Tammy Erickson, a workplace expert and author of Plugged In:The Generation Y Guide to Thriving at Work, advises that if you’re unhappy, see if you can upgrade your contribution to the company, or find a way to be more creative about your job.

via How to Survive in an Unhappy Workplace – Management Essentials – HarvardBusiness.org.

Sometimes it’s not about how much you’re getting from your job, but how much of a difference you feel like you can make. If you don’t feel like your work has value, it’s hard to get excited about it. But you usually do have some control over that.

What did you think? Tell us in the comments.

Brooks Bell, CEO of Brooks Bell Interactive

Corporate Idealist: Thank you for agreeing to this interview. Tell us a little, if you would, about how Brooks Bell Interactive came to be and what the company does.

Brooks: Brooks Bell Interactive was founded about 5 years ago, and was spun out of my first company, NovelProjects. At the time, NovelProjects focused on corporate website design and had a considerable amount of success. In 2003, we started to work with AOL on data-driven online marketing rather than website design, and it quickly became our biggest focus. It made sense to spin out another company with a new positioning to maximize our opportunity in online marketing.

Brooks Bell Interactive continues to focus on data-driven online marketing. We do strategy, design and A/B testing for acquisition and retention programs in the online subscription space. Our clients include Chase Bank, Dow Jones and AARP.

Corporate Idealist: I understand you went through a risky process relatively recently of hiring an executive team and “replacing” yourself in running the business. How did you arrive at the decision to do that, and how did you adjust to the change?

Brooks: I had hired several new designers last year, and was also still managing several key accounts, acting as our creative director and also overseeing operations. I was directly managing 14 people, and quickly became overwhelmed. My team wasn’t getting the direction or training they needed, and I had very little time or mental capacity to work on the business rather than in the business. I knew that this status quo was far from sustainable and had to make the choice either to invest in a management layer or to scale back my team. Scaling back the team wasn’t really an option, so it was clear that making the investment in my executive team was a step that I needed to take for the company to really have a shot at long-term success.

Looking back, it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Our revenue is up 50% this year, stress levels are down, and we are more productive than ever.

Corporate Idealist: You’ve previously talked about the process of defining your core values and culture, and what a challenge that was. What made it so challenging?

Brooks: Defining core values was a challenge at first. We were a simple transactional company in our early years: a new project would come in, we would do it, and get paid, and move on to the next project. I didn’t feel a strong sense of control over where the company was going and couldn’t easily articulate why we were in business. So, core values seemed irrelevant to me.

This perspective changed in 2006 when I did a retreat with two of my early senior employees. We used the later chapters in E-Myth for our retreat and started with the Primary Aim. It was a powerful, eye-opening exercise that helped me dramatically change my point of view on the company. We established our core values to align with my own personal values, and started to use them as a foundation on which to base our future decisions. The company’s culture started to shift almost immediately, and a new, much more motivated and positive company attitude emerged.

Corporate Idealist: How did defining your core values contribute to being able to run a successful company? Has company culture been an important element in your success and maturity as a business?

Brooks: We defined our core values at the same time that we articulated our company purpose and vision. The effect of those three things was somewhat intangible, but it shifted a perception away from ‘I’m working for Brooks’ to working for a deeper, more individually fulfilling vision. It allowed people to buy in to the company’s purpose, spending energy on something that was in line with their own values and more satisfying than just a paycheck.

Core values, purpose and vision have absolutely helped us in our maturity, resulting in a more long-term approach to decision making, as well as more consistent success in recruiting and hiring.

Corporate Idealist: What did the road to maturity as a business owner and business leader look like for you?

Brooks: I would say that I’m still on this road to maturity as a business owner and leader, as I learn ways to improve myself and my leadership skills every day. The road to where I am now has already been quite a journey. My adventure has included incredible winning years, stressful losing years, partner challenges, constant growth, HR headaches, increasingly high standards and a quickly evolving role in it all.

