Jenn Lim is the CEO and Chief Happiness Officer of Delivering Happiness which she co-founded with Tony Hsieh, a company that inspires people to achieve passion, happiness, and purpose. Her motto is "change your world, then change the world." Jenn recently wrote Beyond Happiness: How Authentic Leaders Prioritize Purpose and People for Growth and Impact. Great conversation on Guy Kawasaki's Remarkable People podcast with Jenn on culture and happiness and how this can create a more successful company.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'm Guy Kawasaki, and this is Remarkable People. Our guest today is Jenn Lim.
Jenn is the CEO and chief happiness officer of Delivering Happiness, a company that inspires people to achieve passion, happiness, and purpose. She's also an author, speaker and entrepreneur. She was a consultant at Zappos for eight years, from 2003 to 2011.
In 2010, she managed the launch of the book, Delivering Happiness by the CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh. This book hit number one on the bestseller list, including The New York Times and USA Today. It sold approximately 1 million copies. What started out as a book, morphed into a company and a global happiness movement. Jenn is part of the global happiness council of work and wellbeing and on the advisory board for Springboard, an initiative led by Geisinger Health System.
During her time at Zappos, she created the first of several Zappos culture books. They served as a global footprint for how companies can leverage culture and happiness to increase productivity and profitability.
Jenn believes that happier employees equals happier customers equals successful company. She challenges people to look beyond society's definition of success, status, title, and money, and redefine what happiness looks like on both an individual and company-wide basis. Her motto is: change your world, then change the world.
She recently published a new book called Beyond Happiness: How Authentic Leaders Prioritize Purpose and People for Growth and Impact.
I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People, and now, here's the remarkable Jenn Lim.
Guy Kawasaki:
You mentioned your cat. You actually called it a “cadaver cat,” and you say that the cat's name is Mandu. And then in parentheses, you say, “See what I did there?” And I read that and say, “What did she do?”
First, I go to Google. I look up Mandu. Mandu is Korean for dumplings. I said, “Okay. She named her cat after dumplings, I can understand that, but is there some play on ‘man-doing?’” So clearly, Jenn, I didn't get it. What did you do there?
Jenn Lim:
That's hilarious. Oh my God! Not that you feel bad about this. You're the second person that's asking me that.
Guy Kawasaki:
When two people tell you you're drunk, you catch a cab.
Jenn Lim:
I was in high school, and this is AP biology. My partner and I named our cat Mandu. So it's cat, Mandu. “Hey, would you like to meet our cat, Mandu?”
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh! Okay. I wasted a lot of cycles thinking about that.
Jenn Lim:
That's making my whole day, if not week.
Guy Kawasaki:
I think that that's a good acid test for when podcasters and Good Morning America interviews you. If they don't ask that question, they didn't read the manuscript carefully enough.
Jenn Lim:
That's true. That's true. Yeah. I should throw back that question, “Hey, what do you think about our cat, Mandu?” I love that that's your first question.
Guy Kawasaki:
I have to go back a few years, and I'll tell you, I visited Zappos in Las Vegas, and I just have the fondest memories of that visit. There was some royalty chair you sat in. Do you remember that chair?
Jenn Lim:
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Guy Kawasaki:
I had people kiss my ring and stuff and then as you walked through each department, they would just erupt in cheers and all that. There's not a question here. I just want to tell you, man, those were the days.
Jenn Lim:
Yeah. Totally. I remember that chair. Are you saying, Guy, people don't kiss your ring every day? I just imagined that. Because I read somewhere that you're a Mercedes Benz ambassador. That's probably part of the package.
Guy Kawasaki:
I hate to burst your bubble, but it's not that good to be Guy. So going back into Zappos history, can you explain how you came to the decision of paying shipping both ways?
Jenn Lim:
It was all Tony's ideation. You've known him for a long time. Basically his ideas come from “What's the opposite of what people think is the right idea?” And at that time, this was back in the day. E-commerce was just happening. The internet was just happening. Who would pay for shoes online? It's ridiculous.
It's not even shoes online, it's just anything online was, you buy it, you keep it, unless you want to pay to come back. But I think that was for him, just thinking in the way that he does in another level of, “What's the biggest barrier of someone buying shoes online?” I said, "Well, I have to try them on and I want to be able to get the one that I want." So for him, that was the no brainer of no one's really doing this anyway in general and it breaks down the barrier of us trying to sell shoes for the business.
Guy Kawasaki:
I wrote a book called Enchantment.
Jenn Lim:
I remember.
Guy Kawasaki:
One of the key qualities is you have to prove that you're trustworthy, and the key way to prove you're trustworthy is to figure out that the onus is upon you. So before you can be trusted, you have to trust the other person. You have to trust the other person first.
I cite the Zappos example that this is a case where the company said, “We trust you before you even trust us.” I cite it to this day. I don't know, maybe you had a part of this too, I hope it's still true, if you buy shoes on the leap year, on February 29th, you have four years to return it. Remember that?
