Dignity In The Modern Workplace with Ari Weinzweig

Hey, we're talking about dignity. Dignity. What is dignity? What's its relevance in the workplace? Why does it even matter? We great guest. A great topic today and profound, like, really great, profound opportunity for conversation. Stay tuned. Hey, everybody, my name is Bill Gallagher, scaling coach and host of this fine Scaling up business podcast. We bring our show to you every week, interviewing business leaders, authors, gurus, experts in the world of growing your business and all the things that that implies and some tips and tricks and things like that that we've learned working with thousands of companies over the last 10 years. And so you'll find all that back catalog, over 500 shows and more tools we've got workshop every month. We've got some free stuff. All that and more at scalingcoach.com ScalingCoach.com is our website where you'll find all that groovy stuff and go check us out, subscribe, stay in our world, that kind of thing.

Or right.

Wherever you are right now. All right, listen, without much more to say, topics, dignity, we're talking with Ari Weinsweig. Ari, actually, I didn't look up or remember when you were last on the show, but he's been on the show before. He's been a speaker in the world of scaling Up. He's a co founder of Zingerman's Deli, but the whole group of companies, really. And a noted, recognized, celebrated CEO. Zingerman's group of companies is over 500 people and about 40 million roughly. But, you know, no, lower, higher.

750 and 80 million.

There you go. Bigger. I was. That's all data that I.

That was when I was on the last time. Yeah. All right.

So grown a little bit since then. Right. Like, and that is kind of our topic, but. But a company that is celebrated and does things a little bit differently and he has a very unique perspective and so great that you have this. This topic. So welcome to the show, Ari.

Thanks for having me. Good to be here.

Thanks for. It's great to have you back on. It's been a little while. It's been a minute since you were on. So we're talking today about dignity. Why are we talking about dignity? What is it that got you on this topic?

Well, what got me on the topic is two years ago week, two years and two weeks ago, Russia invaded Ukraine, which everybody will remember, either in detail or vaguely, but everyone will remember.

Right.

I'm a Russian history major. It's been many years since I was in school, but I remain interested in it. Russian history, of course, is not Ukrainian history, to be clear, but for whatever reasons, and we don't need to trace all the theoreticals of the psychology, but for whatever reasons, the invasion hit me really hard. I work pretty hard at staying emotionally grounded. I've written about it, I teach it, among other things. I wrote a whole book on managing ourselves. And there's nothing wrong with being hit emotionally hard. It's just hard. And it, it, in hindsight it sort of sent me into despair. It just seems so horrible, like for nothing other than the ego of one man. Yeah, just, you know, there's been a millions of wars and they're often over natural resources or they've spent years antagonizing each other or it's been building up, but this is basically like the bully and the playground just walked up and punched the kid next to him because they couldn't manage their emotions. And anyway, for whatever reasons, it's settled like that into, into deep despair. And one of the ways that I've taught myself to deal with difficult emotions like that works for me, may not work for others, but I often start studying the subject to try to get greater insight into what's going on. And I'm certainly not a professor of Russian history. I am not an expert in Russian history, but I probably know more about it than the average American, having spent a fair few years in school and then since paying close attention. I didn't love Russian history because of the people in charge, because unfortunately they have centuries of leadership that's not completely out of sync with Vladimir Putin, but more studying the people on the periphery and the people who struggle back against those in power. Regardless. I didn't know a lot about Ukrainian history and so I thought, okay, I'm going to start reading. And it didn't take me long to figure out what everybody in Ukraine, or anyone who was paying more attention to Ukraine than I was, already knew, which is that in 2014, which is now 10 years ago, they essentially, in a nutshell, pushed out the Russian sponsored or Russian inclined leader. And that came to be called the revolution of dignity. And it was a big hallmark in Ukrainian history in terms of shifting it more directly towards democracy, towards dignity, towards respect for the individual, towards a collaborative, inclusive society, et cetera, et cetera. And when I read that, I was like, that's what we need to do. Because I'd felt so helpless, man. Like, I don't know what to do. I'm not going to go to Ukraine and pick up a gun. I don't even know how to shoot a gun. I'M I'm like, what could I do? You know, I could go work the soup kitchen and feed refugees, but I got a large company to help lead that. You know, my value on the soup kitchen line is realistically a lot lower than trying to do good work. But when I came upon the dignity work, I realized that was what we could do. Because what I, I can't go there and fix it, but what I can do is work my butt off here to make sure that dignity is the order of our day. And, and I started, the more I started to study it and process it and reflect on it, I realized that like realistically, in countries where dignity is the norm, people like Vladimir Putin never come to power because it's incompatible. And conversely, we could never run our organization in the inclusive, dignity based way that we do. If we were in Russia, we wouldn't be able to hire people to work the way that we do and we would be getting in trouble repeatedly. Not that we're like super controversial in the U.S. but over there, like just even saying the wrong, you know, people got went to jail or going to jail for putting flowers Alexei Navalny's grave. So imagine that you spoke out on diversity issues, going to jail. And, and so that's really what got me going.

