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 […]
Change is hard. Especially when the change wasn’t your idea to begin with. But change is a necessary part of life. Do you know anyone who hasn’t experienced a change in the past year?! It’s all around us! Deliberately bringing positive energy into the change process ensures that any change you make is not only […]
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. […]
Over the last couple weeks, I’ve written a lot about the importance of bringing love into our leadership lives and daily work. As I continue to do more with the organizational ecosystem model (email me at [email protected] if you want the drawing), I’ve been thinking a lot about purpose. In the metaphorical model that I wrote about […]
Way back in 1990—in the same year that the two Germanies were reunited, Nelson Mandela was released from prison, and eight years after Paul and I had opened the Deli—my friend Lex Alexander from North Carolina told me about a new book he was reading. And loving. It was written by a guy from Iowa […]
Can creativity, caring, dignity, and humbleness help our organizations and our communities get—and stay—healthy? It may sound naïve, but I believe that if we do them well, we can make Dostoevsky’s 19th century declaration into a reality: “The world will be saved by beauty.” We’ve all heard of “death by a thousand cuts.” I want […]
If you work with anyone, whether it’s you and a business partner, or you’re a part of a team of many, it’s inevitable that people will complain from time-to-time. This is a co-working reality! How you handle a complaint from a coworker says a lot about your organization, and it’s important to give these complaints […]
What a year it’s been! As we work our way through the marathon of a minefield that was 2020, tune in to hear Ari reflect on the lessons learned in the first ten months of the global pandemic. Each lesson offers a tangible tool for helping get through hard days—both the pandemic with which we’re […]
Sometimes, small shifts in wording can work wonders. As Governor Gretchen Whitmer said a few months ago, “Words matter.” Which is why I keep coming back to a realization that I had while working on the new pamphlet “Humility: A Humble, Anarchistic Inquiry.” As I shared in the latter half of the pamphlet, I began […]