Jenn Lim:
I didn't know that specifically, but I'm not surprised. That's probably part of the rules of return policy.
Guy Kawasaki:
With hindsight, if there was any impact this way, do you think that Zappos changed Amazon or Amazon changed Zappos?
Jenn Lim:
At that time of acquisition, this is almost ten years now, I think, because Amazon back in the day, they created their own shoe brand. I forgot what it was. I didn't think it was supposed to try and go head to head with Zappos of the world, and they eventually had to shut it down. In the end, they acquired Zappos.
Amazon was already becoming a BMS at that moment, and now it's even more, but it was growing in ways of just what they were double down on. So it was being high-tech, not high-touch, which Tony talks about a lot in terms of Zappos being the high-touch company, whereas Amazon is high-tech.
So I think after the acquisition, there were things that Amazon picked up from what Zappos did and more and more companies started to do at that point. They intentionally signed something. So between Jeff and Tony, they signed this part of the agreement, it was they won't touch each other. Amazon won't touch their culture, Zappos' culture, and all that. So that was ingrained in the understanding of the agreement.
I think there's definitely things that, because Jeff and Tony, I think they connected because they were long-term thinkers, in very different ways. Their personalities are very different, but they were always thinking long-term.
I think Jeff was more on the customer side, long-term thinking there, and then Tony was on the culture side and how that impacts customers but that's where they aligned. Amazon probably took some notes of what it meant to run a people positive and culture driven company, but at the end of the day, when you acquire a company that's someone's boss, when it comes down to it.
Guy Kawasaki:
One more policy that I'd love to know the history of-- I suppose, again, you're going to tell me this was Tony's idea-- but this concept of, “If you don't like this job, we'll pay you. Go away.” How did that come to be?
Jenn Lim:
Yeah. I can't say for sure that it was all Tony's idea, but I wouldn't be surprised it was mostly Tony idea. A lot of Tony's ideas, they’re not there and then it builds because he's just spit-balling things and he was spit-balling things all the time and some of it is fricking crazy, and some of it was, “Well, that actually might work.” Yeah, the whole thing was basically paying people to quit.
So as people were getting recruited and going through the whole training program, they had the option to opt out and take in, and at that time it started at 100 bucks, 200 bucks, back in the day, and then it slowly grew. Now that Zappos is being run by a different team and CEO, I don't know if they're doing it anymore, but it just grew and grew to thousands of dollars or whatever equals your first month of salary, I think that's what landed last.
So the whole intention there was, “Hey, we're going to help ourselves weed and filter the process, because if you're willing to take this money, then that means that you're not really bought into what we believe in,” and those are purpose and their ten values and all that, and Zappos back then saw it as a way for saving them money because we all know it just takes at least one to two times a person's salary to find someone to replace if you go through the training and all of that. So it's more of a positive way to weed out people that are not aligned with this idea of, “Do you really want to live out our purpose and values at Zappos culture?”
Guy Kawasaki:
And from your recollection, did dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people take you up on this?
Jenn Lim:
I think the percentage was around two to four percent, if I remember right. So depending on that year, I'm not sure, but it was a healthy enough percentage to have that automatic weeding process. Weed sounds pretty harsh, but filtering of alignment.
Guy Kawasaki:
You cited in your book, the guy whose company everybody gets paid 90,000 or something like that and how well that's done. That seems to be a kind of a Tony idea. Tony-ism, right?
Jenn Lim:
That wasn't a Tony idea though. That was Dan. So Dan Price is the CEO of Gravity Payments up in Seattle. I think we talked to him right around that time. After he made that decision, he became a poster child over the next wave of what it looks to pay and treat people fairly. That was Dan's idea. He's still living by it.
He's doing really things that people would think that are a little bit too controversial because in the end of the day, that causes risks within the company too. Some people are, "Wait, what? I'm doing a lot of work and all of a sudden I don't get a pay raise, but so-and-so is automatically at 75K?" That was based on a psychological study they did on what the cusp is for once you make more than 75K, based on the studies, there's been studies that have questioned that since then, but basically they said that you don't necessarily get happier after that point. That's why he based it on that and he's still doing it. Something must be going all right.
Guy Kawasaki:
So I have one more nostalgic question. One of my happiest memories of your book and South by Southwest and Tony was the Delivering Happiness bus tour. So can you just tell us about the bus tour?
Jenn Lim:
Yeah, we're going back memory lane. We've known each other for a while, Guy.
The idea was basically germinated from book tours back then, when they actually could be physical, not anymore. This is hopping from bookstore to bookstore across the country. It was basically flying here and there and there and doing a little talk or reading the book and then leaving.
Tony and I were just, “That kind of sounds a little bit boring.” Part of it was kind of self-serving too, because we never really went cross country on a bus before. It was kind of, “Well, we should do something fun, like, not just for the tour, but for ourselves, for the team.” So that's how it all came about.
Timing-wise, it so happened that South-by was the first time to test this bus thing. We didn't have the official big touring bus yet. We just rented a school bus in Austin, had it wrapped with our branding and everything and just drove it around. It was just one of those random ideas of, “Just carry the message” and give people rides and have a phone charger if their phone was dying and it became a thing.
