1. Provide vision: written vision for department completed as part of each year’s annual plan.
2. Give great service to the staff: follow Zingerman’s 3 Steps to Great Service and 5 Steps to Handling Complaints when inter- acting with your co-workers and the people you manage; go the extra mile for staff a minimum of 5 times each day.
3. Manage in an ethical manner: Have at least 1 caring confrontation per month. 4. actively learn and teach: at least 2 hours of formal learning per week and at least 1 hour of formal teaching each month.
4. Help staff succeed by living Zingerman’s training compact: Document clear perfor- mance expectations in a Training Passport for your department, provide resources, recognize and reward performance.
5. Say “thanks!”: Write a minimum of 1 thank you note per week; say thank you to everyone at the end of every shift.

Command – you know exactly what you want and you don’t need input from anyone else.

Consultative – you’re clear about what success looks like, but you’re interested in hearing others’ opinions and may make revisions based upon their input. In the end, however, you have the final say.

Consensus – there is a group of people who must all be in agreement before the vision can move ahead.

Delegation – you’re passing the responsibility for the decision off to someone else and whatever he/she/they decide is A-OK with you.

2) Strategically sound: It might be a stretch, but it is do-able.

3) Documented: It’s in writing.

4) Communicated: Everyone knows about it.

Vision is always a key management tool, but vision is especially important for leaders whose organizations are in the creating or changing stages.

We are honored to be among the fourteen companies that Bo studied and wrote about in his book. And we are doubly excited to work with Bo to design this seminar that shares learnings from his research and gives participants a unique understanding of how entrepreneurs can choose to define success on their own terms!

I won’t give away all the secrets that Bo, Ari and the other presenters will share in the seminar, but I’ve got to tell you about what we think is at the core of the Small Giants book. It is all about vision (one of our favorite topics!). Hence the seminar title. What Bo saw in the businesses he studied was that the founders examined countless ways and options for building successful businesses and the key thing that helped them to make choices about structure, growth, culture, etc. was a strong personal vision of “the kind of business they wanted to live in.”

At ZingTrain, we have been presenting “The Zingerman’s Experience” seminar for 10 years. The underlying theme of that seminar revolves around the role that vision has played in Zingerman’s success. ZingTrain’s “Small Giants” seminar will provide you with the tools to define your vision of success. Call us to find out more or to register!