Creating a culture where people act like they care and care enough to act

Roya Hakakian was born back in 1966, into a Jewish family in Iran. Hakakian was 13 in 1979 when the ultra-orthodox Moslem regime took power and many previously well-accepted freedoms were taken away. She remembers women, suddenly unable to dress as they wished, going into the streets to protest. It was a time when speaking up or saying what needed to be said would likely land one in jail, or at the least earn you a summons to the local police station. When Hakakian was 19, she escaped Iran with her mother, and after a year of moving around Europe, made it to the U.S. Today, Hakakian is a well-known poet, author, and journalist, a woman who Harry Kreisler, in Political Awakenings, called one of  “the most important activists, academics, and journalists of her generation.” In recent weeks, Hakakian has found herself again watching women demonstrate on the streets of her homeland, prompted this time by the tragic death in prison of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.

Hakakian’s first book, which came out in 2004, was entitled, Journey from the Land of No. While Hakakian was writing about what she had experienced in Iran, her title had me thinking about how many modern organizations have created their own less-extreme-than-Iran versions of the “Land of No.” Places where those who hold power prefer passivity from those on the front lines, where higher-ups hold decision-making for themselves, and where new staff will almost never take initiative. Workplaces where people are afraid to take action to do what they know full well needs to be done.

Reflecting on this got me wondering: what can we all do to keep from making our businesses into “Lands of No?” How can we, instead, create workplaces in which taking the initiative is encouraged and expected? Where people take direct action rather than holding back while they wait for direction. Organizations in which, as we wrote in our 2032 vision, we can “Start with Yes.” A place where people understand and believe that when they decide, of their own volition, to take small actions of dignity, kindness, helping others, and building hope can add up to have hugely positive, even revolutionary, implications in the long term. Where, in the best possible way, most all of us regularly have Roya Hakakian’s insightful statement in mind: “No one can predict how a revolution starts.” I believe Hakakian is correct. The next good deed someone at Zingerman’s does could change the course of our organization. Only hindsight and history majors many years from now will know.

Why have some people stood aside while others opted to act? Why do some speak up for dignity when others do nothing? Why do so many people act helpless instead of being helpful? Writers, like Hannah Arendt, George Orwell, Erich Fromm, and others have written volumes about the subject. I’ve been reflecting on how we take those lessons from the literally life-threatening situations in which they’re happening and transpose them, at of course a smaller and less risky scale, into what we do at work every day. How do you create companies where people don’t tolerate untruths? Where people understand what Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko shared during the Soviet era: “When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie,” and as a result, most people will take a deep breath, embrace their understandable discomfort, and still effectively say what needs to be said.

It’s clear to me that living in harmony with the Natural Laws of Business contributes. Certainly teaching #7—“Successful businesses do the things that others know they should do … but generally don’t”—encourages folks to “go the extra mile.” It’s clear to me too that people with high hope, positive beliefs, who are believed in, treated with dignity and respect, who are clear on their organization’s vision and how they fit into it, people who work with strong systems, are getting effective training, who are led by Servant Leaders, etc. are simply much more likely to want to engage and take positive action. Here in the ZCoB, we have, imperfectly, created a culture in which, more often than not, most people who work here will do the right thing, even in the face of anxiety or adversity. There are many other organizations, and communities, around the world, in which this is also the case. Why? Why are so many in Iran continuing to risk their lives protesting in public but in Russia, it’s only a tiny minority? Why does Russian society seem to lean towards disengagement and apathy, when, by contrast, Ukraine’s culture has devoted itself to the revolution of dignity and engages in positive activism? Why do staff in so many organizations look the other way or wait for their boss, when so many here in the ZCoB will take a deep breath, think things through, get help, and then go out and break the rules when they need to do what’s right?

One of the many long-time marketing techniques we use here at Zingerman’s is what we’ve come to call “primary message.” As we define it, it’s the one thing—taken from what is usually a long list of positive attributes—that we believe will be most likely to make someone decide to purchase a product. We try to do them for each of our biggest selling offerings. We also chose one, many years ago, for our organization overall: “You really can taste the difference” is the primary message for what we make and sell. It’s an expression of our belief that anyone interested can tell the difference between good and bad, great, and good. And that, although our industry has often suggested that customers can’t tell the difference, we believe people are smarter and more capable than many “experts” give them credit for.

We also chose a “primary message” to share internally: “You really can make a difference.” Our hope, both explicitly and implicitly, is to effectively get this message into the hearts and minds of everyone who comes to work here. It’s not a trick. We really believe it. Everyone matters, their work matters, and seemingly small decisions very often add up to have very big impacts. We want to get across our belief that one doesn’t need to be in charge or have a fancy title to have great insight. That even on your first day what you do can make a big difference. And that a good idea or a deep concern, regardless of where it came from could, as Roya Hakakian has written, start a revolution.

Reflecting on all this, I can see now that we have a wealth of ways in which we systemically support this sort of proactive approach to work. Open book management, open meetings, Bottom Line Change, effective facilitation in meetings so everyone’s voice will be heard, and ways for people who have concerns to systemically (aka, “due process”) appeal to someone else all contribute. We have “Four Steps to Going Direct,” and a class on Courageous Conversations. We talk about emotion regularly and about going forward in the face of understandable fear to do the right things. One of the big contributors to this cause is the decision we made early on to allow—actually to encourage—every staff member, from their first day forward, to do whatever they needed to do to make things right for a customer. It’s the third step of our long-standing “Five Steps to Handling a Customer Complaint.” While getting help is encouraged, of course, for all of us (I ask for it regularly), no one needs permission from anyone else to replace a product, give a refund, authorize a redelivery, etc.

I remember very vividly, like thirty years ago, when I was teaching the Welcome to ZCoB orientation class. One of the participants was in his teens and his previous job had been at a big chain box store. As I was going over this approach to handling complaints, he spoke up. “You’re joking right?” he said with dismay. I insisted I meant it. “Seriously?” he asked skeptically. “Yes, seriously,” I responded. He still wasn’t convinced that I actually meant what I was saying. Finally, I asked why he was so skeptical. “In my last job,” he said, “I knew what to do to fix customer problems. But if I would have done it, I’d have gotten fired.” I shook my head and laughed a bit. “Here,” I answered, “you’ll probably get promoted!”