Because we did that for a few years and it was so fun. Of course we had music and people partying on the bus. After a few years, the South-by team said, “You guys can't do that anymore,” or “You have to pay for it.” “Okay, we're just trying to help out. We're giving rides.” But anyway, it was a fun launch.
Guy Kawasaki:
We need to get rid of this 800-pound gorilla that people listening to this podcast are probably wondering about. I bet in every interview for this book, it's going to be the gorilla, and this is Tony's death. And if you were to read reports-- depression, drug addiction, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I would like you to shed the light upon what happened and what's the lesson, what's the message? Because I bet many people are thinking, “If Tony Hsieh can't be happy, who can be happy?”
Jenn Lim:
Yeah. Way to load that question eighteen minutes into the conversation. No, it's totally fair.
There's so many ways that I can approach this conversation or this question, and I am not trying to skirt around it by any means. I'm going to be as direct as I can, and being, from my own sense of, I'm just speaking for myself at this point. Just to give a bit of backstory.
Basically Tony passed right after Thanksgiving in 2020, and I had five weeks to finish this book. There was just nothing in me that could do that. Publisher was nice and understanding and gave me more time, but I'm painting that picture because to give the background of what I was trying to process of what happened to Tony, to be specific to your question, at the same time write this book.
So as you've now seen the book, the content of it was the same as it was before Tony passed. But basically there were bigger concepts of stories of life and death. Writing your eulogy instead of your resume. Everyone, I think, we can safely say experienced life and death during the last eighteen months or so.
I really was trying to process and contextualize everything that was coming through, not just through media, because there was a lot of different extremes of hearsay and people that thought they were like trusted people to speak their mind. For me, I can only speak from the last time I saw Tony was in July in Park City. Up until then, I would say the sequence of events that happened that led up to me seeing him in person and seeing where he was at, who he was surrounded by, things he was doing.
I've known Tony for, since '99, so twenty-two years, and when you see someone that you've known for a long time, or even not known for a long time, just when you see someone and you sense that there's been a shift. So for me, I knew there was a shift. I've talked to so many people about this and I tried to piece everything together as to what actually happened.
There's always the truth and everyone else's perspectives of the truth. So from what I can piece together, it's just impossible to say it was just one thing. There's just so many combinations of factors, I think, leading up to this. Again, to the time that I saw him, to his passing a few months later, that things were just not adding up, in a way that the Tony that I was talking to and experiencing was not the Tony that I met or had been so connected with in all these different levels from mind and heart and I think spirituality, for me.
I think it doesn't do his passing justice to try and minimize it to one or two things. Did he have a mental breakdown because of COVID? These are things that were swimming around in the media at the time and swirling into all these other hypotheses. There's just no way to boil it down to one thing.
I would say that what I do know was that the Tony that I saw last, it's not to say that he wasn't all there, he was. Tony is a master of making sure he speaks out his mind and brain and it just comes out and that was still there. He'll tell amazing ideas. Sometimes it's really crazy, batshit crazy ideas and all that, but it was just, I think, as you've known, as you've met Tony along the way, he's just usually so grounded and chill and mellow. It was a different state of Tony that I never really quite experienced.
I would say that there's just no one answer. I would say that there were sequences of events along the way that led up, ultimately to his passing and that's why in the end of it all, that's why I didn't even have the title Beyond Happiness yet, until after I finished the book and after I tried to process everything, and that's why I was leaning in towards what Tony and I launched with Delivering Happiness in 2010, and it became more of Beyond Happiness because the aspect of being real with ourselves and self-aware of what is going well in our lives and our strengths and celebrating those highs.
I think part of Beyond Happiness is also understanding and being self-aware of our low points and what might not be going right and knowing that there's a lot of self-awareness points in being able to reflect on that, but it's also being around the right people to help share when they see things that are not right. So it's both me and the self and the people that you choose to be around.
I don't know if that answers your question directly because I do want to ... I'm just trying to honor him, especially because there was so much media and so many questions and people reaching out. My way of honoring Tony, and his legacy, is with writing this book with what I talk about in what I saw, and keeping Delivering Happiness on, because we can all focus on what went wrong and come up with all these thoughts and ideas and questions, because we all want to understand death.
I think that there were so many positives that he did create and bring to the world, and Delivering Happiness was just one of them. He ran Zappos and Downtown Project in Vegas and all that stuff.
So that's my ultimate goal of being real. This is all real talk. Beyond Happiness is we're going to have shitty days and we're actually going to have shitty lives sometimes. We're going to endure and have to try and be resilient as we can, even though sometimes it doesn't even seem we can even get there or can't even imagine how we can even be grounded in life because of all these swirls around us.
