Winning and success are fun and profitable, so why not devote that little extra effort?

—Everett Nordstrom

The happiest customers leave with Nordstrom bags in their hands.

—Bruce Nordstrom

In its messages to new employees, Nordstrom encourages them to have fun, adding, “Fashion is one of the truest forms of self‐expression. It's creative and colorful and totally limitless. If you're passionate about fashion, this is the place for you.”

As one new employee told us, “All the people who work for Nordstrom have passion about the business. You feel that they believe in what they are saying. That's inspiring. When you are sitting there listening to them, you get excited because they are so excited.”

“The organization is, above all, social. It is people,” wrote Peter Drucker, the management consultant. Drucker's observation is supported by the work of professor Paul J. Zak at Claremont Graduate University, who wrote in an article in Harvard Business Review, “When people intentionally build social ties at work, their performance improves.”

A Google study found that managers who, “express interest in and concern for team members' success and personal well‐being” produce higher quality performance and a greater quantity of work than managers who don't display such interest and concern. When people care about one another, they perform better because they don't want to let their teammates down.

Employee Recognition Meetings, as we discussed, in Chapter 2, are another source of fun. The upbeat meetings are intended to be entertaining and meaningful so that employees leave inspired and with a renewed sense of purpose.

The men and women who thrive at Nordstrom see fun as an essential part of their day.

Larry Smiley, a top‐selling salesperson in Chicago, has the attitude that “You've got to really enjoy what you do. It's got to be a part of you. That's what makes a top seller.”

Store manager Jennifer Drake said, “We see each other a lot. None of us would be putting in the time if it wasn't fun to come to work.”

When you walk into a store or any business that deals with the public, you can tell almost immediately if the employees enjoy being there. At Nordstrom, you can interact with people who enjoy being there.

“Fun is the number one reason we get out of bed and do this,” said store manager Adrienne Hixon. “We are here to take care of the customer. Part of that is having enthusiasm, making sure that you are enjoying what you do. If you don't enjoy it, this is a really hard job to do. We try to instill fun in everything we do, like taking inventory, or being kooky at a rally. Keeping it real is part of fun. You can see key leaders being real. Fun is essential in retail. The customer wants to have fun. We have to do it on their terms. If you're not having fun, the customer senses it and they leave.”

Or as one gung‐ho salesperson said, “Even on my bad days I have fun.”

Does that mean we're going to have fun all the time? Of course not. Even people who create fun for a living—clowns, comedians—are not always having fun. For happy Nordstrom employees, fun is about winning internal sales competitions; making customers happy; enjoying coworkers; and being respected, trusted, and compensated accordingly. Most of us spend at least a third of our lives on the job. Let's have fun!

Fun begins in the morning in the minutes before the doors open, when the store manager gathers the team together for a quick meeting. Over the years, we have witnessed several of these meetings in Nordstrom stores all over North America. An observer can't help but note the tremendous responsibility managers have to gather up all the positivity in their being in order to pass it on to the people on the sales floor. The best managers start the day with energy, optimism, and, yes, fun. They'll single out employees who had a great day the day before. They'll read positive letters from happy customers. They'll encourage their colleagues to put forth their best efforts, as both individuals and team members—and to have fun doing it.

“It's fun to see my team make money. It's fun to see customers excited and happy. It's fun to see salespeople excited about a customer they just connected with,” said store manager Jennifer Drake. “We do a lot in our culture to create an environment that's lighthearted as well as serious. Fun is important to what we do because you're more productive if the environment feels fun. We try to do things around the store to create that feeling of fun, such as store rallies and parties around things.”

It's up to managers to create a fun atmosphere—within a business context.

When a long‐time employee became manager of a women's apparel department at a northern California Nordstrom store, she was faced with a department that had experienced a lot of turnover.

“So my number one goal was to make sure we had stability,” she said. “Once you have stability and happy people, you can create ongoing customer relationships, and that's how your business grows.”

To instill a sense of ownership in her team, she divided the responsibilities in the department. She assigned each person an area of accountability, such as customer service, new accounts, and developing personal trade. The salesperson in charge of new accounts created a chart to monitor each employee's progress, encouraged her teammates, and awarded prizes to those who signed up the highest number of new accounts. The team rose to number one in new accounts for its Nordstrom store, even though it is one of the store's smallest departments. The teamwork boosted the department's spirit and, as a result, the department soon racked up the number one sales‐per‐hour increase in the company.

Taking this approach, “made the department more fun because each person knew they could make an impact,” said the department manager. “We continually challenge each other every day to be better.”

