Your values drive happiness

Early in his career, Paolo Mottola worked for a large advertising and marketing agency in Seattle, and thought he had it made. The work seemed interesting enough and, combined with the flashy offices, free coffee (which was actually good), and downtown location next to cool bars and restaurants, what wasn’t to like?

Oh, and the best perk of all? Happy hours!

“It seemed very cool to me as a young person who’d only recently gotten legal access to bars,” Paolo says. “You feel like, ‘Wow, I’m really blending work and play.’”

As time went on, however, Paolo felt a disconnect. All the classic agency perks, which were similar to those his friends around town enjoyed at big tech companies and fast-moving startups, felt good in the moment, because everyone else seemed happy to have them. Yet, he thought, there must be more to work and life than this. Eventually Paolo landed a job at REI. The outdoor gear and clothing cooperative was founded by twenty-three climbing friends in the shadow of Mount Rainier in 1938. Its mission is to help people choose life outdoors. 

He connected to the mission—and values—of REI. Much more than he did to happy hours and free snacks. 

“I didn’t realize how satisfying it would be to intermingle the feel-good benefits of a mission-based organization with work like this,” says Paolo, who eventually helped develop and launch one of the best values-based marketing campaigns ever. 

In 2015, as the Christmas shopping season approached, the company faced a challenge: “How does REI compete around a holiday that has created over-consumerism inconsistent with our core values?” Paolo says, “The answer: We don’t.”

As a retail store, REI could have followed conventional business logic suggesting that it extend in-store hours, mark down merchandise, and spend more on marketing and advertising than at any other time of the year. That’s what the retail giants did every year. Instead, REI chose a different path. 

“We decided to close on Black Friday to act on our values and, at the very least, give our store employees the day off. Many of them are career retail employees who hadn’t had Thanksgiving and Black Friday off in years,” Paolo told me. (REI has more than 12,000 employees.) “We’re a brand that tells people to go outside to find their best selves, not wait outside for a doorbuster.” 

Paolo’s team created the #OptOutside hashtag on social media to invite America to join them. More a movement than a campaign, it generated national media attention and social media buzz worth millions of dollars more than what it could have spent on its own. 

It wasn’t about the free marketing, however. It wasn’t really even about Black Friday. The company made a decision to live its values in a very big and very intentional way. Imagine how employees felt, the day they learned they would be getting paid to go play outside.

“It’s a way different perk than a margarita cart,” says Paolo, who is now the director of content and media at REI. “People feel they can bring more of themselves into the work. Outdoors as a lifestyle is something we embrace. It encourages people to be their fullest selves.”

A small but humorous example of the REI culture is Paolo’s voicemail recording on his phone, which simply says: “Hey Scott, leave a message.” Since he works with a team of millennials who only text and don’t leave voicemails, Paolo says he personalized his recording for the one friend who actually leaves a voicemail. “That’s who I am.”

People who are happy and satisfied at work are more likely to feel that their personal values match the values of the organization that employs them. Seems pretty obvious, right? Unfortunately, most people do not fall into this group. 

Whether you work for an organization that has values that it lives by or not, you can improve your sense of validation and value by identifying your own core values. If you can match some to your organization, even better. 

This is an excerpt from Chapter 4, which also takes you through a valuable exercise for identifying your personal core values.

- This is an excerpt from The Butterfly Impact, a new book on creating work-life balance through small, meaningful actions.