I think part of the messages about this is Tony led a life that he was, as I say, he's tenaciously chewed himself and there were amazing things about that. At sometimes I think there were probably some not-so-amazing things that came out of just powering through of what he believed in. I would say the majority is amazing. But in the end, I think it's by choice of what he wanted to do, but it can get to a different place for people as individuals. That's too much of a layered, vague answer, but there's a…
Guy Kawasaki:
That's plenty. May I interpret it as saying that the lesson may be that happiness is not necessarily a steady permanent state, that there are episodes of ups and downs, and that's the lesson.
Jenn Lim:
Exactly. Yeah. Did you read the book? I can tell you did!
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh, shit. If the podcaster or an interviewer doesn't read the book… Hell, I asked about cat, Mandu.
Jenn Lim:
I know you did! That's my favorite!
No, it totally is about that. I call it the heartbeats exercise-- so happiness heartbeats. You can focus on your highs and understand what those moments are your whole life, but then if you don't understand your lows, then if you don't learn from them, what values were there, what people were there, then it's too much of a binary state of happiness, because then it becomes a moment versus a state overall.
That is, I think, what true moment of sustainable happiness is about. The more real we can get with ourselves, I think that taps into things, mental health right now, all these things that are happening, the Olympics and all that stuff. So I think it's just really just getting real with ourselves to understand that.
Guy Kawasaki:
So perhaps it would be very useful to step backwards for the listener and just define happiness.
Jenn Lim:
For us in the book, Delivering Happiness, and this one, Beyond Happiness, Tony in his book and mine do recap, because we really wanted to bring it on back on the science, and scientific happiness through all the research, it brings it back to just a few simple things. So number one is, and I'm just going to use Layman's terms, not the scientific terms. Number one is: being true to, as we said, weird self, but number one, being true to your authentic self.
That's the sense of, as I mentioned earlier, of self-awareness, of really being able to be full and holistic and not just concentrating on what we're good at, but also being real with what we're not so good at, or what's not going well in life. That's the first part of definition of happiness.
The second is more of the pleasure. So there's the pleasures in life that we get happiness from. I don't know, you driving your Mercedes because you're the ambassador or whatever, or someone kissing your ring. You must get pleasure out of that.
Guy Kawasaki:
I hope you give me more credit than that, but okay.
Jenn Lim:
Or, I don't know, going out with your buddies and getting dinner, drinks or going to the golf course, let's just say. It could be anything.
Guy Kawasaki:
Just so you don't wonder, the greatest form of happiness for me is surfing with my children.
Jenn Lim:
Okay. So that's definitely more meaningful than getting your ring kissed. I was going to get to that. So that's the, you already called it out, so that's the second thing. This is a pleasure form of happiness.
But the third most, in terms of the definition of happiness, most sustainable way is the most meaningful stuff, the higher purpose stuff of what's beyond yourself. So when you describe that, it's not only are you having an amazing time surfing, you're doing it with the people you love, so that's really directly connected to your higher purpose and what Guy exists does beyond him.
Again, going back to the science, it's what basically defines happiness. The thing is, happiness is so subjective.
Surfing with the kids is for you, but that's what I think the beauty of how this has evolved over the last eleven years, this whole topic is that it's a science. It doesn't mean it's set in stone. It keeps on evolving.
But the beauty of happiness is that it's so subjective and we get to define it for ourselves and we get it tested within ourselves. Is that truly what makes me happy? Is buying that car or getting a raise or getting promotion? Is that truly making me happy or is it really doing the things that we talk about being out in nature, being with people you love, doing something within your own super power can do and no one else and being in that zone? That's how it's being broken down in terms of happiness.
Guy Kawasaki:
So if that's happiness, what is beyond that? What is beyond happiness?
Jenn Lim:
Yeah. Beyond it is taking what we normally think happiness means to us and taking it to the further step of what I've been alluding to with your questions about Tony, questions about mental health. Because I think when we hear the word “happiness,” we automatically have things in our head, especially in the workplace, you bring it up-- what does happiness mean there?
CFO is saying, "Well, I don't want rainbows and unicorns in my workplace. We're here to make money." That's not happiness to them, but that's not what this is about.
The purpose of saying “beyond” is to really just stretch our minds a little bit more, especially after the last eighteen months where everyone had a bit of time to think much more about, “Wait, I'm waking up in the morning and I'm doing what?” Or like, “This is my day-to-day thing? Is it job or duties? Is this really how I want to spend my life?”
So the whole, great resignation as they're calling it, or the great awakening that people are quitting left and right. Four million people in April in the U.S. alone quit their jobs and a lot of them didn't even have another job to go to, nor did they care because, “I can't take this anymore. I can't go in the office and my company is making me go and I have a kid to take care of.”
Those things where people are making a stand, and so that's why I wanted to stretch the conversation in a way that happiness is not necessarily what we used to think. I've had so many conversations with people where I don't even know what happiness means for me anymore. That's where I'm trying to invite the dialogue is “That's okay,” and this is the best time to define it or redefine it.
Guy Kawasaki:
What is the relationship between money and happiness? I don't think it's as simple as making seventy-five grand a year. What is the relationship?