We have little bits of it here and certainly it's been a bit of a flashpoint in the United States and we are in the middle of some cultural conflict and that kind of thing. But, and of course we're talking today not about politics so much, but that's not at all. Yeah, the application for business and why does it matter? Because you know, there's other people working on the political aspects of it and everything. But what lesson or what can we infer from it? And I think you're right, like there are places where you can't say or do anything and there are places and, and we've seen companies run like that where people are tyrants and bullies running businesses and the environment is toxic and.

That kind of thing. Yeah, I mean that's part of what the connection that I drew. I, I mean a, dignity and politics are not, don't need to be related at all. There's plenty of people I don't agree with on political policy, but I treat with dignity all the time and I understand that we just have different views. It doesn't make them bad people. It doesn't mean I need to out argue them. It's just I could treat everybody with dignity regardless. So I think dignity is apolitical. It's it's really about a way of being in the world. And, and, and that said, then the additional piece of info which you sort of alluded to now is the model of the hierarchical boss is essentially the model that most businesses still use. They're just a lot kinder boss, a lot more of a benevolent monarch than Putin is, without question. But it still all resides in one person.

So let's talk about. Since we're in something sort of conceptual here, which we aren't often. When you say dignity, what do you mean by dignity?

Yeah, that's a great question. And that's one of the things that we've done here over 42 years. Next week that we've been in business. Bill. It started with me and my business partner Paul and two employees in 1300 square feet. So one of the things that I think that's helped, I believe pretty strongly has helped us a lot in the same way that Verne's methodology around scaling up is fairly clear. Clear. And people can learn it and it leaves them freedom to apply it within their own construct. But it's also clear macro construct that they can function with and learn and understand. We've done the same thing with stuff like customer service. We have three steps to great service, five steps to handling complaints. I wrote about that in a little service book I did. We have four elements of an effective vision that wrote about that in part one of the book. We have six elements of servant leadership. So that I could go on and on. But the point is just that we have tried to take these inspiring concepts that everybody likes the sound of and actually give them. Here's what it really looks like in practice. And so once I landed on this belief that dignity was really important, then I realized, okay, what does it really mean? It sounds good to say it, but you got. And I came up with six elements of dignity, which I'm happy to run through if you want that. That for me and I've been now doing this two years and it seems to work. Those six have been very helpful.

Well, hold for that for just a second because we'll dive into it. But I. So as you say it, when I think of the common uses of dignity, the one of them, like being dignified, like being serious or whatever, I don't think you mean that. And the other one is like just high rank or position dignitary or. I don't think you mean that. And I. So I think it lives in the world of honor and respect.

Yeah, those are other ways to say it. I would just suggest that those are equally nebulous in terms of what it really means. And then people get into arguments over whether they were. Were respected or not. And so, yeah, I've tried to take it into a little more detail than that. And I'm not saying these are the right things. I'm just saying these are, you know, what seems to work in a way that's teachable and practical.

Why don't you. Before we get into the definition, the elements of dignity and that thing, why don't you talk either about. Well, maybe start with meeting Paul and, and building the business and then a little bit about the creating the community business, the overall company vision and that.

Yeah, yeah. And I think just for context, and then I'll tell that whole story. Looking back, I would say that unconsciously dignity has been a part of what we've been trying to do from day one. We didn't use the word. Yeah, we didn't have it front of mind. But in a sense becoming clearer about it now is it wasn't. It's not a big shift for us. What's a shift is actually teaching it and starting to slowly but surely expect it. Both of starting first with me doing it and then going out from there. So backing up. I'm from Chicago, for those who don't know the geography of the American Midwest, where Ann arbor is about four hours drive to the east of the I94 interstate. And I came here to Ann Arbor to go to school at University of Michigan, which I did. And as you already know from our earlier part of our conversation, I studied Russian history. I also particularly studied anarchism. We have the largest anarchist collection in the country is at the graduate library at the University of Michigan, seventh and eighth floors. And I used to go up there and study quite a bit and probably separate conversation, but actually write a lot about the application of anarchism to modern organization. But we can come back to that later. Anyway, after graduating with my history degree. There is of course nothing one can do with a history degree except go get more degrees, which is what I already knew. And I was supposed to go back to school. Like it wasn't. It didn't depress me. That was the norm. I just didn't know what that next degree was going to be.

