I once saw a job ad on Craigslist for a Happiness Reporter position. After applying, I got an interview during which the interviewer revealed the job was at a startup called Delivering Happiness at Work. This startup was created by Tony Hsieh, a co-founder of Zappos.
During the founding of Zappos, he was very interested in intentional company culture because a previous company he founded at one point became a place he no longer wanted to work at. In fact, after it was sold to Microsoft for over $200 million dollars, he agreed to stay on for a while and that if he left he would not receive an additional $1 million dollars. He left though, because he was more interested in his own happiness and fulfillment than in the extra money.
At first, the startup he wound up selling he had was just himself and one friend. As their startup grew, they only hired friends or acquaintances to make sure they knew and liked their staff. By the time the startup grew to a size large enough to be acquired they had hired many people from online job ads they didn’t know, but who had the appropriate skill sets. The company culture fell apart and he did not want to go into the office anymore even though it was his own company.
Later, when he was founding Zappos he knew he didn’t want to repeat that experience, so he tried to be much molre careful about what kind of culture Zappos had. At one point, in the development of Zappos culture he sent out an email to all the employees asking them what they thought the company’s core values were. Their responses became the company’s core values — the ones they would try to embody and live by. This practical, every day approach is very different than putting posters of core values on office walls, but not actually using them.
Hsieh was also reading books about happiness reseearch to find out what supports happiness and encourages it. He wanted to have a company culture based on both core values and employee happiness. If employees are happy, they will be less likely to leave thus reducing employee turnover and they will be more productive. They will also likely deliver better customer service.
So, he devised the 3 Ps of happiness: purpose, passion and pleasure. Purpose is contributing to the greater good, passion is what we are very enthusiastic about, or have strong feelings about, and pleasure is feelings of stimulation and satisfaction. In his book, Delivering Happiness, he wrote that many of us, if not most, emphasize pleasure first, then passion with purpose last.
However, this mix doesn’t work very well because pleasure is the briefest form of happiness. Eating, drinking, watching movies, playing video games, and so forth are experiences that result in a happiness that doesn’t last very long. Many of us try to be happy by seeking temporary pleasures.
The longest lasting form of happiness is purpose, but many of us may not be aware of that so we overemphasize pleasure. In his book, he wrote that to be happier we can put purpose first, passion second and pleasure last.
I got the happiness reporter job at Delivering Happiness at Work and started writing blog posts about employee happiness, employee engagement, motivation, purpose, intentional work culture, customer service and so on.
During that time I learned some important lessons that stay with me today — ones I would like to pass on to others if they are willing to be open-minded.
To be more specific, I would like to act as a mentor or coach in order to help work organizations be happier and function better. So, any part of this article intrigues you, please contact me.