I am currently managing an incredibly smart, capable team, and my new challenge is to stay ahead of them and provide the direction, goals, and accountability framework they need to perform. It’s tougher than you might think; they really keep me on my toes.

Corporate Idealist: What have been some of the stumbling blocks or setbacks you’ve experienced in growing your company?

Brooks: The biggest challenge for us was to manage the evolution of our biggest client, AOL. In 2006, they represented over 70% of our revenue. In 2007, they were around 15%. In 2008, they were an almost negligible percentage of our revenue. AOL was undergoing massive corporate changes in that period, so we suspected that this might be the case. We needed to replace that revenue quickly to maintain our momentum. In addition, we had been accustomed to servicing only 2 or 3 large clients at a time, so we also needed to build the architecture to be able to service a much larger and more diverse client roster.

It was not an easy task. I feel proud of what we’ve accomplished in the last 2 years. We now have a strong, diversified client base, a well-oiled infrastructure and a well-trained team of professionals to ensure a consistently high level of service.

Corporate Idealist: As we talk about Corporate Idealism on this blog, it’s about doing meaningful work, being creative in business, and focusing on the customer. A lot of your company’s history seems to parallel those values. Do you have any words of wisdom for our readers about being a real-world “Corporate Idealist” and business leader?

Brooks: Yes! I was recently reading some notes from a speech I gave to college students when I was a recent graduate myself. I had just started my first company and was just beginning to have a taste of success. I gave some advice back then that I still think is so relevant on many levels. I said “Success is not about our design (some people have questionable taste anyway), it’s not about our technical capabilities (some may not even realize that what we’re doing is as strategic as it is). We are successful only because we do everything we can to make the right people happy.”

I think this is still relevant because the ‘right’ people are often your customers, your client’s customers, your manager, your CEO, and your investors. No matter what business you’re in, success almost always boils back down to making the right people happy.

photo credit: Michal Osmenda

If you’re like us, work requires you to take a trip every now and then. Or, if you’re like us, you find yourself needing to do a bit of work, even while on vacation to exotic locales.

So, in an effort to help you maximize your time, stay productive and stay balanced at 30,000 feet in the air, here are our 10 tips for in-air (or in-airport) productivity.

In the airport

1. Find a quiet spot. While it’s impossible to escape the announcements and cellphone conversations that ravage your peace and quiet, you can minimize it by sitting at a gate without a flight scheduled soon. Add some headphones and don’t face the walking areas of the concourse and you might just limit distraction enough to get the job done.
2. Have your carry-on bags packed with a high level of organization and a low level of stuff. This not only makes it easier to speed through the bag screening, but you won’t waste any time searching through a wasteland of paperwork to find what you’re looking for. Light is better for your back, too, and you won’t have to worry about finding a spot overhead for a giant bag.
3. When you’re packing your carry-on, dedicate one small section or pocket for the things that normally reside in your pants pockets. As you’re in line for the metal detectors, empty everything in your pockets into that section. As soon as you’re through, back in the pants it all goes. Being able to do this on the fly saves lots of time and aggravation.
4. Resist the urge to chow down. Airport food is famously unhealthy and expensive. Not only will you have to make up for those extra calories and cash, but any time you spend waiting in line is a waste, too. If you simply have to have something, then go with coffee, fruit, or something pre-made. You’ll save cash, calories, and minutes.
5. Hit the bathroom on the way to get your luggage. Everyone’s in such a hurry to get from the jetway to the baggage carousel, but all you’re going to do there is wait some more. A better use of your time and the facilities? Make a quick dash for the loo en route to your bags.