The place he had previously worked was one more example of what Russian writer Vladimir Sorokin refers to as “The Pyramid of Power,” a place in which power and authority are consolidated at the top, where front-line people have little or no say, and if they do speak up, they get in a more socially acceptable form of trouble than what usually happens to people who speak out for peace and human rights in more physically dangerous settings. Instead of spreading dignity, the Pyramid foments fear and uncertainty. It disempowers and encourages passivity. It’s a model, Sorokin says, in which

Power had to be strong, cruel, unpredictable, and incomprehensible to the people. The people should have no choice but to obey and worship it. And a single person sits at the peak of this dark pyramid, a single person possessing absolute power and a right to all.

From everything I have experienced, the Pyramid of Power is a terrible way to run an organization. Bosses get rich and become famous, but everyone around them—and the ecosystem as a whole—surely suffers. Instead of positive action, people on the front lines wait for orders to come, and respond to problems with apathy and shoulder shrugging. (This model of centralized power and authority is pretty clearly one of the Russian army’s big problems as it struggles in Ukraine.) Doing what you’re told takes priority over doing what’s right or telling the truth. The only people who make a difference in the Pyramid are the ones at the top, the ones who hold all the power. Over time, staff members grow cynical and cite their helplessness in the face of “policy.”

Here we want to create the opposite. Our approach, as you know, is about dignity and equity.  Instead of the Pyramid, we want partnership. Our ideal is to help people make decisions quickly and effectively. In the case of a customer complaint or a potential problem where there’s clearly urgency at hand, the last thing we want to do is make a smart staff member and a frustrated customer wait a day or two for a manager to weigh in. We want to create an ecosystem in which doing the right thing becomes routine. It takes good systems, training, practice, an embrace of imperfection, and persistence. As Octavia Butler once said, “First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.”

To understand why this happens in the ZCoB but is hard to find in so many other organizations, I started asking folks who work here. In a good way, even though they do this work well every day, most took a minute to respond. It was a good example of Maurice Telleen’s wise observation that “A funny thing about cultures is that they produce people who understand more than they know. Sort of like osmosis.” All of them gave thoughtful answers, most of which revolve around the culture, and what it feels like to be encouraged to think creatively and take action rather than to shut up and wait for orders. To know that they really do make a difference every day. It’s probably not a coincidence that the other day, I got this email from Samantha Misiak at Mail Order: “I’m grateful to work for a company that encourages, supports, and gives employees ways to get involved at all levels!!”

Certainly, we have hired people who were raised with the belief that being proactive about problems and opportunities was a natural and appropriate way to show up in the world. Unfortunately, many others have been raised with the opposite, socially trained NOT to take action. As I see it, it’s our responsibility to help them understand that here at least, we want them to speak up and take the initiative! As Peter Block points out:

The leadership task—indeed the task of every citizen—is to bring the gifts of those on the margin into the center. This applies to each of us as an individual, for our life work is to bring our gifts into the world. This is a core quality of a hospitable community, whose work is to bring into play the gifts of all its members, especially strangers. 

Our use of organizational recipes is one way that we encourage people to take action. Recipes of this sort—our 3 Steps to Great Service, 5 Steps to Handling a Customer Complaint, Four Elements of an Effective Vision, etc.—are not the same as Standard Operating Procedures. The latter are meant to be done the same way every time. This is how we do our sanitation checks, quality checks, safety procedures, paperwork for new staff members, etc. Organizational recipes are also clear, but leave a lot more room for the “cook” to make appropriate decisions in the moment. While they do give good guidance, they also require the individual to decide in situ how to make them happen successfully. They are not panaceas but they certainly are systems that support a proactive approach to life. If we do our work well, we create a culture in which, as Tuhunnu, Pesio, and Ebilotoh, write in Indigenous and Black Wisdub, “You are free to move, free to be creative.”

One thing that helps to encourage an active stance are the philosophical frameworks we have created over time. Our Mission Statement (about bringing great Zingerman’s experiences to everyone and doing it with love and care), our 2032 vision (see “The Story of Visioning” for much more), and our Guiding Principles all offer relatively clear, hopefully reasonably coherent, mutually agreed upon, boundaries within which it is far easier to take an unscripted action or give an effective answer to an unfamiliar question. Our “Statement of Beliefs” is also helpful. Nearly every one of the 34 beliefs on the list is supportive of this, some very specifically so:

We believe small actions make a big difference.
We believe a diverse group makes better decisions.
We believe each person is a creative, unique individual who can do great things in life.

Whether it’s in a country or a company, what this seems to come down to is helping people learn to be good citizens. To think of the whole without forgetting themselves or their families. To treat everyone with dignity while trying to do the right thing. To learn, as Paul has taught me, to disagree without being disagreeable. In his book Citizens, Jon Alexander writes:

We must see ourselves as Citizens—people who actively shape the world around us, who cultivate meaningful connections to their community and institutions, who can imagine a different and better life, who care and take responsibility, and who create opportunities for others to do the same.

Crucially our institutions must also see people as Citizens, and treat us as such. When they do, everything changes.” If we can step into the Citizen Story . . . We will be able to build a future. We will be able to have a future. That is what is at stake here. 

What can do to create Citizens of the sort that Alexander is alluding to? Back in 1960, Ron Lippitt and Ralph White published a book entitled Autocracy and Democracy; An Experimental Inquiry. Lippitt, of course, was the man who taught us what we now know as visioning. White was a pioneering social scientist, peace activist, and the first president of Psychologists for Peace. White and Lippitt speak of a “psychological core of democracy”—the psychological underpinnings of creating a culture in which people will become effective citizens, embracing the paradoxical challenge of respecting norms while, at the same time, questioning those that don’t work well. There are six prerequisites, they say, to creating a positive sense of citizenship:

1. Open-mindedness to influence from others;

2. Self-acceptance or self-confidence in initiating one’s own contributions and expressing one’s needs.

3. Realism about the objective nature of task situations and interpersonal situations. 

4. Freedom from status-mindedness.

5. Fairness about equality of rights and opportunities.

6. Friendliness and good will in attitudes and actions toward others.

Lippitt and White point out that to have a healthy organization in which people regularly voice ideas, observations, and concerns requires good listening skills. After all, if no one is listening, people stop sharing. It’s not easy to do well (here’s more on listening). As they describe:

The psychological feat of receptively listening to a new point of view, while not abandoning one’s own viewpoint, calls for a kind of inner strength which is by no means universal.  It is more difficult than docile listening to simple orders which is characteristic of the apathetic reaction to autocracy, and also much more difficult than the stubborn clinging to one’s own point of view. 

