Musker and the social contract

Last night I attended the leaving drinks for Craig Musker, one of the best managers Ive ever had the pleasure to work for. He instinctively understood the value of a social contract.
Dan Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational; The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions , describes two different two different worlds, one with social norms and one with market norms. Within a social norm, if I help you move house this weekend, I dont expect you to come over and help me move straight away. The exchange is warm and fuzzy and provides pleasure for both sides. Within market norms, we work forty hours a week and we get paid, then we go home and “live our lives”.
He says

“If corporations started thinking in terms of social norms,they would realize that these norms build loyalty and—more important—make people want to extend themselves to the degree that corporations need today: to be flexible, concerned,and willing to pitch in. That’s what a social relationship delivers.”

To some extent both exist these days and we work because we get paid, but also because we have a semi social relationship with our managers and coworkers and we want to do the best by them. Some manages grok this, others dont, Craig did in spades.
Tony Hsieh descibes in Delivering Happiness how he sees the “culture” amongst the employees at Zappos as being as important, if not more important than what they are paid, or what fancy titles you hand out. In fact they offer all new employees a choice in the first four weeks, stay and work at Zappos or $2000 dollars to leave.
Zappos have 10 core values of which my favourite is

“Create Fun and A Little Weirdness – One of the things that makes Zappos different from a lot of other companies is that we value being fun and being a little weird. We don’t want to become one of those big companies that feels corporate and boring. We want to be able to laugh at ourselves. We look for both fun and humor in our daily work.”

So farewell to a manager who provided fun and humor in my work.