A department manager gathers her employees around her when she's coaching them and encourages them “to be a team. I'll show you how I multiple sell, how I suggestive sell. If you have two customers, turn the sitting room into a party. Let them show each other merchandise. Create a fun atmosphere. If you enjoy what you're doing, they are going to love the experience,” she explained.

After all, shopping at Nordstrom is all about the experience. Fun, of course, takes lots of forms. Like finding a hot fashion item and tweeting about it to your friends. Or getting together on a shopping trip with a few girlfriends, partaking of lunch or an espresso, and taking advantage of the girlfriend dressing rooms that Nordstrom has created, where half a dozen friends can try on clothes comfortably and share their shopping experience. They might be high school girls shopping for back‐to‐school clothes or their moms all buying outfits for a special event. At Nordstrom, they are taken care of from head to toe—shoes, handbags, and all the accessories.

“It's everybody's job to make the customer feel good,” said Jamie.

A department manager in southern California, felt that, “as long as you make the customer happy, no one has a problem with you. If you make the customer unhappy, everybody has a problem with you.”

As he was winding down his career at Nordstrom, “being number one was not as important to me as it used to be,” said David Butler, a now‐retired, top‐performing shoe salesman from the Tacoma, Washington, store. “It would have been very selfish of me not to share with other people what I was able to accomplish. I tried to help teach others what it takes to become a Pacesetter and give them the tools to do it. Helping the entire department make their day, which helped the store make its day, was a lot more fun for me.”

As we've discussed, Nordstrom is a goal‐oriented organization. Without goals, “you don't have a direction and you lose perspective on why you are there,” said a junior sportswear buyer. “Half the challenge of the goal is making it. And when you do make it, you pat yourself on the back. And if you don't make it, you say, ‘Next time, I'm going to try a little harder.’” On the other hand, “If you take a goal too seriously, it will ruin the fun of achieving it.”

A saleswoman in women's shoes in the Pacific Northwest knows customers may not be able to afford everything they want each time they visit. “On the back of my business card, I write down the item the customer really wanted but didn't have time to buy or couldn't afford. I'll also enter that information in my personal book. Often, those people will come back in and say, ‘Hey, I'm ready to get those boots now!’ You need to develop a rapport first, so the customer has fun shopping with you.”

Here's an example of a salesperson and a customer at Nordstrom's downtown San Francisco store, having fun in what could have been a stressful situation. The divorced customer, who was in the middle of making a presentation at a conference in nearby Burlingame, got a text from her college boyfriend, whom she hadn't seen in a long time. The text read: “Do you have plans tonight? Have dinner with me. Drinks at 8 at Palace Hotel. Dinner at 9.”

The customer's only plans were to watch the Golden State Warriors' basketball playoff game on television. The Warriors would have to take a backseat to dinner with her college crush. As the customer wrote to Nordstrom:

Store Openings

Nordstrom turns fun up several notches when it opens new stores, which are huge events that are always covered by the local media. The actual opening day is completely festive. Opening day is the culmination of months of preparation by hundreds of employees, who, for the first time, are working together as a team. As the day draws closer, they meet both as department teams and the total store team, with every one of their colleagues. They hear directly from their store manager and members of the Nordstrom family, who attend every opening.

The final rally before the doors open is openly emotional as the team focuses on its collective achievement—getting the store ready for customers. The store manager offers words of inspiration and thanks for being part of the opening team. Each department within the store is recognized for its contributions. The rally is fun and upbeat—many of the departments bring signs and props, and they cheer, applaud, and sometimes do dances or skits when their department is mentioned.

When the doors are open for the first time, thousands of customers—who have been waiting outside for hours—stream into the store, sometimes shoulder‐to‐shoulder. There to greet them are the salespeople who are lined up along the entrance, handing out balloons and applauding the customers. The store is packed with vendor demonstrations, glasses of champagne, and lots of gifts. It's impossible to not to have fun.

We attended the opening of Nordstrom's store in Vancouver, British Columbia, which featured food trucks, photo booths, a live band, fun prizes, and a “Beauty Bash” outside the store, where customers got the latest scoop on beauty trends and received complimentary consultations, and free makeup applications by Nordstrom's makeup artists. The first 2,500 customers received a Nordstrom Beauty Bash tote. Nordstrom partnered with the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation on the event to raise awareness for the cause.

Have Fun and Give Back

When Nordstrom opens a full‐line store in a new market, it's a big deal. The key is to come in “with all guns blazing,” said Bruce. “I think we get off to a running start better than anybody. We say, ‘Let's be beautiful, let's be great, let's have a beautiful opening party, let's have fun.’ In a new market, we like to start off on the right foot, to give back something to the community before we open our doors. We donate lots of money to local charities and other good causes. We haven't made a cent yet, but we're going to do those things first.”