Jenn Lim:
Yeah. That really brings me back to Maslow's hierarchy. Lot of people are familiar with that. It's a pyramid. You need your physiological needs, and then it goes up, up and up, all the way to self-actualization as he called it.
So basically finding your own purpose, and what I found interesting-- and I didn't realize more until I started researching for this book-- is that he actually expanded on it and so it was interesting that he thought it was a pyramid that you go step, step, step, step up.
So if you don't have your base physiological needs or money, then you can't be self-actualized, and what I found is that that's not the truth. You can have some physiological needs, maybe not all, you can have some money, but maybe none at all, very little and be more self-actualized than someone who has $75,000 and running a great company or whatever, has a good role, and be more self-actualized than that.
So from an anecdotal standpoint, Tony and I were in Kilimanjaro, we climbed back in the day, went to Africa to a little town called Arusha. This was right after 9/11. The world was in a different kind of 180. 9/11 happened, dotcom crash, and me, personally, I found out my dad had colon cancer. So for me, my world was: “What the hell is going on?”
We go to Arusha and we had to acclimate. So few days walking around and we'd go visit people in their homes and they're made them huts. They're made of dung; poop, basically. They welcome us in there, and they have nothing, biscuit or tea-- anything they had, they just seem to have this intrinsic happiness. I call it crow's feet happiness in the book, because you can tell when someone's really smiling, and not just their mouth and that's what struck me at that time, and this was twenty odd years ago of seeing that you don't have to have money to get to that place.
There are different physiological needs. There's a certain level of, I guess, being true to yourself and self-aware and finding meaning out of life, primarily. I can go on with so many other examples of people that are cleaning bathrooms for a living or a custodian at a hospital, and they truly have purpose and have meaningful happiness. To answer your question, yeah, it's not a requirement nor is it $75,000.
Guy Kawasaki:
And what is the name of this state that is above Maslow's self-actualization?
Jenn Lim:
This is what was interesting during the research of the book, I was—“wait, he already said it,” because I was trying to explain it in my own way, and then I realized right before he passed, he added the last pinnacle of the peak of the pyramid and he called it “transcendence,” and so for him, it meant that you're not just self-actualizing for yourself, you're actually self-actualizing for others.
That's true peak of what, for him, in terms of his hierarchy is. So he's already realized that in this way, and I was just trying to write about how we could actually do that within an organization, because I think for us as leaders, no matter if you're a CEO or any kind of leader in your own right, we do have choices to be able to do that kind of level of not just self-actualization for ourselves but transcendence and helping others. So the metaphor in the book is: Nurture your own greenhouse as you grow others.
One of the lessons learned is when you don't nurture your own greenhouse, then things can go awry. Or if you intentionally want to do that, that's also your choice too.
But as leaders, I think we all get caught up in just wanting to help, wanting to help, wanting to help, and grow other greenhouses, but sometimes we forget our own oxygen mask, probably because we don't fly anymore as much, and if we don't hear the message: nurture your own greenhouse first, as you grow others.
Guy Kawasaki:
I would make the case that we should pull back all the psychology books in the world and add “transcendence” to Maslow's hierarchy of needs because that is a very big difference between self-actualization and transcendence, and it would be a shame for everybody who takes psych one to think, “Okay, self-actualization, that's the end game.” It's not! You're still on the one yard line. That would be nice.
Let me ask you something, so you did the audio book yourself?
Jenn Lim:
I did. I had auditioned for it. Did you have to do it?
Guy Kawasaki:
I have done one, but it is so hard. I think for every hour of actual what happens in the audiobook, there's probably five or six hours of takes and retakes and it drove me crazy. At the end I just said, send me some samples, I'll pick a voice. I am not going to do this.
Jenn Lim:
Oh, you didn't do it.
Guy Kawasaki:
No. The fact that you and Michelle Obama both did it, my hats off to you. But man, it was too painful for me to do.
Jenn Lim:
It was. Well, I think I got forewarned. I didn't know I would have to audition. So they're, "Are you sure you want to do this?" And I'm, "What am I getting into?" "It's a freaking marathon." And I'm like, "Okay."
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh God, it's horrible. It's horrible. I've used this when writing, because I noticed this when I tried to do my Audible book, is that when you hear your book, you pick up mistakes you never would've seen after you read the draft thirty times. So now as part of my writing process, Microsoft word and other things, you can have it read to you. So I have my manuscript read to me. So I listen to catch mistakes as a form of editing.
Jenn Lim:
Interesting. That's kind of cool.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'm OCD that way. I don't recommend that either. But you would hear when you say…let's say in three consecutive sentence, you use the word heirloom. You wouldn't see that, but you would say, “I just said heirloom. I just said heirloom. I just said heirloom,” and picks it up. I digress.
Jenn Lim:
No, no, that's cool. That's a good tip because I think it can make me a better writer after I did the audio book. I do have to read this out loud for myself.
Guy Kawasaki:
I want to ask you, because many people are business listeners here, what is the economic value of happiness in a company?