Harrison Gardner has a great new book entitled Build Your Own; Use What You Have to Create What You Need. Harrison (who I met because he took the initiative to reach out after reading Part 1 of the Guide to Good Leading series) has become a big proponent of teaching people how to go back to building their own homes. Manchán Magan, who met up with the Zingerman’s Food Tours group in Dublin earlier this week, wrote the foreword. The book, Manchán says, helps people push past anxiety and uncertainty, to learn to take action to do what needs to be done, and do it well. Manchán’s message, I believe, speaks to the sort of mental shifts and skill set building that we want to create in our organization to encourage us to speak up and do the right thing.

It’s a revolutionary book, challenging the many subtle ways that those in power lead us to believe that building is beyond our abilities and that we should enslave ourselves  . . . Ultimately, it has the knowledge to empower you to shape and craft your own living space, and to alter and adapt the space as your needs change through life. . . .

Cast your fears aside—the revolution starts now. 

I have shared these next two references relatively recently, but I can’t get the images out of my mind. Ukrainian poet, Lyuba Yakimchuk, who fled the Donbas with her family back when Russia invaded in 2014 (in what came to be known as the Revolution of Dignity), wrote in one of her poems in her book Apricots of Donbas,

Where no more apricots grow, Russia starts.

Cultures where folks no longer speak up, where they opt out of taking action even when they know what to do, where people look the other way instead of doing what they know is right, become the organizational equivalents of Russia. Life continues on apace, but almost no apricots are likely to be found.

By contrast, we can actively create organizations in which apricots are everywhere. Writer and poet Volodomyr Rafeenko, who was born in Donbas, relates a bit more context from his childhood:

Apricot trees were in abundance: both growing wildly and domestically. When the blooming time would come, paths of my childhood . . . were covered with a carpet of pink-white petals that were slowly circulating in the air during quiet days of falling on the ground under currents of the first warm Spring thunderstorms. 

I would like to help create an organization in which metaphorical apricots abound, a place where customers write to tell me stories of staff members taking the initiative, stories like this one:

Today a friend and I got carry-out food, and went to the Vets Park pavilion to have lunch. We realized when we got our meals out, that no utensils had been provided. Since I’m in a wheelchair, my friend called to inquire as to whether someone might bring some over to us. The person on the phone actually volunteered to send someone over before my friend asked. Within minutes a young man came running—literally—with utensils and some brownies. In a very winded state, he refused a beverage and a tip. Then he ran off just as quickly as he’d appeared.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko said that “In Russia all tyrants believe poets to be their worst enemies.”  Poets speak up to say what needs to be said when others are unwilling or unable. Poets like Roya Hakakian. Or Linton Kwesi Johnson, who once pointed out, “poetry [is] a cultural weapon.”  Poets—both potential and real—like the people who work in organizations, more often than not unempowered and unrecognized, all over the world. Hakakian writes, “Iran has reached its Ukrainian moment, the time when a people realize that they are willing to pay the price for their freedom.” My hope here at Zingerman’s is that we can create an organization where we won’t ever have to arrive at a Ukrainian moment; a place where people take action on the little things, raise ideas and concerns regularly, step up to help customers and colleagues all day without being asked. Where everyone believes that they really do make a difference, and takes action accordingly to make that difference a daily reality. Where the poetry of small actions can regularly start revolutions of the most positive sort.

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Terrific topping for gelato, cake, toast

Here’s an easy and delicious new taste treat from the crew at the Candy Manufactory. The caramel we’ve been making for years as an ingredient in other confectionery work is now available to take home in 8-ounce cups. If you’re like me and making caramel is not part of your regular cooking routine, then grab some! Since the Candy crew has done all the work for us, the Caramel Sauce is excellent and easy to use.

The Candy Manufactory Caramel, like so much of what we craft around the ZCoB, is made special by the quality of the raw materials that go into it. We long ago made the commitment to cook and bake with Muscovado sugar from the island of Mauritius. Muscovado is essentially old-school brown sugar. Here in 2022, it’s much more work to produce but the flavor is far bigger, more complex, and delicious. Muscovado retains the sugar cane’s natural molasses, and adds great depth and complexity to this sauce, the Zzang! Bar, our Toasted Pecan Pie, the Butterscotch Pudding and Donuts at the Roadhouse, and many more. (We sell the Muscovado sugar at the Bakeshop and Deli as well for your home cooking and baking.) Caramel was likely first made in the Arab world—where sugar was well-established—over a thousand years ago by slowly cooking sugar with water. Milk would have come along much later, most likely in the middle of the 19th century.

This new Caramel Sauce is super tasty on gelato, with cakes, or tortes. Add it to coffee for a caramel latte. Drizzle a bit on French toast or pancakes. Steve Mangigian, managing partner at the Coffee Company, has been dipping slices of autumn apple into it!

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Getting ahead of Rosh Hashanah’s arrival

Ready to kick the New Year off in good form? Here’s a new apple babka from the Bakehouse, made specifically for this year’s celebration of the Jewish High Holidays.

Babka is one more food that comes out of the culinary traditions of Eastern European Jews. I did not grow up with it at all but almost every Jewish person I know from the East Coast did. “Baba” is a reference to a Polish Easter cake, and it’s also a reference to “babushka,” or grandmother. It would likely have arrived in the Americas in the large waves of late 19th/early 20th century arrivals of Jewish immigrants.

Babka’s origin—where it is most consumed and associated with the culture—is in Belarus, the Baltics, Ukraine, and Russia. The old forms of babka were likely much larger, somewhere from the size of a modern-day panettone on up to a few feet high. The original name was likely “baba,” meaning grandmother. One theory says that with the modern era’s smaller sizes, the name shifted to the diminutive, “babka,” meaning “little grandmother.” Others say the tall shape they were made in resembles a grandmother’s pleated skirts. One origin theory says babka is indigenous to Ukraine. There it was part of an ancient fertility symbol used in the matriarchal system once in place in the region.

Babka at the Bakehouse

We’ve been happily making Chocolate Raisin Babka at the Bakehouse for many years. This new Babka celebrates the coming Rosh Hashanah season. Apples and honey are classic Eastern European eating for the holiday. Now we can eat them in the form of this beautiful baked good! It’s particularly tasty cut into slices, then browned lightly in butter. Great with gelato, more butter, or just as it is. The hygroscopic nature of the honey (it absorbs moisture over time) and the juiciness of the roasted apples make the dough a bit richer and moister. I can’t guarantee Eve’s Apple Babka will make the coming year culinarily better than the last few—I will ensure that at least you’ll be getting it off to an awesomely flavorful start!