In the air

1. Save your magazines for pre-flight and pre-10,000 feet. Since you can’t listen to your iPod or boot up your laptop yet (and since you don’t want to listen to pre-flight announcements), this is a perfect time to catch up on the latest Fast Company or Wired. So, if you have a trip coming in the next two weeks, resist the urge to read magazines at home so you’ll better use your time in your seat.
2. Signal to your seatmate that you mean business. If you’re going to be working during the flight, your initial introduction to the folks on your row of seats should be straightforward. Just say hello, then immediately buckle your seat belt and open a book, legal pad, laptop, etc. This – unlike a newspaper – projects that you’re going to be working on the flight. You won’t make any friends this way, but you’ll gain valuable minutes.
3. Have the laptop ready to go. Make sure it’s fully charged and on standby so when you hear that magic ding while passing through 10,000 feet, you’ll be able to crack it open and get started. Feel free to also have documents or presentations already open. Sure, we’re only talking about minutes, but minutes matter.
4. Drink water; save the snacks. You don’t want a bunch of food crowding that already tiny seat-back tray. Drink a cup of water to stay fresh and go ahead and accept the free peanuts. Just save them for when it’s time to put the laptop away or when you’re waiting to get off the plane.
5. Not using a laptop in flight? Then make a plan for what you’re reading or writing. Strategy matters just as much when it comes to analog work as it does digital work. So, if you’re reading reports first, have them ready to rock at takeoff. Or, if you’re penning a speech, make sure pad and paper are at the ready so you can use every precious moment of flight.

By maximizing your time at the airport and in flight, you’ll save time when you get to where you’re going, allowing you to relax and explore your destination.

(Note: A special thanks to my world-traveling friend Ben. He’s been to more countries than most people and knows what he’s talking about when it comes to travel. He’s thinking of blogging. I hope this post is the tipping point, showing him that he could knock it out of the park.)

Tell us: What do you do to stay productive while flying or getting ready to fly?

photo credit: quinn.anya

As I mentioned on Mother’s Day, I grew up in a household where both parents were business people. (My mother, as I said in that post, spent years as a chamber of commerce executive and is now an elected official in my hometown.) My father spent 30-some years in industrial sales and sales management, and he worked out of our house when he wasn’t on the road, so I saw him in work mode a great deal of the time.

Both my parents were role models for me in many ways to become the Corporate Idealist I am today. Below are a few lessons I learned from my father, and which I hope are similar to lessons other people have learned from their own fathers about business.

Act sensibly, but be passionate about what you do.

My father was a likable, friendly guy but he had a short fuse and I sometimes heard him getting angry on the phone with suppliers, colleagues, and probably even customers. I know that what set him off the most was when people didn’t match his expectations of quality and service.

While I don’t think yelling at people on the phone is necessarily the best way to conduct ourselves in business, it shows passion. If you’re passionate about what you do, the challenge is to use your zeal to fuel others’ enthusiasm, and to spark your own creativity and innovation. Even slightly hot-headed dads would probably agree.

Don’t start fights, but stand up for yourself if you’re bullied.

This lesson comes not so much from the workplace as from the playground, but it applies everywhere. Unfortunately, even in the most mundane office environments, there are often still playground bullies. Sometimes they’re the CEO; sometimes they’re just at the next desk. Fortunately, Cy Wakeman recently posted an entry over at Fast Company about dealing with office bullies.

Invent and innovate.

My dad and I were on the front porch swing one time, and he started talking about inventions, and how much money there was in inventing something, and how I should try to think of something I could invent. I remember describing a concept I had for a typewriter that would type down onto paper underneath of it so it could work on odd size pages and bound paper. I don’t think he was very impressed, and I chuckle when I think of it.

Still, while I have not invented something in a classic sense, I have certainly tried to apply a philosophy of innovation to my work and other areas of my life.

In the end, your relationships matter.

When my dad was dying from cancer in 2005, he asked me to help him write some letters to some of his friends. He had a very difficult time finding a way to express what he wanted to say, so we came up with something that said “thank you for everything – your support, your kindness, your prayers, and most of all, your love.” Several of his friends approached me at his funeral to tell me how much they cherished that letter. Many of us may not suffer long enough to get the bittersweet chance to write those kinds of letters, so it’s important to express our love and gratitude to each other as often as we can.

