Tag: ZINGTRAIN

A down-to-earth way to put democracy to work in our workplaces

One of the most common questions people ask me when they see the new “Why Democracy Matters” pamphlet is something along the lines of, “What can we possibly do in the face of the powers that be in Washington?”  

I will suggest that the answer, per what I wrote in the pamphlet, is surprisingly simple: stop worrying about Washington. Yes, very definitely vote—it makes a difference! But democracy, I came to understand in the process of writing the pamphlet, doesn’t really start with what happens in capital cities. It begins, instead, at “the bottom.” With you and me. Right here, right now, with what we do inside our own ever-imperfect organizations. What we do there will eventually manifest in what men and women in Washington do. After all, as Wendell Berry reminds me, “The leaders will have to be led.”  

Small steps—stuff you and I can start doing the day after tomorrow—may seem insignificant to some. But I’ll say with certainty that they add up to make a meaningful difference. As Wendell Berry writes in his 1972 classic Think Little, “The citizen who is willing to Think Little, and, accepting the discipline of that, to go ahead on his own, is already solving the problem.”

Teaching people how to actively participate in the organizations they are part of, I believe, helps them learn to think for themselves. Instead of falling back into helplessly looking to those “at the top” to tell them what to do, frontline folks begin to think—and act—like leaders. Making this happen in our organizations is a practical example of what is possible when we “think little,” which, over time, can have a big impact on our companies, our communities, and, ultimately, the entire country. To wit, while I was working on the democracy pamphlet, Jason Stanley, author of How Fascism Works, wrote me a note: 

Workplace democracy is one of the central and most important topics in democratic political philosophy. It’s where the battle over authoritarianism is fought—if you get workers used to being subordinated, and bosses used to subordinating, you are basically done.

What follows is a look at one longtime practice here in the ZCoB (Zingerman’s Community of Businesses), now also widely implemented by an array of ZingTrain clients around the country—a practice that, I came to see in the course of writing the pamphlet, is in fact a concrete example of democracy in action. It’s called Bottom-Line Change, or, as we say around here for short, BLC. 

BLC is certainly not a glamorous, headline-grabbing part of our work, but after 30 years of doing it, I’ll say with confidence that when we use it well, it’s very effective. It’s one of maybe 20 or so different things we do that help make democracy happen here every day, always imperfectly, in the ZCoB. BLC is about teaching people the leadership equivalent of “fishing” for themselves, rather than just bringing them a fish. They learn to lead change, build buy-in, incorporate input from others, and participate in planning, rather than anxiously letting change happen to them. 

Last fall, Atlantic staff writer David Frum observed, “Authoritarians seek to make you feel that everything is hopeless, because your hope is dangerous to them.” Bottom-Line Change is the opposite: it’s beautifully hope building—an opportunity to effectively provide people both with hope and with a tool to help them lead change, learn leadership, and transform themselves and the world around them in the process. And process is the point. BLC is a five-step organizational recipe, a framework, and an eminently repeatable one at that, which we’ve relied on to great benefit for over three decades now. 

My friends at the extraordinary global anarchist arts collective that is Indigenous Resistance have a chapter title in their book Searching for the Dub Sublime that encapsulates one of the key messages I hope to convey about Bottom-Line Change: “Creation Is the Way.” 

While complaining can feel good for a few minutes, mostly it just produces cacophony; it’s creating that leads to positive outcomes. BLC can help us create the kind of future we want to be a part of. In their powerful new video, IR reminds us of the song “Listening / Honor Song” by Native American activist, poet, musician, and writer John Trudell, in which he says:

Our resistance, our struggle
Is not sacrifice lost
It is natural energy
Properly used

Natural energy properly used is, indeed, what I believe Bottom-Line Change is all about. People want to make a difference, people want to be part of something greater than themselves, people want to learn to lead. BLC helps teach them how to do all that and then some.

Leadership coach and author Benjamin Hardy writes, “A true creator never stops pushing their boundaries.” BLC is a systemic tool to do just that! And who doesn’t want to live a creative life? Part of what I love most about the way we use BLC is that anyone can initiate it. They may not be the ultimate decision-maker, but in the spirit of down-to-earth democracy, that doesn’t mean they can’t lead the way. With BLC in regular use, we have no need for a suggestion box—we just coach people into leading the change work they’re inspired by.

While learning to lead creatively sounds good, the truth is that for most frontline staff—stuck working their whole lives in hierarchically run companies—taking the lead on organizational change is not something they’ve been taught. Instead of leading, they’re left out. An American Psychological Association poll conducted last fall found that more than six in 10 American adults reported feeling lonely and emotionally disconnected; more than half felt isolated. And at a much more extreme level, frontline staff can be kept down in ways that mirror what happens to Ukrainians living under Russian occupation. Last month, journalist Dinara Khalilova published an article in The Kyiv Independent with the headline “What I realized about life under Russian occupation as a war crimes researcher.” The quick summary is that Khalilova realized a lot. “After these conversations,” she notes, “I keep returning to one of the most overlooked and, in my view, cruelest effects of occupation: it deprives people of the right to choose who they are and how they live their lives.” As one Ukrainian woman living in Kherson shared, “It feels like you’re just trapped—like you can’t breathe, like you’re deprived of communication, of everything, really.” Khalilova writes,

Under occupation, reality becomes dominated by fear. And fear erodes trust. Some people collaborate with Russian authorities and report neighbors they suspect of supporting Ukraine or having ties to Ukrainian forces. Since danger can come from anywhere, people isolate and start to suspect everyone around them. It feels like nowhere and no one is safe.

While occupation is obviously far more extreme than what we’re experiencing here in American business, the themes are consistent with what many people say when they feel trapped in autocratically run companies. BLC alone is not enough to fix all that, but it is a very good way to help get things moving in a more positive, more purposeful, and more connected direction. Used well, the process gets people talking to peers in the workplace. It helps them see that reaching out is possible, that positive engagement can emerge from it, that you have agency and influence over your own life—and that, as poet Mark Nepo titled his book, “You don’t have to do it alone.”

