Weekly Inspiration #19: What is your higher purpose?
At LeWeb last week in Paris, Tony Hsieh delivered a very inspiring speech about his company - Zappos – and the importance of company culture. We have highlighted below the main points of his message and explained why we think that these ideas are very relevant to Sandbox.
Define your core values
A company that has a good culture makes well in the long term. Companies have to commit to them and avoid making compromises, which also means hire and fire people based on these values. For Tony, the right way to start a company is to define its core-values.
Don’t chase the money, chase the dream
It is crucial to have a vision that goes beyond money and profits. Don’t begin a business with the objective to earn money. Do what you are passionate about and as you will do it well, the money will follow. Ask yourself what would you be so passionate about doing that you would do it for 10 years without earning a dime.
Once you have a strong vision, you will find it much easier to motivate yourself and your employees. You can motivate people with financial incentives or fear, but true motivation goes along with inspiration. If you can inspire your employees making them share your vision, you don’t need to worry about motivating them anymore.
Keep asking why
Ask yourself what you are pursuing in life: buying a home? getting married? Once you have the answers, ask why again. Why do you want to buy a house? Why do you want to get married? Eventually, everyone ends up with the same answer about what they pursue in life: happiness.
What is happiness about?
There are four factors that create happiness:
1. Perceived control
2. Perceived progress
3. Connectiveness
4. Meaning (being part of something bigger than yourself)
Once you have understood them, you can apply them in your business to better motivate your employees: Zappos for example gives small promotions every 6 months instead a big one every 18 months, increasing the feeling of progress among its employees.
The 3 types of happiness
Tony sees 3 types of happiness: pleasure, engagement and meaning. Most people start looking for the first one, hoping to then be able to reach the others, which is the wrong way to go.
- Pleasure is for example about buying new things. It works well, but only as long as you can sustain it.
- Engagement is about feeling passionate about what you are doing. It works better than pleasure, but is not sustainable either.
- Meaning is about finding in life what provides happiness in the long term. Finding meaning creates a long-lasting feeling of happiness.
How this applies to Sandbox
We have created Sandbox to follow a higher purpose: our vision is to create the greatest community ever of inspiring young achievers under 30. It is what keeps us happy since two years and what makes us get up so early in the morning and stay up late at night.
It is to sustain this vision that we have developed a business model around something else we are passionate about: problem solving. We help companies understand the next generation of leaders and the way the new generation communicates.
Antoine is a Co-Founder and the CEO of Sandbox. He is currently in Antwerp Belgium, and is now leaving his computer to watch the general rehearsal of Candide in the opera house.
On the 16. December 2009 at 17:23 o'Clock
Insightful! Recently I had my own shot at defining happiness, which aims to be more “scientific” and “objective” (as much as this is possible for a subjective feeling such as happiness):
“A person can be considered to have experienced a “happy” moment if the person chooses to re-live it as an end in itself if offered at no cost.”
For the detailed derivation of this conclusion please have a look at What is happiness? ; What do you think about this definition?
Thank you,
Nick