The new Eve’s Apple Babka is available throughout the month of September at the Bakeshop, Deli, and Roadshow. It can also be shipped across the country from Mail Order.

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A week of enjoying the food and wine of Lyon and the Jura awaits

If you’re one of the many folks I know who’s thinking about heading out for some significant overseas travel to try to make up for the last few years, this Zingerman’s Food Tour to France might just be the ticket. Not only is it an amazing culinary destination, the tour next year happens at pretty much the perfect time of year to go to France—the final days of May and the first few of June, when the weather is nice, but not too hot, and before the height of the tourist season begins!

Of all the tours on our docket, this is the one that Kristie Brablec, Managing Partner of Zingerman’s Food Tours, is currently most excited about. Why?

Lyon is the heart of gastronomy in France, started by the mothers of Lyon (this is a story we could tell in itself); many people don’t know that the gastronomy movement in Lyon was born from women. From Françoise Fillioux to Eugénie Brazier, the history is deep with women leading the kitchen. Paul Bocuse is the most well-known, of course, but still, he was trained by Eugénie Brazier, and sadly this is often overlooked. Eugénie was also the first person ever awarded 6 Michelin stars—three at each of her restaurants, and this dates back to 1933—a true female powerhouse in the culinary world, and it all started in Lyon.

The region is home of Comté, one of the finest cheeses produced in the world. Secondly, it’s home to one of my favorite wine regions worldwide. This region is often missed and very rarely traveled. It’s difficult to gain access to this region for various reasons. Outside of serious wine nerds, tourism is very limited in this area, even to the French. The Jura is the smallest wine region in France. Less than 500 producers spread across 80 kilometers of vineyards, covering four wine Appellations.

Lyon could be to France what Bologna is to Italy—a gastronomic wonderland that’s loaded with luscious cheese, wine, world-class cured meats, lots of good eating, and plenty of additional art and culture to boot. The city has shown up regularly on the New York Times’ list of “52 Places to Go.” The Comté-Jura region is, for me, even more special. I love the mountains and I love mountain cheese, and the Jura has the best of both! Comté cheese has long been one of my favorites, and the little-known Vin Jaune of the region is very much the perfect fortified wine you want to accompany it! Sipping on the latter, nibbling on some well-aged bits of Comté on a beautiful spring evening, and watching the sunset over mountain peaks sure sounds pretty superb.

If you’re ready to spend a week traveling, tasting, and creating lifelong memories, give some thought to signing up for this trip with Kristie. If you’re looking for skillfully guided travel, incredible food, wine, people, history, and culture, this superfine food tour will pay big dividends! You will still be sharing stories from it ten years from now when we are finishing our 2032 vision!

Reserve your spot!

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Approaching our work as art can change our worlds

Designer Debbie Millman once wisely shared this life advice: “If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve.” Inverting Debbie’s insight into a more positive frame, I arrive at this: “Imagine ourselves as artists and it’s amazing what can come of it.”

When I think back on all that I’ve learned over the past forty years, I have to laugh. The list of tools, mental shifts, and changes in mindset is long! I knew so little back in 1982. Many of the approaches I’ve adopted have changed my life. Practicing visioning, embracing the power of beliefs, finding open book finance, starting to live servant leadership, creatively applying the tenets of anarchism, and the more recent exploration of the organizational ecosystem metaphor lead the list. Zingerman’s, and my own life, is almost impossible to imagine here in 2022 without them. Although I’ve sometimes given it less attention, the idea of approaching my work and my life as if they were art, poetry, or music has, quietly, been equally impactful.

While the idea of living an artful life had in some sense probably been an intellectual undercurrent for me for quite some time, the idea clicked one day when I was looking at the website of my friend Patrick-Earl Barnes—whose new painting, “Blacks in Culinary,” I wrote about last week. From the day we first met back in 2004, I have been drawn to all of Patrick-Earl’s work. The day I was looking at his website, though, one piece completely caught my attention. It was a painting of one of his classic folk art characters, wearing a t-shirt with the message: “Art is how you think.”

True to his message, Patrick-Earl’s art immediately got me thinking. It was, in essence, an epiphany. The painting took a subconscious, meandering thought I’d been having and framed it in a way I could intentionally and mindfully approach my life. Nearly twenty years later, art is very much how I think, work, look, listen, and live.

Can a small subtle shift like that really make that much difference? For me, the answer is absolutely. Integrating this artful approach to—well, everything—has helped me to see more clearly, deal with the world more effectively, and appreciate everyone and everything around me in a more engaged way. It’s nudged me to notice nuance and to attend more actively and caringly to details I would likely have otherwise missed. The small shifts add up in a big way. As playwright David Mamet put it, “Art is an expression of joy and awe.” When art is how I think, sure enough, to Mamet’s well-made point, I feel joy far more frequently. And, without a doubt, I’m amazed at how often awe shows up in what I might many years ago have mistakenly imagined as mundane.

Seth Godin did a post a while back that sums up this work:

Poets use words (and silence) to change things. They care about form and function and most of all, about making an impact on those that they connect with.

Every word counts. Every breath as well.

In a world filled with empty noise, the most important slots are reserved for the poets we seek to listen to, and the poet we seek to become.

As this approach evolved, and as I began to work at thinking artfully rather than just looking at art, I began, as I so often do, to write about it. A few years after I saw Patrick-Earl’s piece, we published “The Art of Business” pamphlet. Its 30-plus pages are based on the suggestion that no matter what we actually do for a living, we will benefit from starting to imagine ourselves as artists. You can plug in “poets,” or, if you’d prefer, make it “musicians,” or “songwriters,” but the point is the same. When we start to move through our worlds as artists, the shift is easy for an outside eye to miss, but ultimately, the impact can be enormous. Done well over time, thinking and living artfully is life-altering.

“The Art of Business” is based on what I had begun to understand and wrote about in The Power of Beliefs in Business—when we change what we believe, we experience the world differently, we act differently, and others around us are, in turn, impacted, influenced, and inspired in the process. Here’s a snippet of what I suggested at the start of the pamphlet:

Next time someone asks what you do for a living, try telling them you’re an artist. Watch their response. My forecast? They will pay far more attention when you start to share more about your life. So, I’m pretty sure, will you.

  . . .

When we choose to live our lives creatively, to make the most of the days and months and years we have on the planet, to be true to ourselves as best we can and as often as possible, then our lives—and our organizations—are truly art as well. Most of us, I know, haven’t conceived of ourselves as artists. But I’m guessing that if we start imagining ourselves in this new light, our lives will likely become richer and more rewarding. Excellent, if imperfect, works of art in the making.