Bottom-Line Change is an approach that any democratically inclined organization can employ to help people build confidence instead of confusion, foster dignity instead of distrust, and teach effective leadership and followership instead of fear. And this isn’t mere speculation; it comes from many years of solid experience. 

I was reminded of all this last week while visiting the remarkable catering company Chowgirls in Minneapolis—longtime ZingTrain clients—and listening to more than a few of its leaders discuss BLC’s value. Co-founder Heidi Andermack shares, 

My favorite thing about BLCs is getting the ideas out there in a way that conversations can be constructive. It can reduce the amount of debate time where we might not fully understand someone’s perspective or we leave a meeting not clear on what was decided or why we were even talking about something. BLC helps us to focus energies, get everyone on board, and map out a plan—together! 

The fact that we’re going through such challenging times in the world right now makes the practice of BLC all the more important. As author and U of M graduate Anand Giridharadas—apparently a Zingerman’s regular during his years in Ann Arbor—declares, “We are living through a revolt against the future. The future will prevail.” Teaching—and actively using—Bottom-Line Change can help the future come out ahead. Giridharadas writes,

I see then that this is both a very dark time and, potentially, a very bright time. It’s important to hold these truths together.

And what we’re trying to do is awesome. It is literally awesome in the correct sense of that word.

The solution within companies, it seems, is much the same as in the country, and “awesome” is how I feel when I watch someone lead their first BLC through to successful fruition. People who learn to lead change in positive ways at work stand a much better chance at creating the larger world they want to see. In that sense, Bottom-Line Change is a way to help make happen what Giridharadas describes in his 2018 book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World:

It is solving problems in ways that give the people you are helping a say in the solutions, that offer that say in equal measure to every citizen, that allow some kind of access to your deliberations or at least provide a meaningful feedback mechanism to tell you it isn’t working. It is not reimagining the world at conferences.

Along similar lines, author Rebecca Solnit writes, 

“Unhappy the land that needs heroes” is a line of Bertolt Brecht’s I’ve gone to dozens of times, but now I’m more inclined to think, pity the land that thinks it needs a hero, or doesn’t know it has lots and what they look like. … Lone hero narratives push one figure into the public eye, but they push everyone else back into private life, or at least passive life. …

[By contrast,] ordinary people generally behave magnificently, taking care of each other and improvising rescues and the conditions of survival, connecting with each other in ways they might not in everyday life and sometimes finding in that connection something so valuable and meaningful that their stories about who they were and met and what they did shine with joy.

The details of the Bottom-Line Change process can all be found in the pamphlet “Bottom-Line Change.” In a nutshell, we adapted the approach from what we learned back in the mid-’90s from the amazing Stas’ Kazmierski. At the time, Stas’ was working for a nationally recognized consulting company called Dannemiller Tyson, whose offices were a couple of blocks up the street from the Deli. Later, he would go on to join Maggie Bayless as a co-managing partner at ZingTrain before retiring in 2013. Sadly, Stas’ passed away in the spring of 2017. To this day, he is deeply missed. I think of him every time I begin work on a new BLC! 

Dannemiller Tyson was co-founded by a woman named Kathie Dannemiller, known at the time for her innovative and progressive organizational-change processes. When we opened the Deli in 1982, Kathie was just shy of her 53rd birthday and a leader in her field. She had worked in the upper levels of the administration at U of M for many years, before going out on her own to co-launch Dannemiller Tyson. Like Stas’, who was roughly 15 years her junior, she had learned a lot from Ron Lippett, the man who did the initial work to develop the visioning practice we now know, rely on, and actively teach almost every day. 

The foundation of BLC is based on the universally true change formula first developed by Richard Beckhard and David Gleicher back in the early ’60s. Kathie Dannemiller famously carried it forward right around the time we were working to get the Deli going. The equation, as we learned it, looks like this: 

Dissatisfaction x Vision x First Steps > Resistance = Change

The formula is super helpful, whether the change you’re trying to lead will happen at home or at work. Here in the ZCoB, we like to assign numbers to each factor to assess the situation. If the left side of the formula falls short—i.e., the right side is greater than the left—change will not happen. If I’m the change leader and I encounter that scenario, my task is to either increase dissatisfaction with the status quo, improve the inspirational nature of my draft vision, and/or make the steps in my action plan more exciting until they multiply out to be greater than the natural resistance. 

In a 1999 essay entitled “One Brain and One Heart – Unleashing the Magic in Organizations,” Kathie Dannemiller and Mary Eggers write, 

The power of truly being able to experience becoming “one brain and one heart” gives undeniable alignment and strength to any organization, and this … change methodology is based on helping organizations, across all levels, all disciplines, all locations, all ages and tenures, become connected around “one brain” (all knowing the same things) and “one heart” (all feeling connected around common yearnings).

And this is, indeed, what we hope and believe BLC can make happen. 

When you write out the five steps to Bottom-Line Change in a simple, linear fashion, they look like this:

1. Write up a clear and compelling purpose for change.This is the “why” that’s driving us to make changes in the first place. The bottom line is that if people aren’t unhappy with the status quo, change is unlikely to happen. As early-20th-century Detroit anarchist Jo Labadie said, “Discontent is the mother of progress.” 

2. Draft a positive vision of the future and develop leadership agreement on what’s described in that vision.I’ve written extensively on vision elsewhere—here’s a link. In short, a vision is a detailed description of what change will look like after it’s been successfully put into place.

These first two steps of BLC are essentially ways to get people on board. As Anand Giridharadas writes, “The lifeblood of any free society is persuasion: changing other people’s minds in order to change things. But America is suffering a crisis of faith in persuasion that is putting its democracy and the planet itself at risk.” Over two centuries earlier, English philosopher William Godwin wrote, “If you cannot bring over the hearts of the community to your party, expect no success from brute regulations.” You get folks on board both (a) through the compelling nature of your content and, of equal import, (b) by allowing people to give their input on drafts. Even better still would be (c): in as many cases as possible, make changes to the drafts based on their feedback. I can hardly remember any instances in which I could not include some aspects—if not all—of other people’s input.