The corollary to that lesson is that life is too short to spend your time with people you don’t care about, or who don’t share your values.

How about you? What did you learn from your father about business, or about life in general? Leave your lessons and stories in the comments.

And Happy Father’s Day to all fathers and children of fathers!

What’s not to love?

So I was delighted to have the opportunity to interview Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, for Corporate Idealist. The following responses provide insights into what it’s like to lead a truly innovative and customer-centric company… that just happens to do over $1 billion in gross sales.

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com

Corporate Idealist: Thank you for agreeing to this interview. In previous interviews, you’ve mentioned that you got into the shoe business because it looked like such a great opportunity — a $40 billion market. Did you have any concept at the time that you might differentiate the company through customer service, or did that evolve with time?

Tony: Back in 1999, there really weren’t any great destinations online for buying shoes. After learning that it was a $40 billion market in the US, and 5% of it ($2 billion) was being done through paper mail order catalogs, it seemed like a good investment opportunity. I got involved with Zappos about 2 months after it started.

From the beginning, we’ve always thought that customer service was important. But it wasn’t until 2003 that we decided we wanted the Zappos brand to not just be about shoes. Instead, we decided that we wanted the Zappos brand to actually be about the very best customer service and customer experience. Once we made that decision, we started making a lot of changes to our business to be even more customer-service focused.

Corporate Idealist: You’ve also stated that roughly 75% of your business on any given day is from repeat customers. Was the realization that repeat business was going to be your sweet spot something that came about by accident when reviewing business intelligence data, or were you actively trying to cultivate a loyalty- oriented business?

Tony: We stumbled into it accidentally. In the early days of the company (we were founded in 1999), we were unable to raise funding so we weren’t able to spend a lot of money on expensive marketing campaigns. As a result, we were forced to focus more on our existing customers. What we found was that the more we invested into customer service and the customer experience, the more loyal they were, and the more we grew from word of mouth. Today, we take most of the money we would have spent on paid marketing or advertising and invest it into the customer experience instead.

Corporate Idealist: What challenges did you have to overcome to make the company truly able to focus on customer service and customer experience?

Tony: During the first few years, there were many times when we we didn’t have enough money to pay our own employees, but we had such a passionate and dedicated group of employees, that many of them decided to forgo or reduce their salaries because they all believed in the long term potential of the company. If it weren’t for the passion of our early employees, Zappos wouldn’t be around today.

Corporate Idealist: Have you ever had to debate with other executives or with your board of directors about the costs associated with providing an excellent customer experience? If so, how has that been resolved?

Tony: Like any other business, we still have financial goals we need to meet in order to keep our shareholders and board of directors happy. Our approach has been to maximize the amount we invest in the customer experience and our company culture while still meeting our financial goals. There are always things we can do to make our customers happier… for example, in theory we could offer same day delivery for every customer. But it wouldn’t make sense from a financial perspective, so we don’t do that.

Corporate Idealist: Turning our attention to the employee experience, your hiring practices are famously steeped in Zappos culture and oriented towards retaining the right people through the on-boarding process. There’s a clear customer benefit in all this, but it seems that there is an employee benefit, too, in working around people who share a vision and a positive attitude. What indicators can you describe (such as retention, etc.) that this approach is working as intended?

Tony: Our turnover rate for employees varies by department (for example, turnover in the warehouse is higher), but when you compare each department with the same department in other companies, we’ve found that it’s generally lower, which saves the company money in the long run.

Corporate Idealist: You’ve said that when you decided to move operations to Las Vegas in 2004, it was due to difficulties finding customer service people in San Francisco. Yet it seems as if Las Vegas has come to be part of the company identity, as well — visiting conventioneers are often welcomed by Zappos by a party in a trendy nightclub. [Editor's note: I've been fortunate enough to attend one myself.] How did the employees who relocated from San Francisco adapt to Las Vegas culture, and how long did it take for Las Vegas to be part of the company identity?

