. I think the secret to what makes it concrete is to integrate it in a way that happiness doesn t need to be in your face but it s blended in the with what you need to do from a day to day perspective to reach those goals, whatever they are from a productivity or profitability standpoint. So to have it weaved in one and the same conversation is essential in understanding this is not for us as a company, it s for you as in an employee, and in the end of the day we succeed together. Tim Kuppler: That s great. You talked about how you were in China recently and you have worked with organizations around the world. What have you learned from other organizations about the subject of happiness moving beyond Zappos? Jenn Lim: I think that s one of the great things about having put out the book because in an interesting way a lot of companies came out of the woodwork and said this is what we are

5 Page 5 of 9 doing in our own way. They didn t necessarily call it happiness but they called it however they wanted to term it. What s been interesting in the last year to two years is that there are companies and industries where you wouldn t think this whole notion of happiness would be considered, like major financial institutions. In the last year alone I spoke to four or five of them and they reached out to us. It s no longer this weird buzz word of happiness or culture. It s this understanding that we as a company need to change and to keep up with what is going on out there. I think this is the right direction. I think that was the biggest ah ha for us at Delivering Happiness and seeing those companies that come out and say this is what we are doing, how do we continue doing it? - that s what is biggest on their mind, not just starting it but scaling it over time. Tim Kuppler: So what advice do you give them? How do you guide them on that path? Jenn Lim: Well, number one I say it s not easy. It s a commitment. The biggest lessons learned is that sometimes it starts out so well and then companies rest on their laurels and say hey we did a good job and that s when it goes down. It really comes to this idea of being committed to this notion of running a values-driven or culture-driven organization whether times are good are bad. If economic tides go up or down, are you going to be committed to it? I think that s the number one lesson everyone can learn about how to make this successful and sustainable. Tim Kuppler: That makes sense. The awareness of the subject is growing and you talked about how it s reaching a tipping point. What troubles you about the ability to get over that tipping point or the ability to make an impact with even more organizations? Jenn Lim: I think it kind of comes back to what I just said about the commitment. I think people sometimes see it as the word of the day. Whether it s Coca Cola ads or just a lot of companies using it as more identifiable with their purpose. I think the way to go from a tipping point to real sustainable change is this acknowledgement that it produces real results. That s what we are trying to do with taking the fluff out of it and making it measurable is so important. We all had nay-sayers in the past saying that s just fluffy stuff, let s go back to the way to create more sustainable businesses. By connecting more and more to the survey results and to the metrics we get out of there then the less the nay-sayers can say nay anymore. It s not frustration it s more just putting the data where it is to be true and letting it speak for itself and that takes time. Tim Kuppler: What measures tell you about happiness? What s part of the magic formula? Jenn Lim: We go back to the science of happiness. There are different levers according to science that will increase a person s happiness. I ll name a few: the sense of progress is a person developing in their role or in their life? A sense of control is that person making decisions and are those decisions being executed on or at least considered? Connectedness the depth and breadth of relationships in your work and life. Having passion and flow flow is a psychological term that describes something you are so engaged in that feels minutes have gone by but in reality it s actually been hours. How you create that sense of flow in the workplace is basically when you have the level of challenge meeting your level of skill. So if

6 Page 6 of 9 you think about how we can work together and group teams of people to have that sense of flow in the workplace so they really want to be engaged in their work. Ultimately the most important element, going back to the science of happiness, is the sense of higher purpose and meaning. What are you doing that is greater than yourself? What is your personal higher purpose and is that aligned with your company higher purpose? All of these are just different forms of the levers we have in a workplace to increase employee happiness. What we do is come in using that data to create tools like surveys to ask employees where they are in this spectrum. Are they connected to colleagues? Are they communicating with their boss? Are they aligned in terms of their values and the company values? Being able to coalesce all this data into a metric. In a similar way there are indexes out there like the Happy Business Index we are creating. Tim Kuppler: Once you see your results, how do you engage with an organization to change them, to make a difference and to improve things? Jenn Lim: We break it down into different sections of what those metrics mean. Sometimes it s within the personal resources of the individual. Sometimes it s within the system, like the organization itself. We dissect it to the next level of what are these numbers indicative of? We basically make recommendations based on that. Knowing things are always dynamic and change over time, we ask people to do these on a quarterly basis. We can take a sense of what s going well, what s not going well and then make recommendations based on that. I just wanted to point out who we are working with. He s a very important partner of ours by the name of Nic Marks. He has a pretty popular TED talk on the happy planet index and what we are doing with him is working on the Happy Business Index I mentioned early. If you can imagine. taking all these stats, and building a model about how the personal resources, personal happiness and then the system around the organization effect the person s happiness then we can make recommendations based on that. Tim Kuppler: I was glad you referenced the connection to higher purpose. What have you seen other leading organizations do to clarify that higher purpose and engage their organization around it? Jenn Lim: They are doing different things. I guess there s good news and bad news. When the company comes to us for help and they spout off all the problems or issues they are having in terms of employee engagement, turnover, etc. They all sound the same. It s a good and bad thing. At least we know the problem. The bad thing is that over 75-85% of the workforce in the world is disengaged from their work. Putting all of these things together, they are all in different phases. Some companies are already very culture driven and some are just realizing what that really means. I know it s a typical consulting answer, but it depends on the stage they are at. As an example, when a company has values already we say - well you have your values and your purpose but are you living by them? We go through this exercise of asking how can you exemplify if you are living them? If you are not, it s time to revisit your values and revisit your purpose and see if your company and your employees are really aligned by this. At the end of the day it all depends in terms of the spectrum of where they are at.

