Zappos is a growing company with a unique culture, an innovative marketing style, and a brilliant reputation. Compared to most young upstart companies, it’s pretty amazing what they’ve accomplished.
In 10 years Zappos has grown from “nothing” into a billion dollar industry leader, no small feat if you’re just selling shoes! When this happens in business, it’s no accident. When a company is doing this well following their launch they’re worth studying.
Given, the Church is obviously not a “business” that can be governed by “best” practices. But that being said, can your church learn anything from Zappos? In fact, is it possible that Zappos may be activating spiritual principles and successful because of it? And if more churches were doing the same we could see greater things accomplished? Zappos has been fruitful, and multiplied. How’d they do that?
According to the company, it’s pretty simple. They’re able to define their core values in 10 sentences. See the following….
Zappos Core Values
As we grow as a company, it has become more and more important to explicitly define the Zappos core values from which we develop our culture, our brand, and our business strategies. These are the ten core values that we live by:
- Deliver WOW Through Service
- Embrace and Drive Change
- Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
- Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
- Pursue Growth and Learning
- Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
- Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
- Do More With Less
- Be Passionate and Determined
- Be Humble
I don’t know about you but I can think of scriptures that most of these values reflect. Do you see any scriptural foundations in Zappos core values?
It’s likely that having a clear vision, mission & set of core values might be what sets your church apart…. or not. Clear definition creates intense focus, momentum & effectiveness. Think of ambient lighting versus a laser beam.
Can your church state it’s core values?
This is great stuff! Thanks
thx for the love Brian.
and what’s so cool is they compile a book each year called The Culture Book with hundreds of stories from employees describing what the core values mean to them, how they’ve experienced it themselves, an how they show it thru their work. I evwn got a copy of it when Tony tweeted a free giveaway of them — so come on by and browse thru the 2008 edition
Wouldn’t it be great for churches to publish stories every year, like a year book, tracking and sharing the growth in faith, witnessing to God’s work in our lives, and the hope each has looking forward to the next year?
With online/vid/multimedia becoming so prevalent, this might be something worth pursuing to build out a platform so that churches can plug in and create their own story book — and also choose the contribute to an aggregated version that’s public and outward facing.
Hi dj. Do you mean Tony Morgan or Tony Steward? & I’d love a link to the free giveaway you mentioned. Tho it’s past I’d still like the link.
This is good stuff! Isn’t it interesting that Jesus almost always used business examples to define the Kingdom of God? Parables about farmers, masters and servants, vineyard owners, managers, business owners, etc.
Justice thanks so much for stopping by …. I value your perspective and love your insights here about Jesus being unafraid to present Kingdom principles in non-religious parables that anyone could understand (rather than appealing to the pharisees who would have insisted on “spiritual” examples). Thanks for your comment.
Great thoughts! But I’m thinking, wouldn’t it be cool if one day business journals would write up articles entitled “What businesses can learn from the church.”
Now that would be pretty cool
Great stuff, Cynthia. We’re constantly inspired by Zappos, and it’s nice to see that philosophy packaged in easy-to-remember chunks.
Matt – I wondered where City Gates gets it’s inspiration for being so glorious. lol