Excerpted from Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading, Part 2: A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Being a Better Leader

It’s an interesting construct, one that seems like it should be a no-brainer, but I think is actually oddly alien to the way most of us are raised, and certainly the way most workplaces work; to make anarcho-capitalism successful requires something of a (hopefully) bloodless coup inside most of our brains. Because although almost all the buzzwords in the political world are all about this being a free country, strangely, most all of the corporate world is used to operating as if free will was a concept that somehow was left at home when one heads in to work. Bosses, in the old school at least, generally operate in the belief that they can order others around. As the late Gustav Landauer wrote a hundred years or so ago, “ … there can be only one monarch: the inner being of each individual. If our situation is to improve, it is this monarch who must claim his rule and point us in the right direction.”

That doesn’t mean everyone’s going to just do whatever they want, whenever they want. There are consequences for all of our actions and we each own those too, just as we do our freely made decisions. Remember, we’re talking anarcho-capitalism here, not complete chaos—there are systems and structures that we’ve all chosen to be accountable to. But with that little bit of clarification in hand, I’ll say straightforwardly that, in our ideal world at least, our work is really never about giving orders. The idea, instead, is to actually be asking, explaining “why,” laying out expectations in advance, being clear about consequences before they come due, and allowing for dialogue about it all whenever possible. Don’t get me wrong—the work still has to get done and leaders still have to lead; it’s just that we understand that those who follow do so by choice, not because they’re forced, and the truth is that most anyone can step up to lead when they need or want to.

I’ll forecast that most humans will feel freer and more fulfilled if all they were to do was to actively decide to decide; whether we acknowledge it or not, we’re each ACTIVELY—if not always mindfully—making lots of choices. We decide whether we’re going to move quickly or not; to be in a good mood or bad; to smile or look sullen; to stop and pick up paper on the street or simply walk past it as we’ve done two thousand times before. A huge part of our training work here is, hence, to help everyone who comes to work with us become aware of those choices. When we do that well, there’s not a lot of room left for victims. If someone opts not to pursue positive outcomes—even after being regularly encouraged, respected and rewarded for going after what they believe to be right—there’s not a whole lot we can do for them. Pretty much everyone in the organization gets that, and, honestly, the group here won’t really put up with “victim” stuff for very long. When anyone here regularly opts for the negative, I know it’s usually only a matter of time before they end up leaving. By contrast, when everyone is making conscious decisions about their state of being . . . tensions drop, energy increases and everything just plain works better. I’ll just tell you, speaking personally, that life became a whole lot more fun and a lot less stressful once since I set myself free and realized that everything I did started with a decision I had made freely.

I added this one to the list fairly recently. It’s not that having fun is a novel idea—here at Zingerman’s we’ve had it written into our guiding principles for years. But we long ago realized that fun was something we had to actively make happen, not something that would arrive on its own.

Note that by “having fun” I’m not talking about a bunch of goofy behaviors, making your staff wear funny hats or pins, or telling jokes (although in the right culture any or all of those might work). I’m talking about the quality of the energy in our work environment; about enjoying and appreciating all the really amazing little things that surround us every day but that so many people don’t stop to appreciate; about realizing that it’s the ride and not the destination that’s really the point of things.

And before some cynic says something like, “well that’s easy for them because they’re successful, so of course they’re having fun,” I’m going to posit that in this case, as in so many other things in life, the behavior actually very often precedes the feeling. Great organizations aren’t having fun just because they’re great rather, they’re great because the people in them are actively appreciative and have learned to enjoy doing whatever it is they need to do to succeed in ethical and caring ways.

Chip Conley, the founder and CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, shares a great example of this in his highly recommended book, Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow. During the depths of the dot-com crash Joie de Vivre was as hard hit as any other Bay Area hotel group. As sales suffered Chip had to go without salary for a number of years. Perhaps harder still, after many years of success he had to approach his investors with a capital call to raise operating cash for the hotels. As part of the call he and his staff designed a T-shirt to send to each investor. On the front it said, “San Francisco Hotels 2002: The Sky is Falling,” and on the back, “Joie de Vivre Hospitality. Strong Enough to Restore the Sky.” And then, underneath . . . “I bought a hotel in San Francisco and all I got was this lousy T-shirt?” A little humor in the face of great financial adversity goes a long way!

The capital call went very smoothly, the company stayed strong, and they’re doing well now. Obviously the shirt was not the keystone of the company’s recovery. But, hey, the humor helps. After they made it back to equilibrium, one of the company’s investors sent Chip back a T-shirt that said, “Joie de Vivre Hospitality . . . No Bankruptcies, No Defaults, No Salary.”

I’ll close this discussion of the last of the twelve laws with a quote from Logan Pearsall Smith. It’s from his 1931 essay, “Life and Human Nature,” which I first saw in Chip’s book. The piece immediately struck me as being so much in sync with this twelfth rule. “There are two things to aim at in life,” Smith wrote. “First, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.”

Twelve Natural Laws of Business:
There are organizational principles that consistently work and, in the big scheme of things, follow a natural order. We call these “Natural Laws of Business.” Our experience here is that the natural laws are applicable for any business regardless of size, scale, age or product offering. Exceptions exist, but I’ll say up front I wouldn’t recommend expending much energy trying to prove these rules to be wrong.

