Prior to looking at the class reading for the People, Culture, and Teams, I had already read part of Tony Hsieh’s book “Delivering Happiness.” He talked about how he got to where he was today, including all his past ventures before Zappos. He also went into detail about how company culture at Zappos differed from everyone else. My end goal is to become an entrepreneur and run my own business. While I’m not sure exactly what that entails, I know that I will come across having to manage people. Before reading his work, I never considered the importance of company culture and how that affects the productivity at the workplace and quality of work produced. It was definitely an interesting perspective that I will keep in mind in the future, both when I look for jobs and when I start my own company. I used to think that in order to create a successful business one should strictly focus on cost-cutting methods and efficient production but there is more to that. One must consider the human aspect. This includes relations with key partners (as seen in the business model canvas) such as suppliers, manufacturers, retailers, and most importantly, consumers. I believe that at the end of the day, it is people who are delivering and consuming products so it is in the company’s best interest to ensure that these relationships are well-maintained and everyone is happy.

While I was looking more into this topic online, I stumbled across an article by Forbes talking about the best companies to work for and the four qualities that make them great. One of the points that stood out to me was working in a company with “a strong positive culture, firmly grounded in a meaningful purpose.” I’m wondering how I can incorporate this idea as a CEO of my own company in the future. Perhaps I could start by writing a list of my company’s core values and look at how I can synergize these values with each section of my business model canvas. The article also mentions how people want to feel that their company culture supports “exists to support meaningful work.” In my opinion this statement holds a lot of truth.

Forbes uses twitter as an example, where the company says to their staff that “your work will be immediately felt by many millions of people around the globe.” I believe that it depends on what each individual personally values in their life, and what type of person they strive to become. For staff at Twitter it may be having the power to influence and change the lives of millions of people at one time. So I leave myself with two questions: What are my own personal core values in life? What opportunities can I pursue to explore these values?