Ari's Writing

Managing Ourselves

Secret #38: Thinking About Thinking

Eugene Ionesco once said, “It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.” So here’s a question: What if we didn’t think hierarchically? What if we stopped insisting on ranking almost everything from best to worst? What if we weren’t worried about “who was the greatest”?  Buried near the back of Part 3 of the Guide to Good Leading […]

Managing Ourselves

The Power of Solitude

A quote from Beat poet Gary Snyder: “There are two things that are really educational. One is being with a bunch of really smart people. The other is being all by yourself.”  The regimen that I wrote about in a recent newsletter about the power of picking up the phone—making a couple of random phone calls […]

Ari's Writing

Why Open Book Management is an excellent way to run a business!

It’s been nearly a decade now since we at Zingerman’s made the move to open book management. If you’re not familiar with the term “open book,” it means that we actively share all the financial information about our business with everyone who works within our organization. And that everyone in our organization, from dishwashers on […]

Customer Service

One Customer at a Time

At  Zingerman’s we’ve done a lot of work over the past few years to introduce effective measurements to assess the quality of our service work. We do things like mystery shopping, customer callbacks, and track complaints, order accuracy and late deliveries. All have helped us compile data that we use to guage the effectiveness of […]

Leadership Development

The Evolution of Organizational Culture and Leadership

While this piece appears under my byline, the real credit for it should go to Edgar Schein, whom I believe is one of the most insightful writers on leadership. A long-time professor at MIT and a graduate of Harvard, Stanford and the University of Chicago, he is an expert on organizational behavior, change, leadership and, […]

Organizational Culture

The Spirit of Generosity

This is the third part in a topical trilogy, inspired initially by St. Augustine’s fifth-century work, “Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Charity.” My interest in St. Augustine isn’t on the formal religious implications of his work (although it’s certainly a good subject to pursue if your passions pull you in that direction), but rather on […]

Leadership Development

Why Having Hope Matters

Creating and sustaining hope in the workplace can transform how you and your employees approach your jobs every single day. This series is based on what St. Augustine wrote about in his classic Christian work, “Faith, Hope and Charity.” The first essay in this series dealt with the importance of belief in the workplace. Part […]