Zappos Podcast

Dana Zumbo stops by the studio to talk with Jeanne about the many roles she has held during her tenure at Zappos including her current roles with Zappos Adaptive. We do a deep dive into how she was able to take her passion for working with people with disabilities to help build Zappos Adaptive - a site that focuses on providing a wide range of adaptive clothing and shoes with unique features to fit a variety of needs.

In today’s episode, Jeanne talks with Miguel Hernandez, Zappos’ Artist In Residence, about his journey from discovering his love of art in 3rd grade to creating his role as a full-time artist at Zappos. We learn about how Miguel turned his passion into his career and has even received the Key To The City from the Mayor of Las Vegas. His story is both interesting and inspirational!

In this episode we hear from Maritza Lewis, a long tenured employee who’s current roles concentrate on employee engagement, always a top focus for Zappos. She shares some personal stories from her Zappos journey from a number of different role she’s held along the way - along with how being very pregnant during a Las Vegas summer led her to take action on an initiative that is now part of her Zappos legacy! Maritza also talks about introducing a Llama named Kuzco to the Zappos family – you won’t want to miss it!

The Zappos Podcast presents a new season with interviews from people whose stories you hear in the recently released book by Zappos “The Power of WOW”. Today we hear from John Bunch, an advisor to the Zappos CEO, who focuses on organizational systems. John and Jeanne talk a little about organizational changes happening at Zappos and how John’s poker expertise helps him in business. They also explore current internal initiatives to help with the Zappos goal of being an evolving an entrepreneurial organization that will stand the test of time

The Zappos Podcast presents a new season with interviews from people whose stories you hear in the recently released book by Zappos “The Power of WOW”. In the first episode we hear from Chris Peake, a long-time employee who currently focuses on Strategic Initiatives. Chris shares some insights into what it means to him to be a part of the Zappos culture – along with learnings from his journey at Zappos and in life.

In this episode we learn about a systematic approach to business and entrepreneurial work – the value of severely restricting time and resources. We talk about a program at Zappos called 48 Hour Founders that workshops these skills and then we talk with The Lean Startup author Eric Ries about why going lean is a path to gaining super powers.

In an interview with Christa Foley, Sr. Director of Brand Vision & Culture, we talk about the importance of company culture at Zappos. Christa shares her thoughts on protecting and caring for the Zappos culture, especially during big changes such as Holacracy and Market Based Dynamics, and she shares her insights into what has kept it strong during difficult times when culture has been tested and challenged.

In part two of our Psychological Safety series, we continue to explore the line between trust and fear with Amy Edmonson, a former grad student studying organizational behavior at Harvard. Amy had the idea that “good teams” (teams that worked well together) would have lower error rates than teams that did not work well together. After looking into the behavior of some hospital teams, her findings were that the “good” teams actually had more mistakes than the other teams. We’ll hear about her findings and about how psychological safety played a role.

People tend to behave differently when we feel safe vs when we feel threatened so we decided to explore the line between trust and fear in team dynamics. In the first of this two-part series, we meet a team here at Zappos that has attained a high level of trust and find out how one small ritual helped reinforce that trust.

Carmen Daniels Jones, President of Solutions Marketing Group and a paid advisor to Zappos, talks to us about disability, biases, and how Zappos is doing on the disability awareness front. We talk about what happens when a customer triggers our own biases and how to avoid projecting our discomfort onto anyone else. We also learn about how Zappos Adaptive is promoting inclusion by providing functional and fashionable clothing and shoes to make life easier for people with disabilities.

Today we’ll hear a story about how an idea from Tyler Williams, head of Brand Aura at Zappos, brought about a number of surprising, unintended consequences. Tyler, in an attempt to live up to two of Zappos’ core values; “Do something more with less” and “Create a little fun and weirdness”, decided to install a piece of art in the campus plaza. The butterfly, which was 18 feet tall and had a wingspan of 68 feet, was hung in the plaza but didn’t last a full two weeks before it met its demise. Together we explore the positive and negative thoughts and emotions tied to this decision as well as how the company used this as a great learning tool.

In this episode we sit down with Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO, to continue the exploration of the nature of ideas. We look at ideas as “things” and ask the questions; where do ideas come from, how can you sort out the good ideas from the not-so-good ideas, and what’ the best way to bring an idea to life if you feel that you have a good idea?