about two weeks ago, carol harnett, a member of cohealth, suggested that the cohealth community enter an idea into the institute for the future’s bodyshock the future contest. the contest’s a public call for ideas to change our approach to global health in the next three to ten years. carol lobbed the idea into our monthly tweet chat, and within hours the ideas were gelling. under carol’s and ben miller’s stewardship, the group submitted an idea called 12@12.

Simple Acts of Healthy Living: The 12@12 Campaign

12@12 is a worksite-based demonstration project born from a crowdsourced idea called “Simple Acts of Healthy Living.” Here’s the premise: Almost everyone eats lunch and is at their workplace at noon. Our project encourages 12 minutes of activity at 12 o’clock once, twice or five times weekly. The employees choose: walk, stretch, stairclimb or simply breathe (relax). This campaign allows people to be active, feel better and build a community. Employees who’ve been active for 12 minutes at least once a week for 12 weeks earn 12 minutes extra off for lunch daily…for 12 weeks…and the cycle repeats.

carol will tell you about it. in october, up to five winners will be given mentors and resources to develop their ideas. whether or not 12@12 is one of them, this is an idea anyone can implement.

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i’m feeling the pain of mott’s communication professionals; things don’t look pretty over there. in a year of record profits and with nary a word about leadership sacrifice, they’re faced with the unenviable task of fashioning palatable communication messages for why mott’s is asking employees for pay and benefits cutbacks.

to lend them a hand, i’m taking up a collection. drop your suggested copy in the comments. i’ll start things off:

mott’s new people strategy

• Reduce (your pay and benefits)

• Reuse (your uniform)

• Recycle (our workforce with those more compliant)

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yesterday it was slater. today, it’s jenny.

companies, you don’t need an engagement survey to read the tea leaves. just do like your momma told you and mind your manners. the natives…they’re getting restless.

update: jenny’s a hoax. not surprised, but darn. still, what does it say that most of us cheered her on?

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[hat tip to @knowhr for the jenny story.]

hollie delaney has worked at zappos.com, inc. for more than four years. she’s married with one child, so she knows first-hand the struggle of enjoying a full-throttle career while giving all to oneself and one’s family. as the senior HR manager at zappos.com, inc. in charge of their wellness effort, that knowledge comes in handy. i caught up with hollie by email and by phone to find out how zappos.com, inc. is approaching wellness. hint: it has something to do with delivering happiness.

fm: let’s start with the basics. how do you define wellness?

hd: right now, it’s a little different here than elsewhere. we don’t have a huge initiative. we’re focusing on how we get people excited about getting up and moving, eating right. i look at myself. i’m a person who used to be very healthy. but then i got married, had a family…something gives. from my standpoint, i think about what’s it going to take to get me to move and eat well? we’re focusing on this first, and as we get more established we can look at the tougher challenges, like focusing on the different health issues common in our population.

fm: why is it important to zappos.com, inc. to get people up and moving or eating well?

hd: well, we have a conflict with the mainstream about “why.” most are looking to help with rising health care costs. of course, that’s important to us as well, but our main focus is when you’re well, you’re happier. when you’re happier, you do your job better. we want to give people the knowledge and opportunity to see how much better they feel and how much happier they are when they’re healthy. that’s our main focus.

fm: given that, what does “wellness” look like at zappos.com, inc.?

hd: we look for things that work for everyone and that will bring a little more happiness into people’s lives. we want to show people that wellness is important but can be fun. we also want to cover everyone from the person just starting on the wellness track to the person who’s already on the track and looking to sustain their lifestyle.

we provide educational classes on nutrition, finances, parenting. we have weight watchers on-site and offer smoking cessation classes to employees, and we subsidize a portion of these classes if employees complete their commitment. our on-site exercise classes cover everything from hip hop dance classes to how to sit and be fit to laugh yoga to wii competitions. our insurance carriers come in to give employees a better idea of how their benefits work and what things are available that they may not be taking advantage of. we also provide different discounts to gyms and encourage people to walk, hike, bike, and play sports together.

our wellness council is made up of employees from all the different departments within our company who want to be part of what we’re doing. they help us find those vendors who’d work for us culturally and figure out how to take information we all know and make it memorable.

fm: make it memorable. exactly! i’m a big fan of your off-the-cuff youtube videos. how are you communicating with employees about wellness?

hd: video is a good way for us to reach people. we’ve been thinking more about how we can use it. we could do a video about something as fun and silly as parking farther away from an entrance. for our wellness fair, we created this “rock wild” wellness video.

our wellness program’s really just starting down this road. any campaign to date has been through video or email, and we do have a twitter account employees can follow to see what we’re doing. we’re not addressing family yet but are looking to in the future.

fm: your wellness fair video reminds me of healthymagination’s howcast videos. they’re campy fun, just like you’re talking about. your culture’s known as a really driving culture. fun but intense. and obviously, some units, like your call center, have unique stresses. how do you align these competing forces? and do you carve out units like your call center in any way?

hd: everything we do is dictated by our core values. then, as managers, we’re allowed to run our units like our own business. managers are given so much flexibility, it trickles down to everyone else.

