About 25 years ago my partner Paul started talking about the idea of Natural Laws of Business; laws that—like gravity—were simply true. All thriving businesses, he suggested, were living in harmony with those Natural Laws. About a decade later I took Paul’s concept and fleshed it out further in Part 1, Secret #1: “The Twelve Natural Laws […]
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 prior installments in The Guide to Open Book Management posts, you learned what Open Book Management is, The Case for Open Book Management, and if Open Book is right for your business. Next up, an overview of the key components of Open Book Management… Open Book Management is a system used to run the […]
Over all these years, I’ve been fortunate to connect—either directly, or indirectly through their books and teachings—with so many terrifically creative thinkers. People who have impacted my worldviews in meaningful ways, and given me insights that led to significant shifts in beliefs. Each has taught me new tools and approaches that have helped enormously in […]
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. Remembering Grace Lee Boggs: A Life of Hope and Inclusion She lived relatively close by in Detroit and passed away, just six years ago, at the age of 105. I have read a […]
At the end of this week, I have a new pamphlet coming out. Like the pandemic, it wasn’t something I’d planned for. While the idea for the previous pamphlet—“Humility: A Humble, Anarchistic, Inquiry”—had been in the works for over a year, the idea for this one only came into my head a couple months ago. […]
