The promoter sent Robroy a couple of advance copies of Delivering Happiness (http://www.deliveringhappinessbook.com) by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, and asked me to write “an honest review.”
The request alone made me happy. There is so much horrible writing out there, and it’s so much fun to criticize. I was really hoping to hate this book.
Unfortunately, I liked it. You take a shine to Tony as a kid, and come to admire the selfless, tireless leader as an adult. Though I’ve never sold a company for $265M, as he did with LinkExchange, or gambled it all for a chance to sell another company for $1.2B, as he did with Zappos, I feel like I did. I feel like we did it together. His story-telling is that good.
But the real value, and the reason I’d recommend the book to business folks, is Chapter 5. There you get 70+ pages on how to move your business forward with Zappos’ structured “Pipeline” for connecting customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction. It makes sense. Everyone gets happier the happier they make others.
Everyone, that is, but Tony. His happiness is temporary. He’s thrilled at the moment of conquest, or “checking it off the list,” like the time he risked his life on Mt. Kilimanjaro, an important experience, for sure. But he doesn’t seem to experience the other kind of happiness. The sustainable kind. Intimacy.
It’s a business book, not a romance; I get it. But as a man, Tony seems to have no interest in that stuff. No wife, no kid, no dog, no prospects. He’s so busy working, no one really gets close, and in the end, you feel that this amazingly successful, super positive businessman is unfulfilled personally. Which is a bummer. You love him too much to see him to fail now. Yet all you can do is close the book and hope it turns out that Delivering Happiness is only half the story. Maybe the title of his next book will be Receiving Happiness.
If so, on that day, Robroy will give an honest review. I’ll stand up with tears in my eyes and cheer.
(Read my column “Working Life” in the Baltimore Business Journal)
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