one of the things we want to do is build relationships with each business so we can tailor our wellness services to their environment. this is a new road for us, and we’re just starting down it.  we’re looking to tailor programs that work best for different departments, so some may need help with work-life balance, some of the departments may want to focus more on stress management and so on. we haven’t started this process yet but are looking to start in the near future.

as far as the hours go, the way our culture’s set up, we hang out outside of work. so that piece, working tons of hours, fixes itself. i don’t mind; i’m having fun. i’m with my friends. when i first started working here four years ago, working was hanging with friends. now that i have a family and so do lots of others, we’re hanging as families. we’re building these relationships together. for me, this is the healthiest place i’ve ever worked. you can be who you are. you don’t have to fit into a certain mold.

fm: how are you measuring what you’re doing?

hd: we’re not a largely metrics-driven company. we are metrics-driven in certain areas, such as inventory, growth, etc. when it comes to the more subjective things that we do, we’re not as heavily metrics-driven. we know that wellness programs will have returns, but there are facets of the things that we want to do that are difficult to measure. we’re currently working on how to quantify the programs that we’re proposing.

fm: what will you be looking at to see if you’re moving things in the right direction?

hd: that’s a good question. we’re still working it out and trying to find what best works for us.  we’re looking at standard programs but also looking to break new ground, so…it’s a learning process!

check out other free-ranging interviews with health innovators.

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in this video, lakers forward ron artest recognizes his psychiatrist’s prominent role in prepping him for the championships (and tackling his anger issues?). think you can’t destigmatize your employee assistance program and disease management programs with employee success stories? think again.

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today i’m writing on fistful of talent about bias and discrimination:

The unemployed aren’t the only people suffering job discrimination these days. Have you noticed what’s going on at American Apparel? They’re being taken to task for their hiring practices, and quite likely their promotional practices, which both require a photo submission and Project Runway-level fashion sense. Reaching further back in time, Hooters was up to their own shenanigans, allegedly firing a girl for being a few sizes too big for their micro-uniforms. (That made her, what, a size 2?)

Read more…

smart move reversing your decision on that ban of “chevy,” chevrolet. i’m not sure what you were thinking. i’m not sure anyone does, even you. you would’ve had quite the road ahead, policing people’s words rather than their activities. but just in case you decide to reverse yourselves (again), i dug up an instructive video for your employee training. it features count de money. er, count de monet.

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i first encountered zappos ceo tony hsieh’s thoughts on happiness when i stumbled upon his article how twitter can make you a better (and happier) person while researching a post about using twitter throughout the employee “life cycle.” his points from that twitter = happiness post stuck with me, as did his belief that companies can and should do more than merely profit. when i heard he was writing a book to expand on these ideas, i was quick to sign up to read it.*

BLOT (bottom line on top)

delivering happiness: a path to profits, passion, and purpose is one part autobiography, one part cliffhanger, and one part business book. it details hsieh’s youthful business exploits from his first worm farm (they died, or escaped) to on-campus pizza pioneering to…too many to detail. buy it, borrow it, or take it out from the library. it’s a quick read and one that’s bound to leave you more impressed by both hsieh’s and zappos’ achievements.

memorable bits

look, we all know hsieh’s a pretty remarkable guy. that’s confirmed in the book, where you learn he applied to brown, UC berkeley, stanford, MIT, harvard, princeton, cornell, and yale. i doubt he had a safety school or a need for one. he was accepted by all of these and chose harvard for the parental bragging rights. he then proceeded to not study and still excel. he’d be easy to dislike, given this and his whopping success, if he weren’t so darn likable, a terrific storyteller (making me more excited to see him live at BIF-6 in the fall), and a model employer. he winningly conveys his passion and conviction about how businesses should be run.

the first lesson comes via the book itself. because hsieh chose not to work with a ghost writer, the writing is personal and fresh, and not always what you’d expect. i got the feeling that he’s an experiential learner and that he was writing this book to see what it required and what he’d change the next time. basically, it’s how he approaches development: do-learn-do. (at times, there’s a “fail” thrown in the cycle.)

a large part of zappos’ growth and learning stems from flying by the seat of their pants, somewhat. (this same idea is part of jason fried’s, rework, which i’ve not read yet.) it’s the idea that a business plan and forecasting are nonsense. that they’re, at best, guesses. in delivering happiness, we see this business-planning-on-the-go in action—the cliffhanger part of the book.

it may seem sometimes like we don’t know what we’re doing. and it’s true: we don’t. that’s a bit scary, but you can take comfort in knowing that nobody else knows how to do what we’re doing either…so there are no experts in what we’re doing. except for us: we are becoming experts as we do this.

what makes in-the-moment business planning work is committing to your beliefs, even when that means making the tough call. at two junctures hsieh and his team make choices that keep zappos afloat and determine its culture. early on, hsieh sold his home and left himself nearly destitute to throw zappos a lifeline. later, when zappos was more established, hsieh severed its drop-ship business, which ran in conjunction to the delivery service most of us know. this risky move eliminated a guaranteed revenue stream, one that interfered with zappos’ ability to deliver a WOW! experience—their intended core competency. hsieh pushed ahead, partly to control the customer experience and partly to bolster the employee-leadership one.