These first two steps are also, to be clear, pretty much as far as the change leader can get on their own. The other steps, by definition, require the input of others—BLC is really a team sport!

3. Put together a microcosm of folks to direct the sharing of info about the impending change. This, in my experience, is the most underutilized and/or misunderstood part of the BLC process. All it’s intended to do is answer the questions “Who needs to know about the change?” and “What’s the best way to tell them?” The microcosm is the key to making it really work. It should include people chosen from all the various parts of the organization—someone new to the group and a senior staffer, a part-time person and a full-timer, a manager and maybe a colleague working the coffee counter. You get the idea. The microcosm can use their diversity of perspective and cultural expertise to develop a plan to tell everyone impacted about the impending change. Dannemiller and Egnor write,

If you want to shift the whole system at one time, you must be able to think the way the whole system thinks. A microcosm is a real subset of the larger group that represents all the “voices” of the organization. Working with groups that mirror the “whole” allows us to work with the “whole system” at a different level. The microcosm contains the essential “DNA” of the whole organization. The microcosm creates a perspective that combines and represents all the voices, rather than working only with segmented voices such as the “leader as expert.” The segmented voice will never be representative of, or as accurate as, the “whole voice” represented in a true microcosm.

4. Using the rollout plan the microcosm came up with, share info with the larger group about the change. After they ask their clarifying questions, have them develop an action plan to implement it. Unlike a top-down organization, in which the bosses alone make the action plan, this is where the people who will do the actual implementation work create an action plan to enact the change.

5. Begin implementing the change. Regularly check progress, adjust the plan as needed, learn from mistakes, and celebrate successes.When BLC is done well, by the time you get to this step, nearly everyone will be impatient to get going (a far cry from the surprise and shock that are usually the case in top-down companies). Ironically, this is where most organizations begin their change work: they simply start taking action. And then, I’ll suggest, they actually work their way backward, awkwardly and uncomfortably, through the other four steps of BLC, until someone asks what we ask in step one: “Why are we doing this anyway?” 

Probably the most commonly voiced concern about using BLC is that “it takes too long.” What I’ve come to understand is that when people say this, what they really mean is that it takes too long for them to be free to simply announce the decision they want to make. What I would also note is that, while it’s true it takes far longer to arrive at a decision, once you do, implementation will almost certainly be far faster and far more effective. As Rebecca Solnit writes, “Slow change can be radical change.” When you take time to involve people, improve the quality of the vision, and build buy-in, the decision and the plan make everything more effective. Solnit points out, “Describing the slowness of change is often confused with acceptance of the status quo. It’s really the opposite.”

People love stories of historical turning points, shocking social wake-up calls, sudden conversions, and big breakthroughs—the sort of stuff about changes that happen in a flash. Movies promote them with tales of love at first sight, dramatic speeches that shift everything, trouble that can be terminated by offing one bad guy, and other easy fixes and definitive victories. Old-school radicals also love this notion, picturing the kind of revolution that they imagine will transform everything suddenly—even though a change of regime isn’t really a change of large-scale culture and consciousness. I love dramatic stories, too, but I think they tend to mislead us about how change happens.

BLC shifts the focus of change away from institutionalized power and back onto the import of ideas and the people who have them. Why? Because, by definition, it’s an idea—a dream, a vision, a desire to make things better—that gets every BLC going. Everybody who initiates one imagines how things can be better! As Rebecca Solnit writes in her new book, The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change,

Ideas have power, and while those who support them often dismiss that power, those who fear them recognize they can change the world. … Ideas are seeds in that they are beginnings; if they succeed, they do so as they take on more tangible and concrete forms.

Teaching BLC to everyone in the organization helps people to change their own story, to paint a picture of a future where they are neither dictators nor downtrodden but, rather, important participants in a democratically egalitarian organization. Each of us can then become one more imperfect, important, and intelligent voice in a collection of diverse voices. Rather than being victims of bad bosses, or lucky beneficiaries of good ones, people begin to learn to lean into leadership—to go after what they believe in and work, as every leader does, at getting people to rally behind their ideas. They also learn to listen to others—since BLC is never just about getting our own way; to the contrary, it’s about hearing other people’s input and working to assimilate their perspectives (where it makes sense) into our original proposal.

The individuals who put forward their ideas and make the bold leap to lead a BLC benefit in big ways, too! Benjamin Hardy says,

Changing your story can change your life! Your identity is the story you tell about yourself, and the story you tell about yourself determines your behavior, and it determines your outcomes. So how you see yourself and how you explain yourself, ultimately, is the thing that shapes your behavior, and your behavior over time is what creates your habits and creates your outcomes.

If you want to change your life, you have to start by changing your identity. To do that, you have to start by changing your story.

Is it awkward for a frontline staff member to initiate a change in this way? Of course! It’s still awkward for me. But you need to start learning to lead somewhere. To quote Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard: “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.” And in a servant leadership–focused organization like ours, the leader’s job shifts from being the one to make all the change happen to, instead, being someone who supports, guides, and aids the staff member in leading their change. In that sense, BLC creates a peaceful, small-scale version of what a Ukrainian musician by the name of Katja says about her people’s fight against the Russian invasion: “The people who we know, our fathers, our friends, they are fighting for what they love.”

Part of what people learn when they begin to lead BLCs is that there is always resistance. As James Belasco and Ralph Stayer explain in Flight of the Buffalo, a book that was one of my early leadership influences, “Change is hard because people overestimate the value of what they have—and underestimate the value of what they may gain by giving that up.” When you start to understand how to honor, work with, and caringly get past resistance, you are indeed learning to lead. And people come to understand what you and I already know: per Frederick Douglass, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”

So, to sum up, what do you get out of using BLC? I could probably come up with an abecedary of reasons (that’s one for each letter of the alphabet!), but in the moment, let’s just go with a short list:

• By getting more and more people involved before the change is rolled out, the odds increase significantly that we will have a healthier, more holistically sound decision and far bigger buy-in.
• By teaching staff how to start a BLC—rather than waiting for their boss to do everything for them—everyone in the organization is learning to lead.
• When people learn to effectively lead a change they care deeply about, it can have a hugely emotional impact on their confidence. Their beliefs about themselves become more positive, and they’re more likely to do it again in the future.
• BLC is a systemic way to make diversity a reality—it’s designed to weave as many diverse perspectives as possible into the conversation.
• BLC touches on all six elements of dignity I wrote about in “A Revolution of Dignity”:
  • Honor the essential humanity of everyone we work with. The hierarchical model of change takes into account only the voices of bosses. BLC, by contrast, makes it possible to bring many voices into the conversational mix.
  • Be authentic in all our interactions (without acting out). When we work with BLC, we’re making ourselves meaningfully vulnerable by declaring to the world (at least to our world) what we really want. And we’re doing it in a way that’s not critiquing others, but rather is a positive statement about what we believe—from the heart and the head—is right.
  • Make sure everyone has a meaningful say. This is at the crux of the whole recipe. Again, it’s designed to weave in as many people’s perspectives as possible.
  • Begin every interaction with positive beliefs. In his 2010 book, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang writes, “If we assume the worst about people, we will get the worst out of them.” BLC is based on the opposite belief—we assume the best about people, and we believe everyone has insight to offer.
  • Commit to helping everyone get to greatness. Instead of elevating the boss to greatness at the expense of everyone else, this is about trying to find ways to help the greatest number of people get the most out of their workplace. 
  • Create an effective application of equity. BLC is not a stand-alone solution for existential equity, but it isn’t an insignificant start either. By definition, getting more people into the mix spreads power and influence throughout the organization.

All this has helped me to understand that putting Bottom-Line Change to work within the ZCoB is one very real, very down-to-earth, ever-imperfect but inspiringly effective demonstration of democracy in action. I wasn’t thinking about it that way when we first learned it from Stas’ 30 years ago, but today, in 2026, it’s very clearly the case! 

In a world that feels more topsy-turvy than ever, what Rebecca Solnit writes in The Beginning Comes After the End seems exceedingly helpful. She shows that, despite the widespread despair by which we’re surrounded, a great deal of positive change has in fact taken place on a national level. I can certainly say that’s true here in the ZCoB, too. Solnit also highlights how much the ability to lead change matters:

Our world has changed more than almost anyone imagined, in ways both wonderful and terrible, often in ways no one anticipated. … Stability is not an option, but participating in directing change might be, if we recognize it.

Bottom-Line Change is one way to help make this sort of positive approach to change possible. Its roots took shape in the middle of the previous century, but I believe ever more strongly that it is a tool—a democratic tool—especially well suited to the 21st. As Solnit says,

It’s the past that shows us the possibilities, how the world has changed, how power can appear in places and among peoples assumed to be powerless and irrelevant, how the most foundational things can be transformed.

Begin your Bottom-Line Change

P.S. If you’d like to learn about Bottom-Line Change in an uplifting online class, ZingTrain has a session scheduled for the third week of September!

At how many companies do new staff members have a chance to sit down with the co-founder for a searching conversation on mission, vision, principles, and beliefs? 

Rare as this scenario may be, it’s exactly what happens at the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, where, every few weeks, Ari Weinzweig teaches the “Welcome to the ZCoB” orientation class. (For Ari’s perspective on why leading the class is still so important to him, check out this thought-provoking essay.)

As a recent addition to the ZCoB team, I had the pleasure of participating in this unique experience on a Thursday morning in April, in a bright conference room at ZingTrain on Plaza Drive. There were seven of us in attendance from across the Zingerman’s spectrum—two hosts, a bartender, and a dishwasher at the Roadhouse; a Mail Order crew member; a Candy Manufactory retailer; and yours truly, the special beat reporter with the lucky gig of covering it all. Oh, and in the open-armed Zingerman’s spirit, an outside guest was also present simply to listen and learn. 

We sat at our tables, sipping coffee and noshing on the Bakehouse’s beloved Sour Cream Coffee Cake and Pecan Raisin Bread, until, at 9 a.m., Ari arrived and we got down to work. And I’ll just say now—so as not to bury the lede—that the work we did astonished me in the best possible way. 

In his disarmingly down-to-earth manner, Ari took us through his own improbable personal journey—from studying Russian history at the University of Michigan to snagging a job as a dishwasher at the now-gone Ann Arbor restaurant Maude’s, where he met Paul Saginaw, with whom he eventually founded Zingerman’s Delicatessen in March 1982. Their initial aim: to bring classic Jewish comfort food and other specialty fare to a city that needed them. The rest is rich, delicious history you can read up on here.  

As Ari spoke, I couldn’t help but think about the power of storytelling—and of hearing your organization’s story directly from one of the people who built it from the ground up. It makes you feel connected to something larger—part of a legacy of meaningful work, hard-won growth, and continued evolution.

This sense of connection only deepened when we moved into the core of the class, exploring Zingerman’s mission and principles, and its distinctive business perspective. With Ari as our guide, we were suddenly discussing the biggest of ideas: the vital importance of crafting a vision for the future; the ways that organizational systems and culture interact; how to break the cycle of negative beliefs and build positive ones in their stead.

And we were engaged in all this practical philosophy, let me remind you, over coffee cake on an otherwise ordinary morning! 

Another thing that struck me about the session: it wasn’t a one-way street. It was very much an open dialogue in which we were each invited to share our own individual backgrounds and viewpoints. What do Zingerman’s principles mean to us? What are our personal visions for ourselves, and how can they contribute to the overall vision of the ZCoB going forward?

In his essay on the class, Ari draws on the late cultural anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson’s concept of “homecoming,” which she defines as “creating an environment in which learning is possible.” Ari writes:

This class is a bit about coming home to ourselves, at least in the context of work. … For many, I realize, this might be the first time in their work history that their full humanity is acknowledged. Where, regardless of role … they have someone at work encouraging them to be themselves, to study, and to learn. Someone sharing a vision and meaningful mission, appealing to their ethics. Showing them how to caringly and effectively challenge organizational norms—to step forward and think like leaders.