And also leads to law, politics.

My mother was military leadership. Really would have been happy had I gone to law school. But I failed. And I already failed med school because I fell asleep in chemistry class every day for the first week of the semester and dropped the class so pre med was out, and then law school was less problematic because I could just say, maybe next year. But anyway, visioning as I'll talk about it in a minute, is a huge piece of what we do. I've written extensively. We teach Sing Train as our training business. We teach seminars on it. I speak on it quite a bit. But when I graduated, I had no vision at all. I had only what David White, W H Y T E whose books and poetry I would really recommend. It's what he calls the via negativa. So folks listening might not have heard the term, but they might have experienced it in practice. It's where you're clueless about where you want to go, but you're really clear where you don't want to go. So it's not really what I would recommend as a great life path or business growth strategy, but it's better than nothing because at least you could eliminate some options. I knew I didn't want to go home in order to facilitate that financially. I wasn't a business major, but I knew I needed a job. I had driven a cab part time. I was in school, which was, let's say, fine, but not particularly interesting. One of my college roommates was waiting tables at a restaurant in downtown Ann Arbor. The whole town's only 12 minutes across, so it's not that big, but. So I went in there, applied for a job as a server. They interviewed me and said they'd call. I waited two weeks. They hadn't called. I went back, reapplied as a busboy. Same scenario happened. They didn't call, so I was running out of money, so I went back and offered to do anything. They offered me a job washing dishes, and I took it. So that's how I started. It would be a much better entrepreneurial story for something like scaling up if I could tell you that from the time I was 10, I dreamed of opening out my own restaurant. And all we do is my mother's great family recipes. And this is my life dream come true. But none of that's true. My mother was a good person and a teacher, but not a great cook. No one in my family was in business, so unlike Vern's kids, I didn't know you could even go into business. It wasn't even like, on a mental menu for me, so I really just lucked out. The most recent pamphlet I had out before, the Dignity one, is on food and philosophy, and the first line is something like, once every week or so, my mother fed us fish sticks. So I grew up on what I look at as the mid 20th century Industrial American diet. So Kraft Macaroni cheese, green Jello, Pop Tarts, Nest is Quick, Captain Crunch, Cocoa Puffs, all kinds of wonderful things with registered trademark symbols next to them. So I lucked out. I stumbled into work. I love. I still love the food and the cooking. I get home late from work, so I work the floor here at Zoom as roadhouse every evening. So I get home about 10. We eat dinner at our house about 11 in the evening. Like Spaniards. Yeah, that's when they eat there.

Yeah.

So anyway, I love the food and I love the cooking. Then I also met Paul Saginaw. He was the general manager. He had been the bar manager one of their other places. They had promoted him to GM at this other restaurant in their group. And his first day was my first day. And that's how we met. So that started a whatever friendship now partnership that is still going. It's almost 46 years. We still like each other, no small thing. So I started prepping and line cooking. If anybody listening has worked in restaurants, I was all back of the house. I started managing kitchens. I stayed and worked for that restaurant group for about four years. Paul left about halfway through that and opened a little fish market here in town, which is still one of the best in the country. He and I stayed friends, and here and there we would chat about doing our own thing. Fall in 1981, which is now ancient history. I reached a point where it's not like I hated going to work. I mean, in the context of what I write about now in the business books, I had a good job, but it wasn't really good work. So it was fine, day was fine, the people were fine, but it was not unpleasant, but it wasn't super fulfilling. So just like, you know what? It's time to move on. So I gave two months notice, and unknowingly, Paul called me two days later, and he goes, hey, man, this little building's coming open near the fish market. And he had grown up in Detroit where he could get good deli food and. And I grew up in Chicago, where you could get it and you couldn't get it here. That was one of the ideas. We bounced around here and there, and somehow within like a week, we decided we were going to open. And then four and a half months later, we had renovated the space, redone the floor, painted the walls, done the menu, costed a menu, written the recipes, got inventory in, and we opened on March 15th, Monday morning, 1982. With two employees, like I said, in 1300 square feet, you know, and to.

