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 […]
This may seem too simple to even mention, but I’m going to say it anyway: The work that we do in our merchandising makes a significant contribution—for better and for worse—on the quality of the service experience our customers get from us. As you know if you’ve read many of my other columns, a positive […]
EDITOR’S NOTE: In the first article in this series, A Guide to Planning Effective Promotions, we presented a guide to planning successful promotions. In Part 2, we talk about techniques that can make your promotions hum. Successful promotions should be fun, but they must also sell product. Here are a dozen techniques that can contribute […]
Organizing promotions is a less-than-glamorous subject. Good promotions are all about creativity combined with nuts-and-bolts stuff that “everyone already knows. But without good nuts and bolts, it’s tough to build the solid, successful businesses we all want to operate. We’ve been running promotions for so many years I sometimes take them for granted. Yet promotions […]
More people in the food world should write about what they do and sell. Writing has helped me contribute to the building of Zingerman’s. It’s also pushed me to learn more about what I do, while making me a better listener and a more sensitive taster. Getting Started I started writing more out of frustration […]
One day, as Becky Winkler was teaching the section of our ZingTrain MerchandiZing seminar that covers “Contrast, Composition, and Content, it suddenly struck me. Although the approach was created to address graphic design issues, it’s applicable to all the other “design work we do,” whether that’s designing a business, a product or anything else of […]