“Coming home to ourselves”—what a beautiful notion. And I think I felt it firsthand. Whether we’re in a kitchen or at a desk, we’ve all worked in (probably many) places built on rigid hierarchies, where we’re treated less as people than as means to a corporate end. In my case, as someone who has balanced a creative writing career in theater and fiction with professional writing jobs in marketing and media, I’ve long felt the need to compartmentalize these dual paths—and to show up in the latter settings as the limited “work” version of me. 

That’s what makes “Welcome to the ZCoB” such a singular class. It’s not just another rote orientation covering company rules and regulations. It’s an opportunity for new Zingerman’s team members to come together as human beings and talk about the stuff that really matters. To feel empowered by the idea that each of us is, in Ari’s words, “100 percent responsible for the whole organization.”

I was genuinely startled when 11:45 rolled around and our time was up; the nearly three hours had flown by. Ari would soon be on his way, but the rest of us still had an afternoon of activities ahead: a valuable introduction to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging within the ZCoB, and an illuminating class on “The Art of Giving Great Service.” First, however, there was a hearty lunch. This is Zingerman’s, after all. 

Seated at a table in the common room at ZingTrain, enjoying a plate of Roadhouse Macaroni & Cheese and a portion of Reuben sandwich from the Deli, I found myself processing the entirety of the morning. Just two weeks into my time at the ZCoB, I’d joined my colleagues from various corners of the organization for a communal experience of learning and reflection. And for our teacher, we’d had none other than Ari himself, who, with humor, humility, and generosity, offers decades of accumulated knowledge and wisdom—amid his own ongoing quest to learn more.

When lunch was over an hour later, we drifted back to the conference room, digesting our food as well as our thoughts. We refilled our coffee mugs or grabbed a soft drink from the fridge. Then we returned to our tables to resume our fruitful work—although, at least for this reporter, it felt a bit like we were coming home.

Interested in joining the ZCoB? Browse our open positions.

We’re governing with grace… and Grace (Grace Singleton, that is!)

“Is Zingerman’s still run by its founders?” you ask. That’s a great question. We’ll answer with a tale, both old and new (just like our pickles!). What began with the Delicatessen, founded in 1982 by Paul Saginaw and Ari Weinzweig, now includes 11 food and service businesses, 18 managing partners, 800 employees, and a council of leaders among leaders (hang tight, we’ll explain that in a minute).

An Overview of Zingerman’s Governance

Since 1994, the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses (ZCoB) has been steered by our Partners Group (PG), a group that includes Ari and Paul, the ZCoB’s managing partners (the individual business owner-operators), and staff partners (staff members who own a Community Share; they serve two-year terms). As Ari explains:

It’s where we govern the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses—we use consensus decision-making there to lead the organization. The PG makes decisions on organization-wide issues, like deciding to approve our new 2032 Vision or our new Statement of Beliefs. Or if there was, in a strange sci-fi sort of scenario, just for conversation’s sake, let’s say a global pandemic, the PG is where we would decide how to deal with it.

One important piece that the 2032 Vision outlines is the ZCoB’s evolution of governance:

… we’ve seen a successful transition from Ari and Paul as founders heading the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses (ZCoB) to a mode of governance that will last beyond the tenure of any individual. While long-time ZCoB leaders continue in important roles, a couple of new “generations” of insightful, collaborative folks have stepped forward.

That mode of governance is the Zingerman’s Stewardship Council, a five-member group created in 2020 as part of a succession plan to transition the leadership of the organization from its founders to the other managing partners. To be clear, the Partners Group isn’t going anywhere, rather, as Ari says, “The Stewardship Council is filling the role Paul and I have filled for many years as ‘leaders among leaders.’” He adds:

Our main focus in doing this work with the Stewardship Council is, by far and away, looking at how we can do what we do here at Zingerman’s ever more effectively. We want it to be a way to help lead the ZCoB in becoming an ever-bigger contributor to the community of which we’re a part. We want to support succession and inspire future success. We’re committed to creating a governance model that will help both the organization and everyone in it to thrive for many decades to come.

The original council members include Amy Emberling, Zingerman’s Bakehouse co-managing partner; Toni Morell, Zingerman’s Mail Order co-managing partner; Tom Root, Zingerman’s Mail Order co-managing partner; Ron Maurer, Zingerman’s Chief Administrative Officer and Zingerman’s Service Network managing partner; and Ari Weinzweig. Council members serve three-year terms, and just like the Partners Group, decisions are made using consensus. In June of 2023, we reached the end of the first set of three-year terms. The Council has been designed so that one of these original managing partners will come off each year—the first was Ron Maurer who has his eye on retirement in 2023 after more than two decades with the organization—and a new one is selected. Ari explains how that happens:

Our agreed-upon process for selecting members is that Paul and I, as co-founding partners, consult with our staff partners (since they’re not eligible to be on the Council) and others whose views we value, to make the decision. After a LOT of conversation, and honoring what we believe is the best decision for the organization, we chose the next member. 

This time, Ari and Paul offered the spot to Grace Singleton, co-managing partner of Zingerman’s Deli since 2004. Grace knew from the beginning that she was destined for a life full of food (and she may or may not have thought the food industry would be glamorous thanks to a New Orleans restaurant where she received special treatment, sitting at the captain’s table and sampling Frangelico (a hazelnut liquor) at the age of 13!).  Grace received her culinary degree at Paul Smith’s College in New York and managed restaurants across Ohio (we don’t hold this against her) and Michigan.

She found her way to Ann Arbor for the role of general manager at the Gandy Dancer and became a fan of Zingerman’s Deli. Eventually, she made the jump, calling it “the very best job in the food industry,” and in 2004, she stepped up from retail manager to co-managing partner. Since then, Grace has overseen the gold level LEED-certified Deli expansion project (2010–2014), the opening of Zingerman’s Greyline event space (2016), the addition of virtual tasting events for fans around the country (2021), and more, all while continuing to lead the day-to-day of Deli catering and retail specialty foods. (Impressive, right?!) Of this new role and her latest opportunity to impact the Zingerman’s organization and the Ann Arbor community, she says:

I’ve been here for more than 20 years and I’m really invested in the transition of our CEO’s roles. Ari in particular set the stage with his dedication to doing business differently and how we govern is an important part of that. I look forward to working toward our future with this committed group.