Early on in our work together Paul taught me that, in his view, “Professionalism means sticking with something long after the glamour has worn off.” Everything I’ve seen, heard, and learned since has supported that belief.

While most people seem to think that everyone else’s work or life or whatever is glamorous, few things are actually very glamorous after the third or fourth day of doing them. Front-line people think it would be great to be the CEO and be in charge of everything; CEOs think about how nice it would be to just be able to go clean the cooler for an hour and not have anyone bother them! And while there are the hole-in-ones of the business world that you can probably point to as exceptions, nearly all great organizations, take a really, really long time to build.

For instance, we’re big proponents of Open Book Finance. We use it religiously and even teach a two-day ZingTrain seminar on the subject. But I’ll tell you flat out that for the first five years or so of doing it we were probably mediocre at best in our implementation. It took another three or four years to really get good at it. Could others have done it more quickly and more effectively? I’m sure many could, and I know some have. And, believe me, I’m not recommending doing it poorly just so you can say you stuck with it. Most organizations would have given up long before they’d arrived at anything really special. Their loss—Open Book Finance is one of the best things we’ve ever implemented!

Twelve Natural Laws of Business:
There are organizational principles that consistently work and, in the big scheme of things, follow a natural order. We call these “Natural Laws of Business.” Our experience here is that the natural laws are applicable for any business regardless of size, scale, age or product offering. Exceptions exist, but I’ll say up front I wouldn’t recommend expending much energy trying to prove these rules to be wrong.

It took me a really long time to recognize the truth of this law. But having realized the reality of it I can’t recall a single time that it hasn’t proven true. I can tell you, too, that accepting it has radically reduced my stress level. I used to think there was this big conflict at work between “good” and “bad” qualities, either in me or in the organization overall. But the reality is that pretty much anything we’re good at is going to, at some point, be carried a bit too far and become a problem.

So, for instance, I’m personally very focused and I don’t let go of something I believe in very easily. Certainly that quality has contributed positively to what I’ve been able to achieve over the years. But it’s sort of inevitable—following this natural law—that sometimes I’m going to stick with something longer than I should. The same holds true organizationally. One of our strengths here at Zingerman’s is that we’re a very participative workplace. What’s the almost inevitable weakness, then? Sometimes we have so many chances for people to participate that things take longer than they might have otherwise.
Embracing the reality of this law makes life far less stressful: instead of fighting our weaknesses we can actually predict them and then plan ways to manage around, or through, them.

Twelve Natural Laws of Business:
There are organizational principles that consistently work and, in the big scheme of things, follow a natural order. We call these “Natural Laws of Business.” Our experience here is that the natural laws are applicable for any business regardless of size, scale, age or product offering. Exceptions exist, but I’ll say up front I wouldn’t recommend expending much energy trying to prove these rules to be wrong.

Although most of us are raised with the belief that effective work eliminates problems, the reality is quite different. We’re always going to have problems. The key is to pick the problems you want and then appreciate the chance to work on them, all the while working to get better problems still.

Don’t believe me? OK, would you rather have too few customers and struggle to make your payroll, or have sales so strong that you have to struggle to keep up? Obviously I like seeing sales levels right “on plan” best of all, but the reality is that generally I’d rather have sales be too high than too low. Similarly, I’d far prefer the problem of having too many good people in the organization and not quite enough opportunity for them all in the moment than to have too few good people.

Quick story to illustrate the point. A customer was having dinner at Zingerman’s Roadhouse not long ago. While he and his family were enjoying their evening’s experience he shared with his server that the person who had taken their order during a morning visit to the Deli just hadn’t been as enthusiastic as our staff usually are. His server that night was on top of things—she apologized (even though she had no idea who it was at the Deli nor any inkling of what had really happened). She took the initiative to buy the family an extra appetizer as a way to help make it right and follow up her verbal apology.

As the guest and his family were leaving I stopped him to add to the apologies that the server had already given, to check that his dinner experience was good, and to thank him again for sharing the story so constructively. “Look,” he said with a smile. “I’ve been a customer of yours for nearly 20 years. We started going to the Deli when we were students here. Now we live in Florida and we’re huge fans of everything you do. It’s just that you guys have set the bar SO high that when we got service that would probably be fine most places but just isn’t at the standards we know we’re gonna get here . . . it just surprised us. It wasn’t bad—it just wasn’t very . . . ‘Zingy.’”

I love getting a customer complaint of that kind. So many other businesses have set the bar so low that their customers don’t even notice the shortfalls anymore, let alone say anything about them. While the latter is certainly less stressful in the moment it definitely doesn’t lead to success. Ignorance only feels like bliss; reality remains the same whether anyone tells us the truth or not.

Twelve Natural Laws of Business:
There are organizational principles that consistently work and, in the big scheme of things, follow a natural order. We call these “Natural Laws of Business.” Our experience here is that the natural laws are applicable for any business regardless of size, scale, age or product offering. Exceptions exist, but I’ll say up front I wouldn’t recommend expending much energy trying to prove these rules to be wrong.