The impact, while subtle, has been significant. It’s pushed me to approach every small interaction I have with the same sort of care and commitment to craft that I work on in my writing. To put as much thought into how I end an email as I do to where to place paragraph breaks when I’m working on a book. Whether I’m greeting a new staff member, working the floor at the Roadhouse, creating an agenda for a meeting, or making dinner, actively thinking as if I were an artist:

• Pushes me to pay radically more attention. I still slip regularly. But my attentiveness to the world around me has absolutely increased. Artists notice nuance. Many of us have been raised to focus on the finish line; thinking and working more artfully has taught me to tune into and appreciate the process.

• Helps me call up my creativity all day, every day.

• Makes me more appreciative. Beauty in the organizational ecosystem metaphor is akin to gratitude—both, I’ve learned, are there to easily be appreciated if we’re paying attention.

• Gives me a gentle way to raise issues, initiate conversations, and express care and concern; art allows us to do what arguments almost never can.

• Helps me feel better about myself since I, like most humans, feel at my best when I’m flowing with my creative abilities.

• Makes my life better by bringing beauty more intentionally to the fore.

Perhaps the most important part of this shift is the realization, the belief, that everyone can do it. This is not about elite experts crafting world-class paintings—it’s about being the world-class human being everyone is capable of becoming. When I do the work well, it’s very much as artist, author, and former physicist Enrique Martínez Celaya writes:

Being an artist is not a posture or a profession, but a way of being in the world and in relation to yourself. An artist is revealed in his or her choices. Watch your actions as well as what you like and notice who is the person suggested by them. Understanding who you are as an artist should be thought of as a life-long process inseparable from your work.

What follows are half-dozen ways that I believe anyone who’s interested can put this into practice. I continue to work to get better at each of them every day.

1. Creatively manage your creative inputs.

If we are, we know, radically influenced by who—or what—we spend the most time with, then it only makes sense that our inherent, naturally occurring artistic abilities will be brought out most by spending more time around art, artful thinkers, and being in creative conversations. As I shared in Secret #39 in Part 3, “It turns out that the biggest thing anyone can do to increase their innovative ability is to go hang around in a creative environment.” This can be in person, on the phone, in our workplace, or in the café we hang out in. It might be in music, books, films, podcasts, going to plays, or reading poetry. The energy and inspiration I get from all that creative connection is a bit like living on solar power. My energy stays high most of the time. It’s much like what musician Rachel Baiman says of music producer Tucker Martine: “He runs his life in service of maintaining inspiration at all times.”

One of the chefs who appears in Patrick-Earl’s art piece is the late Leah Chase who, with her husband, and later, with her children and grandchildren, ran the legendary Dooky Chase restaurant in New Orleans. I’ve had the pleasure of eating in the restaurant, and I had the honor of meeting Leah Chase twice. She was, for me and many others, an inspiration. When you dine at Dooky Chase, you will be surrounded by incredible artworks by some of the country’s best Black painters. Historian and author Jessica Harris, who is also featured in Patrick-Earl’s piece, writes:

While the kitchen may have been her heart, art was her soul: It was a world where she found her true self, and where she delighted in being. The art in Dooky Chase’s restaurant reflects that love and connection.

The little things matter—we can draw inspiration from fresh flowers on the counter or taking a few minutes to read a poem every morning. I keep six vintage Bakelite Scottie-dog-shaped pencil sharpeners in my pocket everywhere I go—one for each of the dogs at our house. When I feel stressed, they serve as grounding, creativity-evoking touchstones. Rachel Baiman said of Tucker Martine’s studio: “Even the bathroom is majestically wallpapered and smells like designer soap. This is an environment in which magic will be made.”

2. Actively find the beauty in everything. 

Although I spent much of my life ignoring it, most of the time there is, I’ve come to understand from this work, beauty to appreciate all around me. If we learn to look—or listen, or taste, or touch—as an artist, it’s amazing what we notice. Kazuo Ishiguro says, “An artist’s concern is to capture beauty wherever he finds it.” I saw it in the reflection on the glass bottle of sparkling water that was sitting on the table next to me the other morning while I journaled. I’ve experienced it with the color, aroma, and superfine flavor of the Thorburn’s Terracotta tomatoes that Tammie is growing this year for the first time. Flipping through the most recent Mail Order catalog, I noticed the beauty of Ian Nagy’s amazing illustrations and the craft that went into the placement and the copy. I appreciate that the U.S. Post Office is now selling stamps that feature mariachi musicians. I paused for a few minutes to take in the personalities of the people portrayed in the first wall piece Patrick-Earl did for the Roadhouse in early 2020, and the poster that Ian Nagy did of Patrick-Earl. And I just noticed the other evening—Ian’s poster is on the opposite side of the room, “looking” straight across at Patrick-Earl’s piece. That now makes me smile every time I enter the room!

3. Artfully make a difference.

Great art in this context is not for decoration; it’s about making a meaningful difference. Playwright Aaron Sorkin says, “If you feel that strongly about something, you have an obligation to try and change my mind.” Artful action—whether it’s in a painting or in person—draws us in. This is, in great part, why my eye went to Patrick-Earl’s paintings in the first place when I saw him selling them on Spring Street in Soho nearly twenty years ago, why I walked over to look more closely, and why I bought three of them to carry home in my luggage. It’s what made me want to hang his art—alongside the amazing work of Ian Nagy and Ryan Stiner—in the Roadhouse. It’s absolutely what gave me the thought to commission the new “Blacks in Culinary” piece. We can make a difference in people’s lives, and bring beauty to our communities. Elizabeth Catlett, whose painting of Leah Chase is now hanging in the Smithsonian, once said, “We have to create an art for liberation and for life.”

3. Be more attentive to what’s happening in your head and your heart.

If I don’t keep myself centered, it’s unlikely my art will be effective in its impact. Journaling, as I wrote about in “Working Through Hard Times,” has been a huge help. Running every day nearly always brings unexpected insights. Talking to friends, teaching, reading, etc. all help me tune into what’s in my heart. The folks at Indigenous Resistance write about the importance of “taking care of one’s inner dub in order to the work of the outer dub.” Managing Ourselves (which we really, really hope will get past the paper supply chain issues soon!) has 400-plus pages of my thoughts on this broad and important subject.

