Leading is about much more than making money.

What Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, learned about organizational culture from playing poker: “The game is a lot more enjoyable when you’re trying to do more than just make money.”

I've just started reading the book, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose by Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos).  While I haven’t finished the book, I quickly discovered that Tony really gets the concept of culture and its impact on an organization.  He embodies the idea that leadership is about so much more than making money.  And as he describes, if you focus on the vision and your culture, first, you will make money.

At a mere 24 years of age, Tony Hsieh and friends developed LinkExchange, an Internet advertising service, and sold it to Microsoft for $265million.  Tony would receive about $40million if he stayed with Microsoft for 12 months following the acquisition.  If he didn’t stay with Microsoft for 12 months, he’d walk away from about half of that, or about $20million.  Below is some of Tony’s thinking during this season.

…most of my free time was spent just being introspective and thinking.  I didn’t need more money, so what was it good for?  I wasn’t spending the money I already had.  So why was I staying at Microsoft, “vesting in peace,” trying to get more of it? 

I thought about how easily we are all brainwashed by our society and culture to stop thinking and just assume by default that more money equals more success and more happiness, when ultimately happiness is really just about enjoying life.

…I could make more money even though I had all the money I ever needed for the rest of my life.  A lot was going to change about the world.  We were on the eve of not only a new century, but a new millennium.  The world was about to change in a dramatic way, and I was about to miss out on it so that I could make even more money when I already had all the money I would ever need.

And then I stopped thinking to myself and started talking to myself:  “There will never be another 1999.  What are you going to do about it?” 

I already knew the answer.  In that moment, I had chosen to be true to myself and walk away from all the money that was keeping me at Microsoft.

And he did just that, Tony walked away from $20million for one year of employment in order to enjoy life.  He didn’t know it at the time, but he was also on the cusp of creating an organizational culture that would change how many organizations “do business” and how many leaders lead.

Whether your work is for-profit or not-for-profit, revenues are essential to every organization.  The need for those revenues can have a powerful grip on a leader’s focus, energy and self-evaluation of what’s been achieved.  But what’s been proven, time and again, is that when a leader focuses on a vision and higher purpose for the organization, revenues become a consequence instead of a goal.  And many times, are greater than what was imagined possible.