Ari's Writing

Ari's Writing

A Couple Good Questions and an Attempt to Answer Them

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 […]

Business Visioning

Designing Sustainable Visions

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 […]

Business Visioning

The Life-Altering Work of Writing Your Organizational Vision of Greatness

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 […]

Training & Business Systems

Why I’m Glad to Still Teach our Staff Orientation

I don’t have that many regrets in life, but one of mine is that I never managed to meet Grace Lee Boggs. She lived relatively close by in Detroit and passed away, just six years ago, at the age of 105. I have read a lot of what this amazing woman put into print. Her […]

Leadership Development

“Working Through Hard Times: Life and Leadership Learnings from 2020”

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. […]

Ari's Writing

The Power of a Purposeful Path

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 […]

Ari's Writing

Love and Work

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 […]

Ari's Writing

The World Will Be Saved by Beauty

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 […]

Ari's Writing

The Pursuit of Humbleness

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 […]

Training & Business Systems

Another Look at Bottom-Line Change®

What if I told you we had an organizational tool that gets better, longer lasting results than the old command-and-control approach? That it helps develop effective leadership skills across all levels of the organization. Encourages humility in everyone. Actively and systemically engages diverse perspectives in meaningful conversation. Cuts down on unpleasant surprise changes that can […]

Training & Business Systems

What if Good Work was the Norm?

One of the common pieces of conversation prompted by the pandemic has been that “after this is over, everything is going to be different.” It sounds uplifting… though I’m not sure what people are imagining will have changed. While a crisis (personal or collective) can cause reflection, more often than not, when it’s over, things […]

Ari's Writing

Why Mission Statements Matter

Here in the middle of the rather mad year of 2020, taking time to talk about Mission Statements might feel a bit . . . frivolous. Why, one might reasonably wonder, spend time on something like that when there are so many other urgent issues at hand? When stress levels are high, why sit down […]