DataDome Blog

Zappos.com is one of the most fascinating business success stories in recent years and an interesting DISC profile story too. CEO Tony Hsieh has helped lead this maverick company to over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales annually prior to being acquired by Amazon for approximately $1.2 billion. That’s serious business, but along the way the company has also built an incredible culture that counts humility and weirdness among its core values. Sound strange? Perhaps, but that strangeness has landed Zappos.com on the list of Fortune’s “Best Companies to Work For.”

So who’s behind this success? Recently Tony Hsieh released his book, “Delivering Happiness“, which is part autobiographical and in part an explanation of the company’s culture and how it got that way. Tony comes across in the book as a highly family oriented and service oriented individual. His DISC behavioral style is hinted at as his tale progresses from childhood experiments in entrepreneurship (and avoiding piano practice), to college dorm life, early success and frustration with Link/Exchange, to the loft years and into the growth of Zappos, certain themes emerge: a chronic habit of gathering a close, tight-knit group of friends – essentially an extended family – and a taste for pranks, bucking the system and choosing his own way of doing things.

Is Tony a High S?
The book seems to support the idea that Hsieh’s DISC profile would indicate a High S: In college his friends gathered around his dorm stayed very tightly knit – long-term stable friendships throughout the college years and into the twenty-something years. The loft Tony bought after selling LinkExchange was a deliberate attempt to mimic the “Friends” style of a clannish group of friends. He even talks quite positively about how moving the company to Las Vegas created a more insular environment for his employees – knitting the team together since they worked and socialized together due to the move. This is not the gregarious friend-making of the High I DISC profile, but a more stable and family-like drive. Zappos.com employees are referred to as “family” throughout the company website, there is a strong promote from within element in the culture, which reinforces this, and some of the senior employees were Tony’s friends from the loft days and earlier ventures. He definitely has a High S behavioral bias toward long-standing stable relationships.

Is Tony a Low C?
Again the book supplies ample evidence that Tony’s own DISC behavior leans away from a compliance orientation: playing pranks on his boss is an early sign, as was quitting the job at Oracle, pursuing untested business models, valuing people’s good judgment above building layers of process and procedure. Even the preface of the book has Tony thumbing his nose at his old English teachers as he describes how he deliberate wrote the book in plain language, rather than adhering rigidly to proper grammar. Later in the book he inserts an email he sent to his employees to answer questions about the then pending acquisition by Amazon. It is clear in the tone and humor of the note that although he must comply with SEC “quiet period” regulations, he is doing so only grudgingly, since his bias is to communicate openly with the Zappos family.

So, what about his D?
Now this is an interesting question – clearly the young entrepreneur has a lot of the drive and decisiveness associated with a High D’s DISC behavioral style: an early example is abandoning his childhood greeting card business after the first sales call to a neighbor. The instant he stopped believing the business would reach its goals he dropped it. Contrast that to a critical point in Zappos.com’s history when it was in a cash-crisis – because Tony still believed in it, he didn’t hesitate to make a bold decision to sell of his assets, even his beloved loft, to keep the company alive. Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro speaks to his goal-orientation. Many decisions seem to have that decisive, goal oriented quality – moving the company, dropping the outsourced warehouse they used briefly when they couldn’t outperform Zappos.com’s own warehouse.

Is Tony anti-D?
Tony Hsieh isn’t afraid to pursue an objective or making a firm decision, but he is also noted for being personally highly service-oriented – not domineering in the least. He talks in the book about his fascination with rave culture during his twenties and how he embraced the rave term PLUR, which stood for Peace, Love, Unity and Respect. Zappos.com’s hiring practices are interesting too – there is strong design to bring in cultural fits – many candidates who were otherwise capable have been filtered out by the process for not being humble enough, bucking the “common wisdom” that star performers must be ego-centric, High D DISC profile employees and that they are necessary to build business growth.

“Delivering Happiness” is an interesting book about an amazing company, and Tony Hsieh the author and leader will make some readers rethink the DISC behavioral style attributes necessary to build organizational success.

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Tags: business, DISC, DISC behavior, disc profile, disc style, happiness, tony hsieh, zappos