Remembering Tony Hsieh

(Update: Emerging details since my original post about Tony’s tragic death and battle with mental health and substance abuse are heartbreaking and a clarion call for all of us to pay far more attention to mental health and wellbeing. I double down on the importance of honoring Tony’s life by enabling more random collisions.)

It was beyond sad to learn over the Thanksgiving holiday that we’ve lost an iconic entrepreneur, innovator and friend, Zappos founder Tony Hsieh. He was 46. I haven’t stopped thinking since about Tony’s impact on those of us who had the opportunity to learn from him. Tony was a frequent storyteller at our annual BIF Summit in Providence, thinking out loud with us about transforming customer service, measuring the return on community collisions and even designing happiness. We learned so much from Tony. Here are a few of the important lessons I learned from Tony Hsieh.

Create A Customer Obsessed Culture

Every leader thinks their organization is customer-centered while most business models suggest otherwise. I knew immediately from my first conversation with Tony, in advance of the BIF Summit in 2004, that we were both like-minded innovation junkies obsessed with designing transformative business models with customer experience at the core. Still animated from our conversation I couldn’t resist asking my family when I got home, “Have…