Want to read more? Ari wrote about Grace’s addition to the Council and the work of the Stewardship Council in Ari’s Top 5, his weekly e-newsletter, saying, “Success leads to succession work which, when done well, helps create more success. It’s a very virtuous and very inspiring cycle to be a part of.”

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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Sign up for Ari’s Top 5 e-newsletter and look forward to his weekly curated email—a roundup of 5 Zing things Ari is excited about this week—stuff you might not have heard of!

Healthy cultural soil, counter-rhythms, and the power of Silver Branch Perception

I’ve written about humility many times since the pamphlet “Humility: A Humble, Anarchistic Inquiry” first came out in the fall of 2020. As I’ve been preparing to go speak about humility again later this week out west in Portland, I’m reminded how much this seemingly simple and eminently human way to be in the world is badly needed right now. When humility levels drop, despair, conflict, and crises are almost certain to follow. Check the news and you’ll find more than enough evidence of humility’s unfortunate absence. Without humility, it’s impossible to build caring workplaces, communities, and countries in which we can create well-being for all involved. Conversely, an increase in humility would lead us all to more love, more care, more kindness and, I’m pretty sure, peace and dignity.

As I studied the subject over the years, I began to see humility as the metaphorical equivalent of topsoil. In nature, without humus, nothing much is likely to grow. As scientist Suzanne Simard says, “The humus is the foundation of the forest. … It’s an absolutely fundamental part of the being of the forest.” What follows then is a call to all of us—starting with myself—to rebound in the quiet regenerative powers that humility offers to anyone who wants to welcome it into their life. Humility doesn’t get much attention, but it is grounding and good for the planet as well as the people we work with. I wrote in the pamphlet:

The linguistic origin of the word “humble” comes from the Latin humilis, meaning “grounded” or “from the earth.” It’s connected to the word “humus,” which refers to the organic component of soil. In Hebrew, the name of the first man in the Old Testament, Adam, comes from adama, or “earth.” Which leads me to wonder if living humbly is a prerequisite for bringing our full humanness to the fore? Perhaps humbleness happens when we’re at our most human? And when we’re at our most human, we’re effectively in a grounded state of humbleness? 

Unfortunately, neither humility nor humus seem to be on the rise right now. Smithsonian reported earlier this spring that “More than 50 billion tons of topsoil have eroded in the Midwest; the estimate of annual loss is nearly double the rate of erosion the USDA considers sustainable.” A few years ago, the Union of Concerned Scientists announced, “If soil continues to erode at current rates, U.S. farmers could lose a half-inch of topsoil by 2035—more than eight times the amount of topsoil lost during the Dust Bowl.” If I follow the metaphor through, a lack of humbleness leads us away from our humanity, and into trouble. The “topsoil” that’s needed for us to grow as we were designed by nature erodes. The result is the emotional equivalent of climate change; moods become more and more extreme, and swing more and more quickly. Arbitrary applications of authority appear with greater regularity. Temperatures rise as arguments ensue ever more frequently. It makes me think of the state of the nation’s politics as the metaphorical equivalent of the Dust Bowl. What should naturally hold together begins to blow around so badly it’s hard to see clearly—I look at the news today and think back on what it was like to walk through a dust storm in central Kansas during the Great Depression. When the topsoil is gone—both real and metaphorical—we’re in trouble. A few years after the Dust Bowl ended, Dr. Ted Albrecht, an agronomist and professor of soils at the University of Missouri, wrote:

Without humus the earth becomes a corpse, as the Gobi Desert or the Sahara is, and the enormous increase of desert condition … a phenomenon even more terrifying than the savagery of the present war, which is the logical outcome of living for wealth rather than for health.

At times, I will admit, I worry that I’m overfocusing on humility. In light of all the problems we face, humility can seem so small and insignificant. Humble, perceptive leaders like Kathleen Lonsdale inspire me to keep going with it. Lonsdale, who was born in 1903 in County Kildare, just south of Dublin, spoke from experience. An outspoken pacifist in an era when war was the norm, and a woman in a scientific world wholly dominated by men, she repeatedly spoke out—and modeled for the world—what she believed was right. Lonsdale was willing to stand up (and go to jail) for what she believed, and she humbly but powerfully spoke her mind. In her 1957 book, Is Peace Possible?, Lonsdale proposes, “Those people who see clearly the necessity of changed thinking must themselves undertake the discipline of thinking in new ways and must persuade others to do so.” Which leads me to, humbly, keep suggesting that an increase in humility would help us all. We are all, whether we like it or not, imperfect, interconnected, and interdependent. Lonsdale writes:

The pure scientist … must be willing to share his knowledge with others, and since truth is not the monopoly of any one person or nation, he must have an international outlook. He owes a debt to the past, because his own knowledge is based on free publication of the results of other people, and therefore he should dislike secrecy. He ought to be humble, because he knows he does not have the whole of truth, partly because truth is not the monopoly of the scientist and partly because the scientific method includes a realization of the mistakes and misinterpretations of past scientists, the elimination of successive error in his own results and those of other people.

What Lonsdale is describing is not likely to win anyone a political office, but it does, quietly and effectively, make a big difference. While the world fixates on quick fame and fast fortunes, it’s actually by focusing on building the humble topsoil that we can create the kind of healthy lives and organizations to which we aspire. Humility allows us to admit that none of us have all the answers, and embrace the wisdom of Edgar Schein, the country’s leading expert on company culture, who wisely writes: “I’m the consultant, and I don’t know what to do!”

Humility is easy to miss, but it matters. A lot. As I wrote in the pamphlet,

Humility, by definition, won’t win big headlines. It waits quietly in the wings.

If we listen closely, humility has a lot to teach us.

Mozart once said, “The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.” Humility fits that frame. It’s the space between the sounds. The whisper between the words. The energy between the egos. Humility is both ethereal and essential. Like great music, it’s hard to measure—and often goes past unnoticed by casual listeners. But if we pay close attention, we can begin to benefit from the beauty and grace that humility brings to the world.