To choose which beneficiaries it will partner with, Nordstrom's Charitable Giving team visits the community several months in advance to meet with nonprofits in the area. Once the recipients are selected, Nordstrom partners with them for a gala event, such as a formal celebration, a fashion show/benefit, or kids' tile‐painting parties with hundreds of thousands of dollars going to those nonprofits.

“This is an opportunity for us to reach out to the community and learn what their greatest needs are and what we can do to support their efforts,” said Terri Baldwin, director of Charitable Giving at Nordstrom. “It's also a time for us to share more about our approach to giving, our commitment to our communities, and our store opening plans.”

Nordstrom doesn't do cookie cutter events. For example, when the company opened a store in Austin, Texas, the entertainment was a local band called Sour Bridges, which played “brown grass music” (“blue grass, but a little dirtier,” according to the band's website) while 1,000 customers feasted on barbecue and other delicacies from local eateries.

Give Back

These kinds of efforts to give back epitomize what Nordstrom strives for—selfless service in all its forms to customers, coworkers, colleagues, suppliers, and the community. The company tries to be a good citizen and a good neighbor that is dedicated to finding ways to contribute to the common good.

Corporate social responsibility has become a benchmark for customer loyalty. A significant portion of today's consumers want to spend their money with companies that they believe are also good corporate citizens.

But don't forget that corporate social responsibility is a benchmark for employee loyalty as well. A good portion of the members of today's workforce want to work for a company that understand what it's like to be a good neighbor.

Although Nordstrom is in the business of selling stuff to consumers, the company wants its customers, employees, vendors, and shareholders to understand that it is also in the business of doing good while doing well. Nordstrom has had a long‐running dialogue with its employees and customers to learn what matters most to them when it comes to being a good citizen, and it has created a comprehensive strategy of social responsibility based on the input of a task force of leaders from all areas of the company.

According to Nordstrom, the most frequently asked questions from both employees and customers concern the company's commitment to using recycled materials, supporting eco‐friendly products, and offering responsible choices to its customers.

“When leaders create and insure alignment between the place where people feel connected and the actual day‐to‐day work that they do, reservoirs of energy and creativity are released,” writes Dr. Jan Birchfield of Contemplative Leadership Development. We all have “a yearning for connection: The longing to be connected to the ongoing unfolding of life itself is inextricably linked to our longing to serve.”

Nordstrom Cares

“We work hard to be a company our employees and our customers can be proud of,” reads a Nordstrom statement. “For us, that means doing our best to support the many people and communities we serve. It also means respecting the environment by reducing our impact and conserving resources where we can. We strive to make people feel good and show that Nordstrom is a company that cares.”

That statement can be found on a link on Nordstrom.com called “Nordstrom Cares,” where the company details its progress and initiatives on all of its corporate responsibility initiatives.

Nordstrom lives by the phrase, “Leave It Better Than You Found It,” which just happens to be the title of Bruce Nordstrom's memoir. The company holds itself accountable by setting goals and evaluating its progress toward meeting goals in recycling, transportation, paper and packaging, energy, water, human rights, natural and organic food offerings, and community support. Every year since 2009, Nordstrom makes available on its website, a lengthy and detailed progress report on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), “an opportunity to share our goals and hold ourselves accountable to them. We've used it to demonstrate progress and identify opportunities to improve.”

When it comes to self‐evaluation, Nordstrom is disarmingly honest. It will state whether its making progress or falling short of its goals. That honesty gives “Nordstrom Cares” credibility.

Nordstrom's CSR is built on two pillars: taking care of the communities where it does business and respecting the environment.

Here are examples of the Nordstrom Way of giving back to the community:

Cash Grants: Nordstrom donates 1 percent of all gift card sales to nonprofits in individual communities. The funds from this program support cash grants made by Nordstrom and its Employee Charitable Match program. This program is open to all employees who have been with the company for at least one year. It gives each employee $5,000 per fiscal year to match their personal donations to eligible nonprofits.

Each month on NordstromCares.com, the company spotlights some of the nonprofit organizations it supports through contributions and employee volunteers.

Treasure & Bond, Nordstrom's private label brand: Nordstrom donates 2.5 percent of net sales from T&B to organizations that empower youth. T&B products are in women's, girls', and men's apparel; women's shoes, handbags, and accessories; and girls' footwear.

Shoes That Fit, which is helping children in need in thousands of schools across the United States get new shoes and other necessities.

M*A*C VIVA GLAM: When customers purchase any MAC Viva Glam lipstick or lipgloss products, Nordstrom gives 100 percent of the proceeds to organizations that provide a wide range of services to people living with HIV/AIDS, including education, support, and funding for research.

