As you may know, we’ve been focusing on the employee life cycle in our last few webinars. Stage 2 of the Employee Life Cycle is all about Helping Staff Succeed. And Training is a key part of that. Our March webinar was all about training : The Key Components of Really Effective Training, and we’ve […]
In this webinar, Ari will reveal his “secret” source of progressive business ideas – the Anarchists! Anarchism and business might seem like strange bedfellows but Ari’s in-depth studies of the Anarchists, first as a Russian history student in the 1970’s and then again as he did research for his Guide to Good Leading series, reveal […]
Many of you know that here at Zingerman’s, we’re big believers in the power of Visioning. We use it for projects of every size – from getting a new office printer to opening a new business. We teach it at every level of our organization. We write business visions, team visions, project visions, shift visions […]
If you manage people, you’ve most likely faced the dilemma of what to do with that employee who is not meeting performance expectations. And if you’re human, you most likely don’t particularly enjoy being in that situation. Reactions to performance problems can range from squirming to sorrow to frustration to anger. And no matter where […]
For some of us, the upcoming holidays are a time when our teams will be tested. More customers. More product. More sales. More stress. For others, the holidays mean doldrums and slowing down. And then there is the challenge of that post-holiday re-entry, which can be a testy time for all of us as we […]
If we go by Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 Hour Rule, Ari is an expert on Visioning. He’s studied visioning for countless hours. He’s written (and executed) scores of visions. He’s written about Visioning in his book Guide to Good Leading Series, Part 1 : A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Building a Great Business. He’s taught visioning […]
Here at Zingerman’s, we think that being Open Book is a huge part of why we have the employee engagement and finanical success that we do. Jennifer Conlin, the New York Times reporter that “embedded” at Zingerman’s agrees. At ZingTrain, having taught Open Book Management to countless clients over the years, we also know that […]
Here at Zingerman’s, we practice Servant Leadership from Robert Greenleaf. In one summary of the philosophy, Greenleaf defines it as : “A servant-leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong. While traditional leadership generally involves the accumulation and exercise of power by one at the “top […]
Business books and blogs are full of tips from really successful people on how to manage your time more effectively. As you probably know from reading a good number of them, each one has some nugget of wisdom that you can apply to your own life. In fact, Ari Weinzweig lists 15 of his own […]
We don’t know too many people who love to handle customer complaints. When we meet those people, we try to hire them! For the rest of us, who find handling customer complaints stressful, a little help goes a long way. At Zingerman’s, that help comes in the form of a “recipe” for effectively handling customer […]
Organizational culture is a living and breathing thing that is shaped by the beliefs and actions of everyone within an organization. And nearly all our cultures have shifted in some way or another over the last three years. We are intentionally or unintentionally defining culture every day – by the way we treat our customers, our products, our community, each […]
Whether you call them metrics, measures or KPI’s, the numbers you choose to pay attention to in your business, are the numbers that are going to change. Zingerman’s is an Open Book business. Besides the transparency that Open Book brings, this means that we essentially run our business off a “scoreboard” that we then review […]