Jenn Lim:
Yeah. This has been a big one for us because coming out of Zappos, it was, “Oh yeah, that's cool. So they happen to be a billion dollar company because of happiness. That's great for them.” It became our onus and on our shoulders. Actually, it can happen for you and people are like, “What the hell? Why?”
Senior leadership, especially I had mentioned CFO earlier. No offense, but that doesn't make sense. We've just been able to show that whether it's Harvard Business Review or our own clients or the Economist, you don't even have to, let's just say to make it easier, don't even use the word “happiness.” Actually just say, “Treating people as assets instead of liabilities,” and when you see it that way, then you show the investment that you're making into them.
Do you want it to depreciate or do you actually want to add value to the company? The fact that you're already investing money, why not invest it in ways that will make them more productive and make them more engaged and actually make them more loyal and brand ambassadors, et cetera, down the line.
So all those different metrics of take out the word happiness, if it conjures up rainbows and unicorns, but bring in the word of just making sure that you're taking care of your assets, and they're actually called people. So when you see that in that way, in that light, actually you're gaining an ROI out of it, and so when I talk about not just return of investment, you're also rippling your impact because then everyone in your organization is becoming that much stronger towards your goals.
Have greater alignment, because-- look, you take care of your people, they'll take care of you. That's it at the end of the day. In or outside of business, then it's amazing because you see-- you treat them as a whole human being, they have a life outside of work and we want to respect that, and now more than ever, ZOOM land has taken over. There's hardly any separation. It's totally work/life integration, and then you expand that to your teams and being able to instill purpose and values that I shared about before, and then you see that ripple of effect and then to your customers, they see that too, because of that alignment internally, purpose and values, and the kind of products and services that you put out there are aligned with that. Then your customers and your ecosystem and partners and vendors.
Now more than ever, we're seeing the impact in society and our planet-- Mars for Elon and Jeff-- but the whole ripple is so interconnected.
Guy, you can see that they can all coexist and it's an expectation now. Especially if you want to keep the right people, bring on the right people that are aligned with what you want to do most, it's almost a given and it's a necessary thing to be able to have those kinds of conversations in a transparent, honest way and to make sure that they are going to make an impact that's aligned with your purpose and values beyond making money.
Guy Kawasaki:
So much of this book is about the alignment of values and beliefs and these kinds of things between employees and companies. So if I'm an employee, or prospective employee, how do I identify what the company's values are? It's not as simple as, “I'll go read the about page on the company's website.” So how do you assess what their values are?
Jenn Lim:
That question, actually, at least is more easier to assess now because usually in the past, it's just, you go to the “about page” and I say, “Who's Enron? Their value was integrity. Oh, really? How'd that work?” Now we have things, Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and all these tools that are being more transparent about what's actually happening behind closed doors.
If I was an individual that is looking for a change in my life, a new place, I would go by that first. What are the things I stand for? What are these companies that stand for that are aligned with me? Whether it's Patagonia or Toms, whatever it might be, there's all these different companies that are putting it out there and actually being more accountable. Time will tell.
There's a lot of Microsoft, Google, Starbucks, they're saying, “We're going to help climate change by 2030.” I'm just putting that out there. There are statements being made that have not been made in a way that we most prioritize the most for ourselves.
Look, for those kind of brands that at least speak that way, and then, as part of the process of interviewing, it's always been a two-way street anyway, that's ideally of talking to people and actually getting behind what's beyond the glossy awards in the wall of what their values and purpose are.
So the tools online, there's a lot of-- and you can go to Reddit, I'm sure there's a lot of stuff at Reddit of companies-- and then if you feel there's a match and there's a good alignment, then just asking on questions about with people that are there that are going to be part of your team, especially if it's a big company, the most important thing is that people are going to actually work with on a day to day basis.
If you sense that they're hiding from the truth or glossing over things that they want to make it a good impression, then you already know that's not a good fit because then they're going to treat you that way too. You're not going to be able to be yourself.
Guy Kawasaki:
Let's suppose that you're considering a job for a Mountain View based company who professes to do no harm and then you read, “Oh, former general counsel dated someone in the legal department, got her pregnant, left her, then married somebody else. Then left with $200 million. Former division head accused of sexual harassment leaves with $90 million.” Are those two data points? Are they outliers? Or do I create a judgment that I can't possibly work at that company? No company's perfect, but then there are some data points there. How do you interpret all that?
Jenn Lim:
Number one is: these questions are going to come all the time in our lives, whether it's, “Do I take this job or do I move or stay where I'm at?” Or, “Do I get in this relationship?” These are kind of these broader questions of major life moves for ourselves. That's why I think it's so important just to go through those exercises within ourself of putting that stake in the ground of who we are as people.
Again, I'm going to go back to purpose and values. This is not a huge exercise-- It's asking yourself what your purpose is. Is thinking about what lights you up or fires you up. That could be great, energetic wise, or makes you pissed off. What is your talents and what's your impact that you want to make. Those three questions just right there, if you just answer that really quickly, you get a sense of what your purpose statement is, and that's a draft and it evolves over time.
