An Emotional Intelligence Based Entropy-Management System to Accelerate the Development of an eCommerce Retail Organization as a Complex Adaptive System

This paper discusses an emotional-intelligence based entropy-management system that helps reduce organizational and operational inefficiencies in real-time. The system is in use at Zappos.com a multi-billion dollar eCommerce Retail organization. Anonymous reflection at the individual level is aggregated by team, to create a real-time mirror of a range of team and organizational dynamics that the team may be experiencing. Through facilitating continuous-learning and a constructive solution mind-set this system helps to reduce sublinear and superlinear inefficiencies to help drive the organization to operate as a Complex Adaptive System. The paper illustrates features of the system used at Zappos.com and summarizes lessons learned from over one year of use.