4. Go for mindful greatness.

No artist wants to put out below-average art. No poet calmly settles for so-so. Tucker Martine says, “If we aren’t doing this to make the best record that we can, then what’s the point?” When art is how I think, I take that mindset into every small interaction I have—taking time to thank the postal carrier with a heartfelt smile. To add a bit more meaningful appreciation to what starts out to be an otherwise mundane email. To listen more closely when someone tells me their name so that I actually remember it in the understanding that even our brief introduction can be done superficially, or, instead, with an artful intent to attain excellence in the exchange.

5. Nurture other artists.

The other day I got interviewed by Jonathan Fields on the Good Life Project podcast. At the end of the conversation, he always asks, “What does living a good life mean to you?” I began my answer by referring back to many of the things we had talked about—increasing hope, enhancing positive beliefs, paying attention to purpose, etc. A sentence or two into my response though, I realized the obvious answer I was working my way back to: “Living a good life is helping other people to live a good life.” Sharing this approach with everyone, noticing the beauty in their work, and encouraging them to do the same with their own surroundings, helps a lot. As Seth Godin says, “Art isn’t painting or canvas or prettiness. Art is work that matters.” The amazing, difference-making artist Samella Lewis, who passed away earlier this year at the age of 99, was mentored as a young woman by Elizabeth Catlett who was eight years her senior. Who can we help this week to see themselves through this sort of artful lens?

6. Make a positive difference.

Elie Wiesel writes, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference.” The point of this piece is, ultimately, to help enable anyone interested to make their life richer, their ecosystem more connected and caring, and to tap into their creativity and purpose more purposefully. Despite laws that said it couldn’t happen, the upstairs at Dooky Chase became the first integrated restaurant in New Orleans. And as Leah Chase said, “In my dining room, we changed the course of America over a bowl of gumbo and some fried chicken.”

Approaching our work and our lives as artists is not in conflict with doing what we need to do to make a living. The key is that we do it in ways that are true to us, true to our values, infused with dignity, and done daily with grace. Here’s a snippet of a bit from “The Art of Business”:

Poet Gary Snyder came to visit Ann Arbor a few months ago for a reading. He’s studied Japanese drawing and Chinese poetry, and he used to hang out with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. He’s been called “the poet laureate of deep ecology,” does environmental work, and has also published a good bit of insightful prose, including an essay that particularly resonated with me called “Buddhist Anarchism.” As I write, he’s in his 85th year. He was born ten months after Robert Henri died. I’m honored that Gary chose to eat at the Roadhouse (as he did on his previous visit as well) on the evening of the event. Over 500 people came to hear him read poetry on a farm 10 miles west of town. Wow. Snyder shared his belief that “[c]ommercial art is when you do something to respond to a demand in the marketplace. That’s not a bad thing. But when you do something because it’s what you love, and then you figure out how to get people to buy it, even though they didn’t know they wanted it until you made it, now that’s really great art.” It’s what we’ve tried to do here at Zingerman’s for 34 years now.

The poet Guante says, “Don’t write a poem about war. Write a poem about what it’s like to stand in your brother’s empty bedroom.” When I’m engaging with the world as an artist, it reminds me to look more closely, notice more, hear more, and in a regenerative way, do better. It pushes me to see not just at the plate of food being served to the guest but to focus equally on the energy of the person who’s putting it down in front of them.

What we know now about neuroplasticity makes clear that this artful approach, practiced regularly over a period of years, will literally change our minds. Not only will that change help us, and those around us, it also serves to help inoculate us against the fear, negativity, and unnecessary drama that dominates so much of the world’s daily conversation. As scientist Norman Doidge describes, “Once a particular plastic change occurs in the brain and becomes well-established, it can prevent other changes from occurring. It is by understanding both the positive and the negative effects of plasticity that we can truly understand the extent of human possibilities.”

In the urgency of the world’s current crises, it would be easy to ignore this call for thinking and acting more artfully. I could have walked right past Patrick-Earl selling his paintings in Soho all those years ago. But look at the impact of that seemingly small decision to honor my instinct, to engage artfully with his art, and to build a friendship and find ways to connect creatively and caringly. Every person we see, every interaction we have, has the potential to also make this kind of difference. These acts of artfulness get little attention from others, but they might just save the planet.

John O’Donohue wrote many years ago that the world was suffering from a crisis of ugliness: “In a sense, all the contemporary crises can be reduced to a crisis about the nature of beauty.” Stepping back and working at approaching our lives and work like artists or poets or painters helps us to gain much-needed perspective. “Perhaps,” O’Donohue says, “for the first time we gain a clear view of how much ugliness we endure and allow.” I don’t have any statistics to prove it, but I’m confident that there are more artfully-minded folks doing good work in the world, and that most of those doing ill (though I know not all) are not spending time on palindromes, poems, or careful selection of paint colors.

Learning to think in artful terms has shifted the way I see the world, and I hope, through that shift, also altered my impact for the better as well. Dooky Chase has posters on the wall by the artist Jacob Lawrence. Leah Chase told Jessica Harris:

I learned to look at his work, and from there on, I just learned to look at things. Sometimes you don’t understand it. Sometimes you look at it, you say, “Oh my goodness, this is so ugly.” Look again. Look again and you’ll see something. 

Chase’s artfully spoken comments reminded me to return my attention to the ending of “The Art of Business,” where I shared a similar lesson from a story that James Baldwin told, a story that took place maybe a mile to the west of where I first met Patrick-Earl:

I remember standing on a street corner with the black painter Beauford Delaney down in the Village waiting for the light to change, and he pointed down and said, ‘Look.’ I looked and all I saw was the water. And he said, ‘Look again,’ which I did, and I saw oil on the water and the city reflected in the puddle. It was a great revelation to me. I can’t explain it. He taught me how to see, and how to trust what I saw. Painters have often taught writers how to see. And once you’ve had that experience, you see differently.” Baldwin’s story sticks in my head. Every time I start to skip past something unthinkingly, I try to turn my mind back to look—or listen, or taste—again, to see what I missed the first time around. It’s amazing how much more interesting the world gets when we take the time to pay careful attention. Beauty begins to appear in the most unexpected places.

If you’d like to purchase a bunch of copies of “The Art of Business” pamphlet to get your organization moving in a more artful direction, email Jenny at [email protected].

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A small shift in beliefs that can have a big impact

You might well know the old, cynical restaurant anecdote in which a customer flags down a server who’s passing his table and politely asks for another glass of water.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the server replies, “but you’re not in my section.”

This story is symptomatic of the shoulder-shrugging unwillingness to take ownership of anything that’s not directly our “duty”—at best, customers get bad service. At worst, companies and communities come apart.