Thinking musically like this leads me to share a recent learning I’ve had that has given me a new and helpful lens through which to look at the power of humility. It’s about what the art and music world calls “counter-rhythms.” The dictionary says that a counter-rhythm is “a rhythm that complements another rhythm.” It stands in contrast to what gets more attention; each makes the other more immediately apparent. In this context, I’ve started to see our ego as the rhythm; we need to draw on it to lead, and to push, as Kathleen Lonsdale and so many others have, for what we believe. Ego helps us to stand up for what’s right, to speak our minds, to put our art out into the world. On its own, though, the ego creates all kinds of problems. Humility is the counter-rhythm. It balances out the ego, brings us back to ourselves. Finding that balance is easier said than done; I struggle with it regularly, as does everyone I know who has started to see the quiet importance of humility. When we use the two well in tandem, our work has a powerful authenticity. You can feel the difference. Counter-rhythms quietly make the music and art we admire possible. While the eye or the ear goes naturally toward the rhythm, the counter-rhythm is the contrast that makes it great. The artist—or leader—who masters counter-rhythm can, quietly, create magical work.

Painter Robert Hunt (who designed the DreamWorks logo) shares that counter-rhythms “became a mantra to me.” The shift in the quality of his work was significant. “My drawing immediately improved,” he says. Same goes for leadership, I’ve come to see. Strong-willed, innovative leaders without humility go off the rails. Rather, it’s when the rhythm of our main message is effectively balanced with the counter-rhythm of humility that our work is most evocative and effective.

Speaking of which, one quiet source towards which I’ve started to look for a deeper understanding of humility is the late Irish philosopher John Moriarty. Born in 1928 in County Kerry, Moriarty, himself, was something of a counter-rhythm. His philosophy is intriguing but it’s his humility, I believe, that makes it so special. Writer Michael W. Higgins says, “For most of his life Moriarty remained a neglected treasure.” After Moriarty’s passing in 2017, Higgins called him an “epic visionary in the tradition of the Franco-American monk-poet Thomas Merton.” Moriarty, Higgins says, “… sought the consolations of contemplation, the sanctuary of isolation.” He was clearly quite humble, a mindful and thoughtful model for the rest of us to learn from. Réamonn Ó Ciaráin writes:

Moriarty seems to have thumbed a lift to his speaking engagements. He was a contemplative uninterested in prestige or wealth. He was more fascinated by the caterpillar metamorphosing from leaf-eater to butterfly feeding on nectar, than in academic prestige. For almost threescore and ten years John Moriarty emitted gentle waves of challenge almost like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon, he was so fond of and waiting for the echoes.

Moriarty wrote a lot about the ancient Irish concept of “Silver Branch Perception”—a practice of “opening our minds, eyes, and ears” to pay attention, and to tune into the quiet that those who are racing through life will very likely miss. Moriarty said that Silver Branch Perception gives us “a marvelous way of seeing and knowing things that, in effect, is paradise regained.” Slowing down to get centered around humility can help us to see the small things, and notice the nuances that actually make a big difference.

Knowing that humility is a good idea is infinitely easier than making it an integral part of our organizational culture. How do we make humility happen? On an organizational level, writing humility into our vision can work wonders. Encouraging meaningful equity helps as well—we work to create a workplace where everyone matters and no one is better or worse than anyone else. Regular reflection almost always increases humility. This could be journaling, intentional mindfulness, therapy … Talking about our struggles with friends who are themselves grounded in humility helps us gain valuable perspective. Openly admitting our own shortfalls, asking for help regularly, and paying attention to the small successes of people who are typically ignored on the organizational periphery can all contribute to our humble cause. Edgar Schein, in his wonderful book Humble Consulting, recommends that we stay “committed to being helpful, bring a great deal of honest curiosity, and have the right caring attitude.”

Here at Zingerman’s, humility is, ever imperfectly, embedded in the way we work with consensus decision-making at the partner level. It’s an implicit part of Open Book Management and also open meetings. Using Bottom Line Change is a very effective way to make humility come alive in the day-to-day—I might be the CEO, but I still need to use the process to make a change. Diversity drives us to understand we’re all flawed but finding our way by working together. Humility is also now clearly and directly written into our Statement of Beliefs:

We believe humility is an essential ingredient for effective leadership and contributes to personal growth and success.

Another way to increase humility is simply to recognize quiet caring acts of effective, humble leadership when and where they happen. In the spirit of which, I noticed the article that K.C. Johnson—who has been writing about basketball for nearly thirty years now—posted about the coach of the Chicago Bulls Summer League team, John Bryant. While coaching professional basketball is a line of work that usually recognizes drama and yelling, Johnson’s experienced and insightful eye effectively identifies the gentle counter-rhythms of Bryant’s coaching. His quiet humility makes his messages far more powerful. “Leadership is hard to fake but easy to spot,” Johnson writes. Bryant, he says, “displayed it calmly and consistently. From his pre-practice habit of having players share thoughts and opinions about each other to his vulnerability in talking about losing his father to COVID-19, Bryant represented the franchise with class.”

In a society that admires awards, idolizes its heroes, and tears down those it doesn’t like, it’s hard to stay centered in a caring, dignity-based, humble middle ground. And yet, when we make humility a high priority, we will be better able to work together instead of going to war. We can focus on acceptance instead of anger. We can learn to do right instead of worrying about being right. Humility is what allows us to work caringly and collaboratively together, to find the answers, ideas, and insights that we would otherwise miss. Building humility up, instead of wearing it out, can quietly but effectively transform our organizations. And our lives.

As I was working on this piece, I realized I ought to practice what I’m preaching. When I went to the Roadhouse chefs’ meeting the other day, I decided to ask for help understanding what impact humility has had in our kitchen. I proposed that we use the question “What does humility mean to you all?” as the meeting’s icebreaker (a humble and equitable way to get everyone’s voice into a room at the start of any session). They had more to say than I can squeeze in here, but their comments were inspiring. Head chef Bob Bennett said, “There are a lot of kitchens where ego dominates and there’s lots of yelling. Humility means we don’t do that.” Sous chef Jessica Forbes said, “It’s about staying ‘right–sized’ with your ego. You try not to take too much credit, but you try not to beat yourself up either. It looks like walking down the middle of the road, always trying to keep your side of the street clean.” Supervisor Chris Kucera said, “Humility is listening to everyone, no matter their position. It’s trying to take in everyone’s advice.” At the end, Bob added, “Humility reminds us to make time to help someone in need.”

