Last week I wrote a bunch about the importance of organizational culture—how much difference it makes to be part of a healthy culture versus an unhealthy one, and my metaphorical context of imagining organizational culture as the soil in which we’re working. This week I’ll begin to share my list of things we can do to […]
Over the past 20 or 30 years, organizational culture has become one of the most common topics of leadership discussion. Everyone seems to agree that it’s important. But, as Buffalo Springfield sang back in the late ’60s, “What it is ain’t exactly clear.” Progressive business writer Frederic Laloux says, “Culture is how things get done […]
Chances are that the way you’re currently serving your customers looks a lot different than it did a year ago. We’ve all had to be agile and flexible as we work to set our businesses and our customers up for success in the face of so many changes and a lot of stress. Although not […]
Dr. Vivek Murthy wrote in his book Together: “The more I studied the seesaw relationship between loneliness and togetherness, the more convinced I became of the great power of human connection. So many problems we face as a society… are worsened by loneliness and disconnection. Building a more connected world holds the key to solving these […]
A year ago, on Tuesday March 10 of 2020, we hosted our annual Jelly Bean Jump Up dinner at the Roadhouse to raise money for Safehouse Center. Anxiety was in the air around news of COVID-19, but the dinner went well anyway. I breathed a small sigh of relief that evening, but the relief, as you […]
In “Working Through Hard Times,” the Introduction is an essay I wrote back at the beginning of the pandemic, called “Things Fall Apart.” As we approach the one year mark of the arrival of COVID-19, I’m imagining the inverse. Sometimes things come together, often with an unexpected elegance. My belief is that by gently and consistently calling forward […]
In the spirit of picking up the phone that I wrote about in “Working Through Hard Times,” I dialed the number of a friend the other evening. She’s an amazing leader who lives halfway across the country. Someone who is humble, focused, and persistently positive in her leadership. She has vision, she’s grounded, and determined […]
In the four months since the release of “Humility: A Humble, Anarchistic Inquiry,” I’ve had a couple of good questions about its contents come my way that—initially—I had no answer for. I’m happy to share that the reflections that followed have helped me to further understand the importance of humility in our organizational ecosystems and to see […]
Many thanks to all of you who reached out with such positive thoughts after to my recent piece about our 2032 Vision. I appreciate everyone who asked for a copy. I’m happy to share—inspiring visions and interesting ideas, ever imperfect, can only lead to more creative thinking across our ecosystem when shared widely. Speaking of […]
Thursday, January 28, is a morning that I will remember, in the best possible ways, for a long time. Probably, for the rest of my life. Unlike so many other days lately, nothing particularly noteworthy that I know of happened on a national scale that day. And yet, here at Zingerman’s, it was a day […]
Remember March 2020? What were you doing a year ago–in the “before” time? Personally, I was spending a lot of time on the phone. We were interviewing prospects for a newly available position as a ZingTrain Trainer. Someone who could help pick up the load at the end of July when I would be stepping […]
I don’t have that many regrets in life, but one of mine is that I never managed to meet Grace Lee Boggs. She lived relatively close by in Detroit and passed away, just six years ago, at the age of 105. I have read a lot of what this amazing woman put into print. Her […]
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