Stories, as I’ve written any number of times in recent months, are beliefs made manifest. I’d like to tell you stuff like this only happens in poorly-run restaurants, but the reality is that it reflects a widely held belief. Most people, in most companies, and in most countries, have been led to believe that they are only responsible for themselves—accountable only for their own work assignments. As a result of which, customers get shunted from one office to the next. One department blames the next, one party points at the other. Stas’ Kazmierski, who taught us the visioning process back in 1993, used to tell the story of a company he worked for: “When you asked who was responsible, people would essentially cross their arms over their chests and point in either direction. We called it the company ‘salute.’ It was always someone else’s responsibility.”

This essay is about the opposite belief. The radical idea that we can all start by taking on total responsibility for everything of which we’re a part. While we are responsible for our own actions, our organizations would be healthier and happier places if we each were to skip the blame, defensiveness, and finger pointing and instead act with a sense of grounded, caring ownership. This small shift, I believe, is a powerful one that can have a meaningfully positive impact on mindsets, energy, and outcomes. Over time, it can change company cultures. It is a big part of ours. While it might seem like “more work,” it works the other way around—when it’s done well (by both the individual and the organization), people feel more empowered, more engaged, and, in the process, they gain a greater sense of purpose.

Over the course of the last few years, through ZingTrain, I’ve found myself working with some organizations that have, unintentionally, got me thinking this all through in greater depth. On the surface, they seem to be doing well. Many have already adapted some of our approaches, along with a host of other ideas that they’ve picked up from around the progressive business world. While all have had some good success, they are also, as they tell me, feeling frustrated: “We do so much for our staff, but they don’t seem to appreciate it. We’ve made all these changes to help them, but all they seem to want to do is show up, do their jobs, and go home. We’re trying to make this a great organization, but mostly people just want to punch in and out.”

I can certainly relate to the feeling of frustration. And yet, over the years, I’ve learned to push past it. Blaming staff for being unappreciative helps nothing. In Freedom and Accountability, Peter Block and Peter Koestenbaum write, “To blame others merely means making a decision to avoid the responsibility which ultimately and inescapably is one’s very own.”

I grew up, like many people, learning how to do all the blaming, finger pointing, and deflecting—our family dinners were all too often about engaging in endless arguments. I’ve tried, instead, to reground myself in the maxim Paul taught me 40 years ago: “When furious, get curious.” Which made me wonder… Why are companies who care about their staff, who are giving so much, finding that they get back so little? As I reflected on what wasn’t quite working, I started to realize that this belief about personal responsibility might be a big piece of the organizational puzzle. There’s something here in our culture that we don’t talk a whole lot about, but I realize is making a bigger difference than I’d given it credit for. It’s the sort of thing that, as Peter Block describes,

… [C]an be thought of as peripheral vision: you look at something, say a picture on the wall, and on the edges of your field of vision are images that are definitely there, but difficult to see definitively and clearly.

Here, we believe that we are each, fully, 100%, responsible for everything of which we’re a part.

This is not something we invented. I was reminded of that the other day while I was reading through a tome entitled, appropriately for the moment, Managing in Turbulent Times. Although the title might lead you to believe that it probably came out in the last couple of years, the book has nothing to do with Covid, attacks on the American Capitol, or the war in Ukraine. Managing in Turbulent Times was written 40 years ago by longtime leadership guru Peter Drucker.

Reading Drucker’s work helped me realize what was missing in some of these organizations where frustration with staff runs so high. Staff members are cared for, but they don’t care as deeply as someone who feels fully responsible for their organization, their department, their colleagues, or their work community. They’re asked only to do tasks, and that is what they do. The sense of belonging that goes with feeling fully responsible for the whole goes missing. The typical employee, Drucker explains, “is held responsible neither for his ownership power nor his knowledge power. And that, at bottom, explains his unease, his discontent, his psychological hollowness. … he has function but lacks status. He lacks responsibility.” As a result of which, Drucker writes:

The employee in most companies … is basically “underemployed.” His responsibility does not match his capacity, his authority, and his economic position. He is given money instead of the status that only genuine responsibility can confer—and this trade-off never works. 

…

The employee on all levels … needs to be given genuine responsibility for the affairs of the … community. … He must be held responsible for setting the goals for his own work and for managing himself … he must be held responsible for the constant improvement of the entire operation. … He must share responsibly in thinking through and setting the enterprise’s goals and objectives, and in making the enterprise’s decisions. 

When we accept responsibility for the whole of our work, what we create, Drucker says, “is citizenship.” While the word is well known, the approach is the inverse of what exists in most companies. Instead of citizens, the typical business quietly sees staff members as “subjects.” The leader—very much like a sovereign ruler, a king, or a queen—is the one who is, patriarchally, responsible for the health and well-being of all. The staff member is accountable only for their own work, but is neither empowered nor expected to take responsibility for the whole. This approach, Drucker demonstrates, will often lead to apathy. At its worst, the unwillingness to share responsibility creates alienation, anger, blame, bias, and burnout.

We did not consciously have Drucker’s directive in mind when we opened the Deli, but Paul and I both believed that we and everyone we hired would work in the way that Drucker describes: People who worked with us ought to have a meaningful say in what we were doing. And, at the same time, they would take total responsibility—as we felt ourselves—for what was going on. We weren’t trying to be radical. It just seemed like the right and obvious way to work. I don’t know that we talked much about it in those early beginnings, but taking responsibility was informally woven into what we do every day. It’s a way of being in the world of which I was reminded again this past weekend when Bill Russell passed away at the age of 88. For Russell, the long-time star of the Boston Celtics, and an active campaigner for civil rights throughout his life, the focus was always on the health and success of the group. As columnist Jim Rohn writes, “Russell was a player who wanted to take responsibility for the success or failure of his team.”

The mindset that Russell brought to the Celtics is what we want, and have always wanted, for our organization. In more turbulent and less turbulent times, it’s our hope and intent that all of us here take total responsibility for what’s going on. By embracing the whole, taking responsibility for the ecosystem and everything and everyone in it, we have a shot at making something magical happen.

I still remember when I realized that this unspoken hope could be hard-wired into the way we work. While I might well have read it first in Peter Drucker, I wasn’t savvy enough to see the power that a shift in responsibility could have until I came upon Gay Hendricks and Kate Ludeman’s 1997 book, The Corporate Mystic. They list “7 Radical Rules for Business Success.” Number 2 blew my mind:

Always take 100 percent responsibility for any activity you’re involved in. If you are in a leadership position, take 100 percent, not 200 percent. Require that each participant take 100 percent. Equality is only possible through meeting at the 100 percent level.

