I dare to ask The Big Question in my latest on Huffington Post.
Zappos, we hardly knew ye
The new poster-child for corporate-culture utopia will very likely become the former one.
The New York Times quotes Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh as saying that despite yesterday's acquisition by Amazon, “We plan to continue to run Zappos the way we have always run Zappos—continuing to do what we believe is best for our brand, our culture
and our business."
And Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos chimed in in praise of Zappos' culture, "I get all weak-kneed when I see a customer-obsessed company."
(Ick!)
In a letter to employees, Hsieh elaborated that Amazon execs "are not looking to have their folks come in and run
Zappos unless we ask them to. That being said, they have a lot of
experience and expertise in a lot of areas, so we're very excited about
the opportunities to tap into their knowledge, expertise, and
resources, especially on the technology side."
As Scoob would say, ruh-roh.
Writing Boots has a shoe-industry source who has worked with both companies. She loves Zappos but says "Amazon is a nightmare! … unbelievably disorganized and very hard to do business with."
She holds out hope that "Zappos could improve the way Amazon does business."
But bad cultures rub off on good ones more often than the other way around, and if I'm a Zappos shareholder, I'm selling today—and if I'm a Southwest Airlines employee communicator, I'm realizing we're back in the benchmarking bull's eye.
I passed the accreditation test on mushrooms!
In the comments section of the previous post I mentioned that many accredited pros rave about the ABC exam. Then, a case in point came over the transom, via a LinkedIn notice of a post on the IABC Café website. Communication consultant Mark Schumann, ABC, remembers his accreditation exam in a recollection that's actually more typical than not in its wide-eyed, far-out-man mysticism on the subject.
I excerpt:
I stayed out too late.
The night before I took the accreditation exam—at the US District 6 conference many years ago—I intended to go back to my room and study. …
But I was at an IABC conference and, well, I stayed out too late.
So, the next morning, as I walked the hallway outside the exam room, I kicked myself for not preparing. And then I remembered something a seasoned ABC had told me, that, 'when you take the exam, all the study won’t make a difference, you either know it or you don’t.' And so, with those words in mind, I walked in, sat down, pulled my chair up to the manual typewriter I would use (yes, manual) and thoroughly enjoyed the next few hours of expressing every passion and thought and idea and conviction I have about this profession we work in. ….
I stayed out too late another evening, a few months later, when I learned I passed. …
Well, David Wells once said he pitched a no-hitter while drunk and Dock Ellis threw a perfect game on acid.
A call to sober takers of the IABC exam. I know you can't reveal its specific contents—have they changed since Schumann hammered his soul into his Underwood?—but is it really as cosmically stimulating as all this?
If so: I'll take it!