Human rights: Although Nordstrom's stores are currently only in North America and Puerto Rico, Nordstrom is an international company in many ways. Nordstrom.com claims customers from more than 100 countries. And Nordstrom is also an international manufacturer of more than 50 brands of products, manufactured in more than 500 factories through its Nordstrom Product Group (NPG). NPG manufacturers have to adhere to Nordstrom's Partnership Guidelines for proper working conditions. Nordstrom hires a third party to audit all of the factories that make NPG merchandise.

To reflect the communities where it does business, Nordstrom has an aggressive Minority‐ and Women‐Owned Supplier Diversity Program, which it began in 1989, to attract qualified businesses to consider Nordstrom as a potential client. When Nordstrom enters a new market, the company cultivates minority‐owned and women‐owned vendors of office supplies, food, music, photography, and other services, including construction. This program helps form community contacts with a wide range of business and civic leaders, and it gives an opportunity to boost the economic vitality of the communities.

The second pillar of Nordstrom's corporate responsibility is being good stewards of the environment by developing inventive programs around recycling, packaging, sustainability, and other green concerns. Nordstrom is making concerted efforts on these fronts to reduce its carbon footprint. The company is looking at virtually every area in its far‐flung operations: energy use and management, lighting technology, renewable and alternative energy sources. To make its delivery options more earth‐friendly, Nordstrom is looking at ways to better optimize schedules, truck capacity, and gas efficiency.

The company is constantly looking at improving recycling and composting. When it comes to paper and packaging, when a customer places an order with Nordstrom for more than one item, it's Nordstrom's goal for the customer to receive all of those items in one box, if feasible. In Nordstrom's restaurants and specialty bars, the goal is to use as many sustainable products as possible.

Nordstrom solicits green or cost‐saving suggestions from employees, and encourages them to share their ideas with whoever is in charge of that particular initiative. The men and women who come up with a good idea to create positive change are designated as “Nordstrom Cares Heroes.”

The company has ongoing initiatives focusing on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, lighting technology, energy management, renewable and alternative energy sources, water use, transportation, conserving resources, recycling and composting, paper and packaging.

All gift boxes and shopping bags are made from 100 percent recycled content. “If it came from us, you can put it in the recycle bin,” Nordstrom assures its customers.

Shopping bags from Nordstrom Rack are made of 80 percent recycled content, and they have an additive that helps them decompose in landfills in the event that they don't make it into a recycle bin.

All catalogs, annual reports, and paper‐based employee communications are made with Forest Stewardship Council–certified stock with 30 percent postconsumer waste. Most Nordstrom gift cards are made of 50 percent preconsumer/post‐industrial recycled PVC stock. All inks are soy‐based.

In its stores and office buildings, Nordstrom labels all recycling containers and displays educational messaging in the hallways, meeting rooms, and near the cash wraps, and spreads the word through awareness fairs, manager meetings, and e‐mails.

The restaurant division recycles all cups and napkins. All to‐go bags and containers are recyclable. All brewed ice tea is organic, and all eggs are from cage‐free hens. Organic matter is being composted in many stores.

Nordstrom wants to show its customers that fashion and the environment can coexist.

For example, Nordstrom took an abundant material—the plastic water bottle—and converted it into a stylish, versatile tote bag, made from 100‐percent post‐consumer‐recycled material. Approximately ten 16‐oz. water bottles went into the making of each bag. These bags were made from discarded material that otherwise would have been headed for landfills. The bag looked modern and felt strong. It stood up to rain, snow, sun, and sand, and could be washed and wiped clean. It also folded up into its own compact pouch, so it fit inside the customer's regular handbag. When fully expanded, the bag was big enough to hold two shoeboxes. Each tote featured an earth‐friendly illustration by artist Ruben Toledo.

As it moves into its twelfth decade of business, Nordstrom's values have remained unchanged. Its strategy is built around a steadfast and constant belief that the customer remains the best filter for every business decision it makes, both large and small. An obsession with the customer experience continues to be what separates this company from the rest of the field.

Although the ways in which it takes care of customers must adapt with the times and the technology, the company's values remain constant and steadfast.

Bruce told us that his father, Everett, “had a unique ability to get to the heart of the matter. He believed strongly in the things that make our company unique and strong: Give the customer a good value, treat people fairly, allow everyone to contribute their thoughts and make their own mistakes, and finally, set a goal and devote yourself to its completion.

“The values of honesty and hard work, which he shared with his younger brothers, continue to this day to be the bedrock of our company,” said Bruce. “We couldn't do what we've done if we didn't have those values, which manifest themselves in many different ways. Every day in every store in every region, hopefully, something positive is happening that will reinforce our reputation and make things better for our employees, our customers, and our communities.”

And that is The Nordstrom Way.