The Why, What, How, and Who of Writing a Statement of Beliefs
The Zingerman’s Statement of Beliefs: The *newest* ingredient in our special sauce!
Many customers ask us what makes our organizational culture so special. We credit many, many ingredients (more than we could possibly touch on here), and the latest is rooted in our core beliefs.
As best we can tell, we’re pioneers in the world of organizational beliefs – in fact, we’ve created the first-ever organization-wide Statement of Beliefs. We believe in this work so much that we’ve made our Statement of Beliefs, a booklet originally written for internal use, available to the public in hopes that it can help others learn from the work we’ve found so rewarding. Doing this work yields notable benefits, such as higher levels of inclusion, more effective training, the ability to more easily manage through difficult situations, and a way to convey the cultural aspects of our organization that have become second nature.
Zingerman’s Founding Partner, Ari Weinzweig, has this to say about the magnitude of this work:
“In the years ahead, the Statement of Beliefs will have as much impact on the way we work here as writing our Mission and Guiding Principles in 1991, finishing our first formal Vision for Zingerman’s 2009 back in 1994, teaching our Training Compact in 1994, embarking upon Open Book Management in 1996, or embracing Lean management systems in the early “aughties.” Rolling out the Zingerman’s Statement of Beliefs, I can see clearly, is a radical and meaningful act.”
Tune into this conversation to hear Ari expound on what beliefs are and how they impact our lives. Take a deeper look into the newly-released Statement of Beliefs, and hear how we’re putting it to use in our organization. We invite you to consider how the exploration of your organizational beliefs can help clarify your work.
What can life look like when we live in accordance with our beliefs? And what happens when we don’t? We hope to see you there to explore these questions together!
