Tony Hsieh, the chief executive of Zappos.com

Tony Hsieh, the chief executive of Zappos.com has his own idea of leadership which he implements into his company. His work experience provided a very important leadership lessons to him. He considered the culture in company to be the number one priority for the skilled and experienced team. Core committable values of culture make work of a team to be successful one. It took time and efforts to create these values but the result is worthy of them. The main principle is that people should co-operate and interact; they should feel comfortable being at the work place and sharing it with other co-workers. They should feel like a team being out of office as well. Company also acclaims initiative in work and creative new ideas. It gives people the possibility to develop and to show themselves as individuals.

As Tony Hsieh states the standard for hiring all employees, from common worker to executive manager are high but all they aimed at establishing favorable and friendly culture of a company for productive work. Each employee is responsible for his work and the work of his team. When are person hired he is reviewed from different sides and it’s a common tradition already to invite a person to some unofficial event and to watch him in this situation understanding his character and behavior. The result should be completely acceptable for a team.

Company pays attention to its workers and this is not indifferent to it what employees think of Zappos’ culture, they can express their opinion in a book which is available for any person to review. All moments ”“ from building structure to atmosphere ”“ are reviewed, considered and calculated for the only one goal ”“ culture.

Zappos.com emphasizes new methods, approaches, ways and possibilities in business and life.

Taking into account the main principles of military, we can say that most values which create the model of Hsieh’s leadership are acceptable in this field. Military service should also have its culture and values. Military discipline is based on an awareness of each serviceman military duty and personal responsibility to protect the Fatherland, his selfless devotion to his people. The main method of training in military discipline is a high conviction. The discipline stems from the principle of the military hierarchy and determines not only the attitude of subordinates to superiors, but also vice versa. Military discipline presupposes obeyance to rules and statute but it also take into account person’s initiative to solve different problems. A person hired for military service is considered from different point of view. He normally provides all the information about his life, his family, his past and this information is tested on practice. Military service also emphasizes its “employees” behavior in different situation. A soldier should understand that his work in team is the only one way to achieve the positive result, to realize their aims and sometimes to stay alive. He is also responsible for his own acts as well as for all activities of the team.

Tony Hsieh creates the model acceptable in his field of leadership but with small transformation it can be applied in military (Bryant, 2010).

The only one and very important moment is the necessity to understand that work in company provides more freedom for people while in military the regime should be more strict and sometimes tough for people who did not obey the rules cause insubordination can leads to casualties.

In general Tony Hsieh’s ideas can change some aspects in military for better. The first and the very important thing which can be applied in military is the way to hire people who can interact and co-operate as friends, because it makes team stronger and their interests to be the base for development and success.

Reference

Bryant, Adam. On a Scale of 1 to 10, How Weird Are You? Corner Office. January 2010. The New York Times.