In 1992, we called together a group of managers, staff, and owners and set out to put on paper a statement of what Zingerman’s is all about, to write what’s referred to in business books as a Mission Statement. I was skeptical. I’m not sure why I agreed to it; probably because my partner Paul […]
Regardless of your actual title in an organization, your job involves making decisions. New staff members start making decisions the day they are hired, and beginning with their decision to accept the job, we hope their decisions will be good ones. One of the basic tenets of Bottom-Line Training — clear, documented expectations — is […]
Congratulations! You made it through the holidays. And if you’re taking the time to read this column, you must have made it through more or less intact. In the best case, it was your biggest holiday season to date and you’re feeling wonderful about how smoothly everything went — despite all the things that went […]
Happy New Year! As the retail world catches its breath after the whirlwind of the holidays, many managers find their New Year’s resolutions include “doing something to improve training.” How about you? Now that there’s hope for a little down time, does training figure in as one of the projects you hope to accomplish? Very […]
My formal education was first in German literature and then later in business administration. What I know about training design, development and delivery, I’ve learned through on-the-job practice and self-study. I’ve gone to lots of seminars, designed hundreds of classes and workshops, and helped to implement effective training here at Zingerman’s. Along the way, I’ve […]
“This isn’t a vision, it’s an illustrated to-do list… let’s try a second draft.”
The article below was originally published in Lawn & Garden Retailer in 2017, as a collaboration between former ZingTrain Community Builder, Gauri Thergaonkar, and myself (Elnian Gilbert). I vividly remember sitting at a table in our lobby area, discussing all of the fine points of the 10-4 Rule – what would be the most useful to […]
Over the years that I’ve been a Trainer and Speaker with ZingTrain, sharing how Zingerman’s builds a culture of great service, I’m sure you can imagine how my awareness of the way that different companies deliver customer service has only increased. Of course, there’s a wide range out there – I personally try to patronize […]
Ian Gurfield, Co-Founder of Ian’s Pizza, is a long-time client and dear friend of ZingTrain. Below, he shares how he came to learn about Visioning, what the process of writing his first Vision was like and the impact it’s had on his business. And be sure to scroll down to to the end of this […]
Before I get too far into this blog post about how to write a vision, it feels appropriate to share a vision of what success looks like for this blog post. Here goes:
In the Servant Leadership workshops we teach, we often lead in to the content we’ve adapted from Robert Greenleaf by asking the group:
