If you were to ask your staff how much money your business makes each year, what would they say? I can tell you that when we first started asking our staff that question (about 15 years ago), we got answers that were all over the map — from figures that approximated our annual sales to […]
While this piece appears under my byline, the real credit for it should go to Edgar Schein, whom I believe is one of the most insightful writers on leadership. A long-time professor at MIT and a graduate of Harvard, Stanford and the University of Chicago, he is an expert on organizational behavior, change, leadership and, […]
The Natural Laws of Business is a concept that we’ve had at Zingerman’s for about 15 years. It’s also the title of an essay that I wrote for a previous issue of Specialty Food Magazine and stuck into Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading, Part 1, which was published last year. Basically, they are about operating […]
This is the third part in a topical trilogy, inspired initially by St. Augustine’s fifth-century work, “Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Charity.” My interest in St. Augustine isn’t on the formal religious implications of his work (although it’s certainly a good subject to pursue if your passions pull you in that direction), but rather on […]
Creating and sustaining hope in the workplace can transform how you and your employees approach your jobs every single day. This series is based on what St. Augustine wrote about in his classic Christian work, “Faith, Hope and Charity.” The first essay in this series dealt with the importance of belief in the workplace. Part […]
This is not an essay on religion in the workplace. Nor is it about values or guiding principles, though these certainly overlap and underlie all of what I’m addressing here. This piece is about belief, in the singular sense of the word. It’s about what we—each of us as individuals—believe about the work, people, products […]
In the past year or so, I’ve been asked to speak on the subject of innovation about 14 times.As the economic screws tighten, it seems like the pressure increases to invent the culinary equivalent of the next iPhone. People from the press, business schools and bigger companies keep asking me to predict tomorrow’s big breadwinners […]
Understanding these three types of systems—and deciding how they can work for you—is one of the best investments of time in your business that you can make. In an earlier article, we discussed the importance of creating a corporate culture of appreciation and training around strong systems as well as finding the right system to […]
Are you focusing enough on your business procedures? In this two-part series, you will learn about four types of systems and how understanding them can help your business run more smoothly and successfully. Like every organization with more than 15 folks working in it, we have a lot of systems at Zingerman’s. Which is a […]
Rather than simply cataloging past behavior, spark passion and purpose by defining what both you and your employees want to achieve in a year. It all starts with creating a vision of success. If you put together a list of universal management frustrations—the areas where, despite our best systemic intentions, we consistently fall short—offering timely […]
Becoming what‘s known as a “third place” is a status that every community-oriented business should want to achieve. I first heard the idea of the third place in reading Ray Oldenburg’s book, The Great Good Place, originally published in 1989. Here is the key concept: As Oldenburg explains, the “first place is the home; the […]
At Zingerman’s, we are often asked, “How did you build this great group of people? How do you get people to care and have such a good time at work? Basically, they are asking what the secret of our culture is. And, of course, there is no secret; there are a thousand things to make […]
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