Some time ago, I spoke at the Inc. 500 Conference in Savannah. The biggest perk was to hear the other presenters, such as former President Clinton. The presentation that had the greatest lasting impact on Zingerman’s was by Scott Cook of Intuit. Intuit makes Quickbooks, Quicken, TurboTax and other accounting software. Cook talked about the […]
High achievers, those focused on ways to improve an organization, may not be as appreciative as they should be. I’ve spent the past 15 years trying to turn my overachieving nature inside out and become good at appreciation. True appreciation can create an organizational culture in which appreciation and positive energy are the norms rather […]
Children are an ever-more-important element of our work in the food world. At the Deli, kids of all ages come in at all times of the day with parents and grandparents. At the Bakehouse and Creamery, which are located in an industrial park, parents show up with kids after school or around scheduled classes in […]
There are two specific areas where the one-customer-at-a-time approach can make a significant impact on organizational success. At Zingerman’s, we focus on both of them because either has the potential to take a customer experience from poor to great by simple, though often not intuitive, action by an owner, manager or associate. Breaking the Rules […]
If bad profits are akin to strip mining, then good profits are like sustainable agriculture; they’re solid, rooted in shared values and win-win outcomes that have long-term gains for all involved. The customer has a great experience, the staff member enjoys serving them and feels good about what they’re selling, and the organization is building […]
Learning never stops. Sometimes it’s painful—learning that comes from working through difficult circumstances, making mistakes, exercising poor judgment, confronting bad luck or facing up to things we didn’t want to know about. At Zingerman’s, we’ve been learning a lot through what we have taken to calling the ZXI, or Zingerman’s Experience Indicator. (See sidebar on […]
At Zingerman’s, we first adopted the Open Book approach to finance in the mid-1990s. We learned about it from reading the now classic book, The Great Game of Business, by Jack Stack and Bo Burlingham, as well as John Case’s Open-Book Management. The concept basically states that everyone in the organization—from hourly staff through to […]
Everyone at Zingerman’s is currently engaged in what we’ve affectionately come to call ZAP, a simple acronym for Zingerman’s Annual Planning. Like any skill one is attempting to perfect, it takes time, practice and dedication to become a master planner. Planning—and even more importantly following the plan—has become such a normal part of what we […]
The first of this two-part series, Meaningful Games at Work, addressed why and how games can help grow your business. Part Two provides pointers on developing games appropriate for your business. While there’s no perfect formula for designing group games, here is a ten-step recipe that we use at Zingerman’s to get better results. The […]
In this first of a two-part series, we address how playing games can help achieve business goals. The next article, Ten Steps to Designing a Great Game, will tell you how to design an effective game for your business. People always give me a funny look when I tell them that we like to play […]
How can you apply the principles of good work at the stove to the work you do with staff? It’s a challenge. People drawn to the lively, loveable chaos of the food business have an aversion to too much structure. It’s natural; we like the freedom of the food world because we don’t have to […]
This essay is about effective leadership. But not the out-front, high-energy, heroic, final-step type of work that wins recognition in magazines about management. Instead it’s about an element of effectiveness that comes from the unglamorous, behind the scenes, stick to the systems stuff that’s just as important, but rarely gets headlines. It’s not about the […]
Learn 30 years of internal systems & practical tools to address common challenges at this annual leadership symposium!