Then the values part of it is, during dotcom days, my values were all about money, title, status, and then I got laid off and 9/11 happened and then my dad passed away. That was wrong. So then my values became, “What does it really mean? What matters the most is peoples authenticity and freedom for myself.
When we go through these exercises, and just don't even think twice about it, think too much about it, just where you are as a snapshot of life, then those kinds of questions of, “Do I join this company because of what you mentioned of X, Y, Z reasons of this person did this, this person did that?” Then at least you have your base. If that's just foundationally wrong to you, then you're just not going to be able to wake up and say, "I'm so excited to be part of this company." Then that's just a total red flag and a no brainer.
I also think that sometimes companies get cast as evil, even though there are a lot of good people in there. I think it largely depends on who the leaders are, and I mentioned earlier is so important to meet the team that you're on and who's leading that. There's companies out there that we know had bad decisions made, whether it's Uber or Wells Fargo. I'm not throwing them under the bus, because this is true. This is what happened, but we also know there could be good people, especially if there are good cultures that breed good people, then I would see that more as an outlier of, “This was just a bad apple, but I can see that the rest of the company is an indicative of this one person.”
Guy Kawasaki:
I want to get some tactical answers. Pretending that I'm an executive, I'm a happiness officer, I'm an HR, not necessarily general counsel, though. You don't have to worry about general counsel, and I'm listening to this. I say, "Wow, this person really understands happiness and culture and values in the company." So I got these really tactical questions. Number one: how can management connect better to employees?
Jenn Lim:
Yes. That is such a timely question, Guy. Going back to the whole great awakening, great resignation, there's a reason why that's happening and it's not just some people that are self-reflecting, it's just, I think the status still true. The majority of the reason why people are leaving in the first place is because of the relationship with their manager or their boss. Not necessarily all the other stuff going on, because that's who they have to work with every day.
So there's the conceptual side. We hear it all the time. Brené Brown talks about being vulnerable. If you're vulnerable, then others will be vulnerable.
The trust aspect-- if you exhibit that trust you talked about this at the beginning of the conversation, you trust them first, they'll trust you too. Just leading by that.
So more tactical way that I talk about too in how we've seen it really effective is there's an exercise called wheel of wholeness.
You can picture pie and there's different pie pieces, and everyone has their own different pie pieces, but general categories that we do is there's a mental piece, there's an emotional piece, there's a relational piece, there's financial piece, there's physical piece, there's spiritual or fun. These pieces are all, basically, you pick which ones that are most important to you as individuals. That's your whole wheel of wholeness.
So how that becomes a more engaged conversation, if you ask everyone in your team to self-evaluate where they are in that wheel of wholeness. So basically, point little dots as to where they are from a scale of one to ten, and then it becomes a dialogue.
It is not to say the manager has to fix everything. That's not the point at all. It's more of understanding this person is a more whole person of people outside of what they bring to the workplace from skills and responsibilities to where they are in life.
So it's a more sincere, practical way to show that the manager really wants to understand this stuff, and not to say that, again, it becomes a dialogue. This is more of a mirror of where you're at. I can help where I can, but there are things that is on the onus of the employee.
So I found that to be just so much more natural in having a real conversation about what it means to engage. Even being as vulnerable and honest and true and trusting as we are as leaders, until we actually ask these kind of questions and truly listen, then that level of engagement will still be having this sense of hierarchy that people are less patient to deal with these days.
Guy Kawasaki:
Second tactical question: how do you detect toxic people?
Jenn Lim:
The most effective way that we've seen it work, because sometimes it becomes too personal. “So and so did this and they're toxic to the culture and is a bad hire,” or “wrong fit.” But the reality is that that person is coming from somewhere that you don't know if you can actually trust. That's why we're so big on not just defining values on the wall, but behaviors that stem from them and that becomes and makes everything so much more black and white-- going back to Enron-- not just living by this whole, what integrity means, what does that mean? Well, it means not squandering billions of dollars for your customers. That would be not having integrity.
For the value of communication, what does that mean? Well, it's actually listening before you speak in response. It's actually making it more democratic in how we share ideas, so that it's not just the extrovert, “We're going to use Google Docs for this particular exercise so everyone can just input their ideas at the same time in this Google doc and becomes more democratized as to whose ideas are being shared.” So by embedding those specific behaviors, then it doesn't become a subjective accusation of like, "Dude, Guy is kind of being a jerk. I don't really think he belongs on the team."
It's specifically, “Dude, this guy or woman, whatever, constantly just man or womansplaining over everyone else, even though they haven't even spoken yet, and the key to all this, too, is accountability-- is actually rewarding, recognizing and incentivizing by it. So if you're not living by these things, and you're an amazing salesperson, totally kick-ass rockstar, but you're not communicating respect or you're mansplaining or whatever, then by being a good leader you're actually showing that this person is going to get coached, and if he or she doesn't learn, this is not a good fit for him or her going forward.