the best leaders are servant-leaders. they serve those they lead.

trust between employee and leader is critical at zappos, and it lies beneath much of their culture and ways of working. unscripted and untimed customer rep calls and the publishing of uncensored employee stories in their culture book are some of the proof in that pudding.

toward the end of the book, hsieh transitions to a discussion about happiness theory. being a perpetual “why” asker, i particularly liked his notion that asking “why” repeatedly can drive you to a greater understanding of what delivers happiness. from a business angle, he outlines how happiness drives individual and organizational success through perceived control, perceived progress, connectedness, and being part of something bigger than yourself. his walking away from millions several times lends credibility to his argument.

as expected, there’s lots about zappos’ culture in the book. hsieh shares his growing appreciation for a strong company culture, beginning with stories from school through to a culture gone awry at linkexchange, and landing finally at zappos, where hsieh cultivates and nourishes theirs, largely by turning over much of the development and articulation of it to employees. readers will find plenty to take back to their office for discussion.

one knock against the book

although hsieh invites us “to be a part of a movement to help make the world a better and happier place,” delivering happiness mostly equates higher purpose with WOWing customers; developing passionate, inquisitive, and empowered employees; and building a thriving business.

there’s nothing bad in all that. most of us would gladly go work for zappos or a company like them. it’s simply that when i consider a higher purpose, i think of something that will dramatically alter the way we live. maybe i’m quibbling. perhaps, for example, if BP was following the “zappos way” they would’ve made the up-front investment in safety that could’ve prevented the ecological nightmare we’re facing. and the world truly would look different.

as i said up front, i’d recommend the book. and i’d love to visit zappos and learn firsthand more about what they’re doing there. heck, i’d love to work with them. how can you not love a company that has “create fun and a little weirdness” as one of its core values?

ultimately, if more companies operated at the same level as zappos, i think we’d all be happy(ier).

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* in exchange for a free advance copy, i agreed to write this honest review.

thanks, BP, for perfectly demonstrating the concept behind the saying “everything communicates.”

just three years ago, BP unveiled a new logo to exemplify their passion and commitment for the environment. yet here we are today, with BP’s oil jeopardizing our waterways, fish, jobs, health. their logo and status as impassioned protector of the earth have become a joke, even if it’s no laughing matter. that’s because there’s a serious breakdown between what they want us to believe about them and what they’re doing.

what they’re doing

in case you’ve missed any of the woeful tale, i’ll run down the basics:

the spill took place on april 20, 2010. first reports were of 1,000 barrels a day leaking into the gulf of mexico. latest estimates are 5,000. and even that’s being questioned.

on may 6, BP admitted they were looking for good solutions, and it appears they still are. they’ve gone from sucking the oil into a ship to using a toxic chemical to clean up the toxic mess to now trying something called a top kill, since hair wasn’t going to cut it. they’ve set up a site to crowdsource ideas (one of the first times I’m leery of crowdsourcing), and others have jumped in as well. the media may have laughed, but BP graciously (graspingly?) accepted kevin costner’s offering of his ocean therapy machines.  each new idea seems increasingly preposterous, so much so that jon stewart and stephen colbert don’t need to add punch lines. the ideas, or lack thereof, stand as one.

rather than standing up, being frank, and taking the hit (see zappos), BP’s wasted time and trust pointing fingers at their partners and offering fisherman work in return for relinquishing their rights to future legal action and to speaking out on what they see.

what they’re communicating

for the sake of argument, let’s say BP eventually stems the flow of oil and fashions a cleanup that rectifies some of the damage threatening louisiana’s marshes and wildlife, plus surrounding gulf states. what then? their PR, marketing, and leadership team have been feverishly making the rounds to ensure that customers’, investors’, and employees’ loyalties stay with them, and that we continue to see BP as the careful steward of the earth they imagined themselves—or willed us to believe―when they created their new image.

guess what? the jig is up. not only do all their above actions communicate their true culture and interests, but so does this gem from an in-depth report:

“The lack of available technology, however, was forewarned in multiagency reports following the training exercises—reports that cautioned the oil industry would not spend the money to develop new containment solutions unless mandated by the government. The recommendation went unheeded, according to officials and experts.”

everything communicates. and what BP’s communicated is that they don’t care about the earth. they don’t care about the communities where they work. they don’t care about investing in proper planning and preparation, which could’ve potentially prevented all of this. i won’t comment on their people, other than to express sympathy for the family and friends of the eleven who’ll be memorialized this week.

BP’s troubles have nothing to do with social media spilling their poor leadership everywhere. their troubles are the age-old ones of message not matching actions. that logo BP so painstakingly refashioned is now the emblem of their missteps and misdeeds (witness greenpeace UK’s BP logo redesign contest). i wish BP good luck cleaning up this branding mess, and i hope it goes better for them than the physical one they’re currently mopping up.  i also wish them well in attracting new talent. their “are you up for the challenge?” tagline is no exaggeration.

serious things can only be learned through laughable things — plato

if a guy from 400 BC gets humor’s contribution to learning, surely 21st century companies can.

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