Tony: When we first moved from San Francisco to Las Vegas, we had about 90 employees in San Francisco and about 70 ended up moving with the company.  Today, we have about 700 employees in Las Vegas, so the vast majority of our current employees joined Zappos after they had already lived in Las Vegas.

For the employees that moved from San Francisco, some of them decided that living in Las Vegas wasn’t quite right for them, so we offered to pay for their relocation back to San Francisco. Overall, I think most employees are pretty happy with the move.

Most customers don’t actually know that we are located in Las Vegas, so I’m not sure if it’s really a part of the company identity.

Corporate Idealist: Another big piece of the Zappos identity that was later to the game is Twitter. You yourself are clearly one of the most popular accounts on Twitter, and many Zappos employees use it as well. How did Zappos come to embrace Twitter, and how has it become a part of the culture?

Tony: We have over 400 employees on Twitter, and you can view their tweets at:

http://twitter.zappos.com/employee_tweets

As you can see, most of the tweets are not about business or marketing, but it’s a great way for us to connect on a more personal level with both employees and customers. It gives people a glimpse into our company culture, which is ultimately what our brand is all about.

Corporate Idealist: Corporate Idealism, as we espouse it on this blog, is all about creative business, meaningful and satisfying work, and an unrelenting focus on the customer, none of which do we believe contradict the ability to make money. The Zappos story epitomizes that. Do you have anything to add for our readers about being a real- world Corporate Idealist?

Tony: I would say rather than focus on what will make you the most money or be best for your career, figure out what you would be passionate for 10 years and go pursue that. A lot of people work hard at building a career so that one day down the road they think it will bring them happiness. And most of the time, when they finally accomplish their goal, they realize that it doesn’t really end up bringing happiness or fulfillment for the long term. One of the things that the research has shown is that people are very bad at predicting what will make them happy. If the ultimate goal is to achieve enduring happiness, it seems like it’s worth spending some time learning about the science of happiness so you don’t wind up in the same situation.

photo credit: Éamonn

A friend once told me, “When clients come to me with something they want to do, I pass it through three tests. If it is not clearly illegal, flagrantly immoral, or physically dangerous, I tell them to go right ahead and do it.” For years I thought this philosophy was unique to the practice of law, but I’ve recently wondered if it should be applied in most professional work.

Often when a client comes to you, he or she is less seeking your advice than seeking your skills in implementing what they already have decided to do. This may create an ethical pull in one or two directions. The most difficult is when the client’s goal or process itself conflicts with your personal ethics.

Recording Your Concerns

We all know people who have succumbed to the pressure to go along with something they believed to be wrong, and the results are disastrous. There is no good end to that story. If you have a supervisor, talk with them in private about your concerns. Most people are supportive of working through the problem, and at the very least if you are now on record with your issue. If you are beyond ethics and into illegal territory, you must refuse participation. If you are the supervisor, you will have to have this conversation directly with the client.

Wants vs. Needs

There is a second type of more nuanced ethical dilemma: You may not think the goal or process is wrong, but you may believe it is not in the client’s best interest. We do what we do to help advance positive results for our clients, and in turn hope to garner a reputation for excellent outcomes. If we do what the client wants, and the outcomes are poor, have we truly succeeded? But if we push our own agendas and become disconnected from the heart and mind of our clients, do the outcomes matter?

Staying Connected for Everyone’s Success

We can do more to balance this equation by strategically building better, deeper relationships with our clients, and by spending more time working through the pros and cons of various decisions. There are no easy short cuts.

I would tweak the story above to say the three tests are for us as providers. Know your own business culture and standards and faithfully enforce them. If we cannot establish shared goals and understanding behind project direction, the client relationship will not be successful. That relationship is the ultimate positive outcome we all want.

How have you handled tricky ethical scenarios at work? Tell us in the comments.