7 Page 7 of 9 Tim Kuppler: I am sure you run across quite a few organizations that don t have a purpose defined. They might have something laid out but it s really not a purpose. You probably run across organizations that might have values defined with no explanation or life behind them. How common is it for an organization not to have a defined purpose or not to have clear values? Jenn Lim: It s pretty common. Most of the companies we come to have values but I would say 80% of them don t actually live by them. I don t know if you know about the Zappos Culture Book. It was started 8-9 years ago. It was a simple way to say - how do you define the culture? We said let s ask our employees. Every year we ask them to submit two or three paragraphs about what Zappos culture means to them. We published those answers in a book unedited, except grammar and spelling errors, but in the sense of really being transparent about what Zappos culture means to them. It s interesting, as you may well know, when you ask people to be honest they can be really honest. There is the good stuff and the bad stuff printed for everyone to see since we send it out to anyone that asks for it. A question I ask companies these days is: would you be willing to print, unedited, what your employees think of your culture? I would say 9 times out of 10 the answer is no. When they say yes, it s kind of a meek or quiet maybe. In the sense of how strong do we feel we are living up to our values and our purpose, the reality is that there s really a minority of companies doing it. Tim Kuppler: With this whole awareness thing, you could ask anyone whether culture is important and most of them would say yes. Let s talk about your purpose and values and they say - let s not go there. It seems like we are at a tipping point but sometimes it feels we are so far away. Jenn Lim: The good thing is that people and companies are at least wanting to understand what it really means. I have been in all of these group conversations with champions of culture from all different companies and industries. It s interesting they are asking very similar questions trying to define what this really means. At this same time they are all trying to figure it out in their own way. We are just at that point where there is enough conversation going around it knowing that we, as people that are advocates of this, can kind of connect the dots in the sense of hey, if you don t know what you are doing you are not alone. It s on everyone s mind and everyone is figuring it out at the same time. Where we are coming from as DH is saying you need to figure out your unique DNA, your unique purpose, and vision and values that are true to yourself as a company. I guess I am looking at it from a positive standpoint that at least there are actions being taken to understand what this really means. Tim Kuppler: It definitely seems like, fast forward 5-10 years into the future, hopefully it s going to be far more commonplace and you will be the one left out in the cold if you are not clear about your purpose and values.

8 Page 8 of 9 Jenn Lim: Right Tim Kuppler: So what else is Delivering Happiness doing for the future? You mentioned the research and the work on measuring happiness. Is there anything else you would like to share about interesting plans for the future? Jenn Lim: Sure. Essentially we are a start-up. Even though we had Zappos part of our history, it s really us becoming a sustainable business through what we say is important, it s through happiness. I think with time and place we have been lucky with the amount of interest we have had from businesses and conferences trying to understand how to implement it in their own organization. For us we want to continue to go along with this idea of growing ourselves financially and we see it not just on the service side, we see it on the product side with inspirational products In the workplace or at home. It s all to the greater goal of really building a meaningful community globally. I say that, a community and globally, I know there are so many movements out there but from what I have seen happen in the way people as individuals and companies really take on to this idea and making a change about it. In the sense of sustaining happiness in their life and to be able to sustain their company or their individual happiness. Basically creating this community that can be connected around the world given where we are at technology-wise and be able to continue the conversation on how this is truly a life changing thing we are committed to. The more we grow ourselves the more we are able to provide these programs and networking abilities within a meaningful community. Tim Kuppler: I think that s great about what you have done. You are not just building a company but you are genuinely focused on building a movement. I think you have a statement about trying to nudge the world a little bit. Is that true? Jenn Lim: Yes, nudge the world to a happier place. Tim Kuppler: Awesome. How can our readers and listeners learn more about Delivering Happiness? Do you have any tools or resources that will help them learn. Jenn Lim: Yes, just come on our website at DeliveringHappiness.com. We offer the survey of how happy you are at your workplace free for individuals to get a sense of what that s all about. We also have ROI calculators. We also offer a free culture book if you are interested in what I referenced earlier, the Zappos Culture Book, if you are interested in that we can send you a copy. Just shoot me an to Jenn@DeliveringHappiness.com and include your mailing address because it s a physical book and we ll send one out to you. Either me or check out our website or we re on Facebook as well to get a sense of what we are all about. At the end of the day, if you are in any way intrigued by this idea of happiness in the sense that what we basically are here for in asking ourselves: what are our real goals in your life and if you ask why enough times it usually comes back to being happy, for yourself and for the

9 Page 9 of 9 people you care about in your life. If you are interested in that topic at all then just reach out to us, that s what we are here for. Tim Kuppler: We are all definitely interested in happiness. You sent me that culture book many times. I was shocked by the last one I received with it being hard backed and a couple hundred pages just some amazing content. A lot of organizations can aspire to having a culture book like that someday. You were kind of modest before. I believe you were the original creator of that or facilitator weren t you? Jenn Lim: Yes I was, way back when back in the day. Tim Kuppler: I really appreciate you being with us today and hopefully you will come back and talk some more about happiness at CultureUniversity.com Jenn Lim: Yes, I would love to. Thanks again for having me. Tim Kuppler: Thanks again Jenn, take care.