I must have read the statement something like ten times trying to let the concept sink in. It certainly didn’t mesh with what my 8th grade algebra teacher had taught me. And yet, it totally made sense in a belief-altering way. What had I believed up until that point? I’d probably just gone along, unconsciously with the “obvious norm” of what I’d been taught underlay all equity. We would share responsibility the equitable way: “50-50.” It felt fair and the math worked out. Unfortunately, though, that model just doesn’t actually work. It leads to the kind of blame and finger-pointing that Stas’ had taught me about. When I would inquire about something that had gone awry, it nearly always seemed to be the “50%” of the other person, almost never of the one I was asking. As Hendricks and Ludeman say:

The ordinary definition of responsibility: Whose fault is this?
The successful person’s definition: “How can I respond to this so everybody wins.”

Someone else who has challenged these old beliefs about responsibility for decades now is Peter Block. In his book Community, Block writes, “Choosing to be accountable for the whole, creating a context of hospitality and collective possibility, acting to bring the gifts of those on the margin into the center—these are some of the ways we begin to create a community of citizens.” Block, too, talks about citizenship:

A citizen is one who is willing to be accountable for and committed to the well-being of the whole. … a citizen is one who produces the future, someone who does not wait, beg, or dream for the future.

Instead of looking to leaders, bosses, teachers, politicians, or professors as either heroes or villains, we can take a deep breath and realize that we are all, like it or not, in this together. None of us have full control, but we can each work to make the kind of company, and/or community, that we want to be part of. If we do that work well, we create an ecosystem in which people will speak up, voice concerns caringly and constructively, participate in pushing for improvement, actively work to innovate, and come together when things go wrong. The sort of place where, rather than talking behind people’s backs, people calmly call meetings to have difficult conversations. Spots in which cynicism still starts up, but is relatively quickly nipped in the bud through effective self-management. The kind of place where, no matter who you ask for help, it’s always “their section.”

For those of you who write job descriptions, please know that none of this is meant to suggest that particular people aren’t also fully responsible for particular things. To be effective, we need to know who’s doing what. AND, at the same time, we are also, all, 100%, responsible for the whole. Responsibility for the whole can be written right into the job description. It’s a prerequisite for having a healthy, inclusive, equity-based, organization in which people participate fully. When we step up and take full responsibility for what we’re a part of, we grow stronger both individually and collectively. I’m inspired by what historian Keisha Brown writes about civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer’s “bold message—that each of us has the responsibility to work toward the just and equal society we envision.”

All these years later, the idea of taking 100% responsibility is embedded, ever imperfectly, in dozens of places here in the ZCoB. It’s an explicit expectation that’s written into our Training Compact. It’s a critical part of Open Book management and of why most all our meetings are open. It’s supported by our work with staff ownership and Staff Partners. And it’s at the heart of Secret #22, in which I share my belief that everyone in the organization is responsible for leadership. Taking 100% responsibility is also essential to the work we do to teach effective self-management, in our recipes for Customer Service, and on how to have caring conversations. And, it’s written clearly into our Statement of Beliefs:

We believe we’re each 100% responsible for the health of the ZCoB, of which we’re a part. 

All of this is a way to shift power away from the people at “the top” and put it where I believe it really belongs—in the cultural soil of the organization. Peter Block suggests that it invites us to invert old school, hierarchical models that most of us are used to. Instead, we enter a world where we begin to see that power is moving in very different ways from what we’re used to imagining. In this new model, where everyone takes full responsibility, we are at the same time also dependent on, and empowering of, each other. It’s an inspirationally inside-out world in which, as Block puts it:

– The audience creates the performance.
– The subordinate creates the boss.
– The citizen creates its leaders.
– The student creates the teacher and the learning.

Does everyone at Zingerman’s avail themselves of these empowering options? Of course not. All of us, me included, can slip back into cynicism, or start to watch passively from the sidelines as if we have no say. But there’s a big, big difference I’ve learned over the years between freely choosing not to participate and the more commonly encountered alternative where you aren’t allowed to.

How can we expect people to take responsibility for what they can’t control? Natural Law #13 reminds us that “Everything is out of control; all we have are varying degrees of influence.” This push to take 100% responsibility for our work, for our boss, for our peers, and for the performance of the whole organization, means that we need to accept this Natural Law and then move forward anyway. After all, as Peter Block says, “the willingness to accept responsibility and blame for all our acts is a central ingredient in an authentic existence.” Asking people who work in an organization to take 100% responsibility for the whole only works if people also have access to power. If people have no say in how things go, it’s hard to honestly ask them to take responsibility.

How big of a scale can this concept of everyone taking 100% percent responsibility work at? I don’t know. I do know that all social change starts with people accepting responsibility for the group. The other day I saw a clip of Ukrainian young people organizing a rave party during which they started to rebuild a bombed-out building while DJs spun discs and blasted tunes.

What are the practical implications of this work? My belief is that it quietly helps us to create what writer Bankole Thompson, a regular at the Roadhouse, told me last month: “You’ve created an alternative reality here!” If we do it well, we can build the kind of balanced relationship and responsibility that I wrote about in Secret #29. The first two of the twelve tenets of anarchism reflect this. (Tenet 1. All for One—Bringing Out the Best in Each and Every Individual in the Organization. Tenet 2. One for All—Individual Responsibility for the Organization’s Success.) When we do it together, good things come from it. As adrienne maree brown reminds us, “It is our right and responsibility to create a new world.”

Peter Drucker was not an anarchist, and he saw the need for hierarchy in ways that might not be fully aligned with what I would advocate. And yet, half a century ago, he still saw that everyone in an organization taking responsibility was essential to the health of the organization and to everyone in it as individuals:

The task of building and leading organizations in which every man sees himself as a “manager” and accepts for himself the full burden of what is basically managerial responsibility: responsibility for his own job and work group, for his contribution to the performance and results of the entire organization, and for the social tasks of the work community.

Can this concept of each of us taking total responsibility for the whole really work? I’ve come to believe that it’s really the only way. It’s a belief that I see—and feel—in great businesses, on basketball teams, in communities, and in countries. We cannot create collaborative, caring greatness, without it. As Grace Lee Boggs said, “You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.”

While there is no ZingTrain seminar or Guide to Good Leading book specifically on radically taking responsibility, the belief is quietly woven into all of them. Sign up for a seminar soon! Or, put all this into practice by ordering a complete set of all 34 pamphlets and have everyone on your team read one and share back with the group what they learn.

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