Bob’s comment reminded me of a small personal story that I’ve been watching unfold out behind our house. It’s about the kind of meaningful difference humility can make. As some of you know from her Instagram, Tammie has been rescuing dogs over the last few years. On New Year’s Eve, she saved a pit bull named Blu from an abusive setting where he was chained up outside in the mud 24 hours a day (not good in the Michigan winter). Blu is very strong, and hence, to many, also scary. Most everyone who worked with him at the shelter where Tammie took him liked Blu, but still politely wrote him off as reactive, hostile, and risky. In the spirit of Silver Branch Perception, Tammie, as she often does, saw something others didn’t. Humbly following her heart, knowing that she didn’t have the perfect answer but might still be able to make a difference, she did what Kathleen Lonsdale called for: she took action. She has stayed grounded within herself, but also treated Blu with dignity from day one. Tammie got Blu into a tiny house on our property where she’s helping him get used to being around people, eat better food, get exercise, love, and get ready to find someone who can pay him proper attention and offer him a forever home. Slowly but surely over the last month, Blu’s anxiety has been going down, his eyes have softened, and his energy is slowly shifting. A few nights ago, something wholly unexpected happened. Blu gently put his head on Tammie’s leg and held it there. It was, as she says, the canine equivalent of a hug. The next night, out on our porch, he laid on his back and let her rub his tummy—the most vulnerable position a dog can put himself in. It was a remarkable thing to see, something that would never have happened without the quiet power of humility. There’s still a long way to go, but thanks to Tammie’s care, Blu is slowly becoming the dog he was born to be.

This sort of shift is what, I realize, we can do for people we bring into our organizations who have suffered in bad workplaces or challenged lives where they, like Blu, have understandably hardened their hearts and learned to keep their defenses high at all times.

Why does all this even matter? Like topsoil in nature, we need humility to grow as healthy human beings. Without humility, it’s hard to collaborate. Both dignity and democracy depend on it. It’s only with humility that we can make our organizations and our communities more caring, more peaceful, and more positive places to be. The cost is very low, but the upside for those who are humble and patient is big. Robert Hunt wrote this about counter-rhythms, but it could just as easily be applied to humility:

It’s all around us—the first step is to know it’s there, the second is to look for it, the third is to incorporate it. You may be surprised to find out that it could have a transformational effect on your work. Maybe it will help you make something no one else has seen before…but they will know it has something special in it.

Want to learn more about how to lead from a grounded, humble place of self-awareness? Maggie Bayless and I will be co-teaching the ZingTrain Master Class next month—it’s almost full but there are still a few seats left! It’s on Zoom so you can sign up from New Zealand, Nova Scotia or anywhere else from which you want to learn more about effective self-management.

The “Humility” pamphlet is available at the Deli, Roadhouse, Coffee Company, and online at ZingTrain.com and Zingermanspress.com. We’ve also put together this Leading with Humility Pamphlet Bundle filled with philosophies and practical tools that together can help you create a humbler culture. If you’d like to help increase the topsoil in your organizational culture, we would be glad to arrange bulk pricing if you buy a bunch. Email Jenny at [email protected].

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Last month, we celebrated Women’s History Month by asking the women partners of Zingerman’s Community of Businesses to give us their best advice. We posted their responses on our Zingerman’s Community Instagram and  thought it’d be fun to recap their wise words here.  Here’s what they had to say:

Amy Emberling, Co-Managing Partner of Zingerman’s Bakehouse
“During my first experiences in the food world in the late 1980s, it was clear that in some restaurants gender bias lived strong, as is the case today. I thought it was bizarre. I just ignored it and forged ahead. I recommend this as a strategy. Don’t engage with it except if necessary to call it out. Don’t embody it!”

Ji Hye Kim, Managing Partner of Miss Kim
“I am not a native speaker. I am not a native. I’ve been a woman all my life, and I’ve been an immigrant ever since the age of 13. I had fancied myself as a fighter, with this idea that I have to go after what I want, because no one ever is going to hand it to me. In much of my personal experience, this has been true. But I know that with the right people and community like Zingerman’s, I can tune out all the noise, even internal ones calling me to be a fighter. I can just focus on being a leader and building something wonderful and delicious together.”

Aubrey Thomason, Managing Partner of Zingerman’s Creamery
“Do not be afraid, do not back down. If they tell you that you are loud, direct, abrasive, and competitive, you are probably doing it right! There are times to be soft and times to be hard, and over time you will learn to balance those things. But first you need to know what you are talking about, be fearless and direct, command attention.”

Grace Singleton, Co-Managing Partner at Zingerman’s Deli
“If I was going to give advice to any woman trying to move up the ranks or own their own business, I’d say believe in yourself first and foremost—you can do anything you set your mind to. Work hard. Nothing great comes easy, don’t lose sight of your goals—it’s easy to get sidetracked—and don’t be afraid to ask for help from others by sharing your vision of success.”

Toni Morell, Co-Managing Partner of Zingerman’s Mail Order
“Never let anyone tell you what is and is not possible. You can be confident and kind, strong and humble. You only learn from your mistakes—you will make them, so get ready to learn. Don’t be afraid to say what you think. You don’t have to know all the answers, but be willing to admit when you don’t. Let your passions guide you. You set the organization’s tone, so be careful you are setting the right one.”

Maggie Bayless, Managing Partner of ZingTrain
“I grew up in an academic family and for years thought there was something a little sleazy about being in business—that corporations were out to take advantage of people. As I found myself in a variety of different jobs, however, I began to see that there were good businesses as well as bad businesses….Now, 23 years after starting ZingTrain, I have the opportunity to meet entrepreneurs and business leaders from around the world, and I’m completely convinced that small businesses can be an incredible catalyst for positive social change.”