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THE TONY HSIEH AWARD
As CEO of Zappos for more than 20 years, Tony Hsieh, pioneered the modern workplace, challenging ideas of what the workplace is and how it works. Upon his death, the inaugural Tony Hsieh Award committee sought out leaders and organizations that strive to deliver happiness to employees and other stakeholders.
JA Worldwide is proud to be the winner of the inaugural Tony Hsieh Award.
 

AWARD CRITERIA

To be eligible for the award, JA Worldwide CEO Asheesh Advani had to demonstrate the following:

INNOVATION: Is the nominee pushing the status quo? Adapting to change in ways that others haven’t?

REPLICABLE/SCALABLE: Is the nominee running the proverbial 4 minute mile in a way that others can learn, improve upon, and replicate? Did the nominee create a solution allowing for teams to understand their responsibilities & make changes where deemed necessary? Is there freedom in how responsibilities will be met?

PROOF OF BETTER OUTCOMES: Tony was a proponent of learning by doing, has the nominee been “doing” instead of theorizing? Is there evidence of proven outcomes?

DELIVER WOW: Is the nominee marching to their own drum and surprising people on a regular basis? Are they delivering their own form of Wow?

Inaugural Tony Hsieh Award acceptance speech from Asheesh Advani, CEO of JA Worldwide.

 

 
FIXED-FLEXIBLE-FREESTYLE APPROACH

JA's Fixed-Flexible-Freestyle model has helped us act as a more cohesive global network with a collective voice and empowered teams.

 

HOW FIXED-FLEXIBLE-FREESTYLE WORKS IN PRACTICE

JA’s Fixed-Flexible-Freestyle framework has enabled more rapid decision-making on important items such as selecting high potential leaders (JA Fellows), building a global alumni community, working with tech-forward partners, improving data and impact measurement capabilities, modernizing our brand, and funding innovation (JA Labs). It has enabled our network of teams to cooperate and co-develop initiatives across cultures and boundaries, particularly in parts of the world that are historically underserved.

In a nutshell, Fixed-Flexible-Freestyle means that JA Worldwide establishes a small number of strategic, fixed elements that everyone in the network agrees to adopt. (We keep these fixed elements to a minimum to ensure the highest possible level of innovation throughout our network.) For example, with our modernized brand, we established global brand guidelines with about a half-dozen fixed elements relating to our symbol, colors, fonts, and photos. We then encourage our regions to take all the remaining non-fixed elements and make them regionally relevant. So, that means some of our six regions have taken the global brand guidelines and made some regional additions, deletions and changes, while still adhering to the fixed elements. Other regions have chosen not to do that, and that’s okay. It’s flexible. At the national and local levels, the freestyle part of our approach allows JA offices to customize further, adding elements that build off the global and regional elements. For our brand, that means creating innovative and creative collateral that meets the cultural and language requirements at the local level. And the cycle is virtuous, with JA Worldwide seeking out the best freestyle collateral and sharing it with the rest of the network to use and adjust as they desire.