So being accountable on both ends from the employee side and the leadership side, saying like these values and behaviors actually mean something, that's when you get a clear definition of what's toxic.
Guy Kawasaki:
Third tactical question: how do you foster a happy virtual team?
Jenn Lim:
That's a billion-dollar question right now because everyone's just, “What do we do?” For us, we've been remote since we started in 2010. Other companies, automatic, they've been remote for a long time. These kinds of companies knowing that they've existed and can actually grow and thrive, it's just a testament too, even though it seemed chaotic as it was.
When the pandemic hit and we all had to be remote and now hybrid, it just shows that there are ways to actually create meaningful relationships and productive and effective ones through remote working. Culture for us, part of it is just reminding people on a day to day basis of what culture is. So what are your values?
So as an example, one of the things we would do, instead of diving into the agenda and getting “Boom, boom, boom. Here's our meeting,” we would just take five, ten minutes, maybe five, whatever it is that feels most comfortable for your culture, to set aside time for connection, and that connection would be going a round-robin around, maybe if it's five, ten people, really quickly being able to say, “What values have you seen being lived today or yesterday? Who in this room do you want to call out and say, ‘Give them shout out’ because they did something that wowed you,” or something. So those connections become culture in the end of the day because you're creating something more meaningful than just diving into the work. It can be fun too.
Do you remember that show MTV Cribs? As an example, everyone's working at home right now, so part of it is just every week, other week or whatever, people do their own episode of Cribs. They walk around with like their favorite hip-hop song on and just show, where do they work? Then it becomes more of, “Hey, I know this person,” more than just what Netflix show they watch or whatever banter you get. So that's on the fun side.
But I think the values piece is so important because once you start inviting those kind of conversations, and it can be quick, “How are you feeling today?” And everyone just puts in the ZOOM chat immediately at the same time, just ask a poignant question of, “What was the most meaningful thing that happened,” or something like that. They all input at the same time and it happens very quick and everyone gets to see exactly where everyone's at. Then that's more of building culture beyond just the typical water cooler talk, so to speak.
Guy Kawasaki:
Two more questions.
Jenn Lim:
Okay.
Guy Kawasaki:
First one is, and I truly do mean this, I want you to be absolutely scrupulously honest, okay?
Jenn Lim:
Because I haven't yet?
Guy Kawasaki:
No, no, no, because of the nature of the question that's coming up. And if your answer is really negative, I might cut your answer, but to be scrupulously honest on my side.
So you talk a lot about eulogies and purpose in life and all that so I want you to grade my eulogy.
Jenn Lim:
Grade your eulogy?
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jenn Lim:
Okay.
Guy Kawasaki:
So before I die, I'm going to tell people when you eulogize me, this is what I want said. It's only three words. I just want my eulogy to be, “Guy empowered people.” So how is that as a eulogy?
Jenn Lim:
From a grading scale, that sounds like A+ to me.
Guy Kawasaki:
I wasn't fishing for a column! I really want to know!
Jenn Lim:
Yeah. In many ways, that's transcendent. That's your own version, the Guy version, which is perfect, because you should be defining your eulogy anyway. Yeah, that's transcendence. You're just trying to help others self-actualize.
You use the word empower, but essentially that's your reason for existence and that's what you want to hear when people, when that time comes, and they're talking about Guy, they'll say, "Guy empowered people." How amazing is that?
Guy Kawasaki:
When I see Maslow, I'm going to give him a high-five.
Jenn Lim:
Say ‘hi’ to Tony and my dad, too.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. I'll send him your love. I'll see him before you will.
The reMarkable tablet company sponsors the Remarkable People podcast. Makes total sense. It's as if somebody planned it this way, but nothing could be further than the truth. Having said that, it really has worked out quite well for both of us.
I ask each guest how they do their best and deepest thinking because the reMarkable tablet is all about doing your best and deepest thinking. Primarily because, it helps you focus-- No social media, no email, no surfing the web. So here is Jenn Lim explaining how she does her best and deepest thinking.
Jenn Lim:
I didn't grow up being a nature person, but there's something that happened in the near last few years, something that connected me to it in a different way, and that feeling, I don't know if you've been in this place, but when I describe it, where you feel you're so one with everything.
So for me, I was in Montana on a fishing boat and it was not peak season, so it was super quiet. That feeling of just oneness of it all, feeling so small, being part of this big, beautiful world and universe. So mere and mighty at the same time. That's when I think that that opens up the space that there really is no boundaries in what one can think about in life. I hope that's not esoteric at large.
Guy Kawasaki:
I hope you learned a lot about happiness. Jenn Lim is an expert on happiness.
I'm a happy guy because I get to work with a producer like Peg Fitzpatrick, a sound designer like Jeff Sieh, a transcriber like Luis Magana, and a research communications person like Madisun Nuismer. That's the team that brought you this episode of Remarkable People.
I'm Guy Kawasaki. Have a great week.
I'm not going to stop saying this: wear a mask, get vaccinated, wash your hands, maintain social distance. Let's all get through this together.
Mahalo and aloha.