Just finished reading Seth Godin’s latest book ‘Lynchpin’ (well, well worth a read as ever!). He highlighted a great example of a business that works extremely hard to get (and retain) the right people that have bought in to their vision and their ‘way of doing things’ (culture).
Zappos, the incredibly successful e-tailer which has a recognized ‘obsession’ with customer service offers it’s ‘new starts’ $2,000 to quit! After an intensive four week ‘induction process’ which introduces the new employees to the company’s ‘vision’, culture and processes, each employee is made ‘The Offer’. They are told “If you quit now, we’ll pay you your wages for the past four weeks plus a $2,000 ‘bonus’”. Apparently, less than 3% typically take up the offer!
Being a ‘Dramatically and Demonstrably Different’ business is often centred very much around all the people who work in it. They have to ‘own” what your trying to do and recognise how they can contribute to it. 3D businesses do all they can to get that ‘ownership’. The Zappos ‘Offer’ is a very powerful way of getting ‘buy in’ to what you’re trying to achieve.
It means the ones that stay WANT to be there!
