Repeatedly talk about your values so that everyone understands what great talent looks like. And, above all, make it clear that building the team isn’t just one person’s job, it’s everyone’s job.

1. Core Values: the handful of rules defining the culture, which are reinforced through your People (HR) systems on a daily basis.

1. Core Purpose: the top leader’s regular stump speech to keep everyone’s heart engaged in the business.

3. Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG®): the 10- to 25-year goal that provides constant context for all of the decisions made throughout the organization.

1. Priorities/Themes: a handful of three- to five-year, one-year, and quarterly priorities, which require repeated review on a daily and weekly basis to keep them top-of-mind.

UNCOMMON TAKEAWAYS

• It's not enough to design your service model right. Uncommon service is achieved when great organizational design meets a culture of service excellence. A basic way to think about it is this: service excellence is a product of design and culture.

• The right culture is not a universal concept. Your right culture is a distinct asset that must be consistent with your organization's service model.

• One way to understand culture is to break it down into its relevant components. We like Edgar Schein's culture framework, which loosely divides a culture into artifacts, behaviors, and shared basic assumptions. As Schein argues, to change behavior (a company's typical goal), you have to change the way people think. To change the way people think, start with the underlying assumptions that drive that thinking.

• Great service organizations tend to do three things well in their relationship with culture. They have deep clarity about the organizational culture they must cultivate in order to compete and win. They are effective in signaling the norms and values that embody that culture. And they work hard to ensure cultural consistency, alignment between the desired culture and organizational strategy, structure, and operations.

Hsieh is crystal clear on the culture he needs to make the company thrive, and he and his team have broken it down into ten core company values:

1. Deliver wow through service.

1. Embrace and drive change.

1. Create fun and a little weirdness.

1. Be adventurous, creative, and open-minded.

1. Pursue growth and learning.

1. Build open and honest relationships with

communication.

1. Build a positive team and family spirit.

1. Do more with less.

1. Be passionate and determined.

1. Be humble.

UNCOMMON TAKEAWAYS

• It's not enough to design your service model right. Uncommon service is achieved when great organizational design meets a culture of service excellence. A basic way to think about it is this: service excellence is a product of design and culture.

• The right culture is not a universal concept. Your right culture is a distinct asset that must be consistent with your organization's service model.

• One way to understand culture is to break it down into its relevant components. We like Edgar Schein's culture framework, which loosely divides a culture into artifacts, behaviors, and shared basic assumptions. As Schein argues, to change behavior (a company's typical goal), you have to change the way people think. To change the way people think, start with the underlying assumptions that drive that thinking.

• Great service organizations tend to do three things well in their relationship with culture. They have deep clarity about the organizational culture they must cultivate in order to compete and win. They are effective in signaling the norms and values that embody that culture. And they work hard to ensure cultural consistency, alignment between the desired culture and organizational strategy, structure, and operations.