This, a couple things I think are interesting to reflect on and note. One of them you mentioned. There is like, just the importance of food and the fact that you, your mom wasn't a particularly good cook. My mom's pretty terrible cook by her own admission, and, but my grandmother was a really good cook. My mom's family, I would say, had fairly, like, mediocre food taste, that kind of thing. And the other family had really great food, like, sort of taste and quality. And, and I love food. Total foodie today. But in both families, one that I would consider good food, the other bad food, Food was a central place, an occasion for human connection. So, like my grandfather in the Bad family, like, going to a, a buffet or going to the Sizzler Steakhouse, like, was a, was an event where we gathered and we, we, like, connected and over food. And then the other family, you know, like, we're getting ready for the spring holidays, and some families do Easter and others do Passover, and there's a variety of traditions. But I started to think about, I was looking at some of the menu items. I was getting very emotional thinking about gathering for the first thing with, with the new baby in the family. And, you know, like, there are these occasions where we come together, whether it's Thanksgiving, whatever. Like, these are places or even like a date, a conversation with a friend, a cup of coffee, a little nosh of some kind. Like, you know, like, there's something deep and human there about breaking bread together, as they say.

Right? Yes. That's what we do for a living. Yeah.

And the other thing, I think that's really fascinating, and then also an opportunity for joy. Right. Like, there's times that we eat for sustenance and for physical recovery, but then also times of, like, experiencing the joy of the flavor in the moment.

Right? Yeah. And that's what I write about.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then the other thing, I think that's relevant for business. So not everybody's been. I also have been a prep cook, a busboy, a dishwasher, a waiter, a restaurant manager.

Well, we are hiring if you want to come back.

I, I, it's such excellent training and hiring people because there's immediacy. Like, you can't screw things up when people are hungry. You have to, you have to take care of it now. And so much of business is like, oh, we'll deal with that later tomorrow, like, whatever, and let's know. It's like, now, and the food goes Bad. And the food is only warm for a minute and like, and then it gets Dr. And that whole world of like, and then spoilage. And so the immediacy and the urgency and the human connection is super great training. And then it, like, develops the customer service mindset, the integration, front of house, back of house. Like, even if you have no connection or never going to be in the restaurant business, hiring people with some background, there's valuable skills there, whether it's sales, service, or operations.

No, it makes total. I've. I've never really worked in any other kind of industry. So, you know, and I live with a woman who's a farmer and we don't have kids and they're not religious, so whatever. Tuesday, Sunday, it's all the same. I don't. I don't know what 9 to 5 is, you know, whatever. But once, one time, I spoke at a conference of wine people, winemakers and wineries, and about the natural laws of business, which is an essay that's in the first book. And after I spoke, you know, as you've experienced when you do it, I'm sure two people want to talk and they have questions and they. They like this. And anyway, a guy came up to me, nice guy. He goes, you know, I love your talk. And he said, I'm not really a. I'm not in the wine world. I'm an attorney, but a lot of my clients are wine, wine people. So I thought I'd come. This was great. He goes, you know, I tell all the other lawyers, I said, you, if you want to be in law, you should work a year in restaurants. Because when you're working in a restaurant and something goes wrong, you can't go, you know, let's get together next Friday and we'll go over that. You gotta get. You gotta get the food of the customer right now, like you just described, you can't. You can't put it off for a couple weeks while you go on vacation. And then we'll get back to the guest at the end of the month, tell them what we're gonna do about their burgers.

You gotta go right to it. And, you know, there's. I think about things that I learned and enjoyed in every single one of those jobs. And I actually, I remember I switched for a little while I was a.

Dishwasher and a prep cook.

And then I went and I was a busboy for a little while. And then I asked if I could go back into the kitchen because I was really hating being a busboy. And the Way that that restaurant was organized and like, oh, I love why I come in the morning. I chop all the vegetables, I help make the soups, I do things like that. And then I wash dishes through lunch and it's very like, it's done and it's very satisfying and funny how a thing like that could be satisfying. Gratifying.

Absolutely. That's what we do.

Come on over, talk about, you know, I haven't visited and I'd really like to figure out a time when I could come visit.

Well, next, in 10 days, I'm teaching the Zingerman's Experience seminar for two days could come out. That's awesome. Delta hub. We're the Delta hub here. So you can fly right to Detroit, west of Detroit.

Yeah. Talk about the. The creation of the. The vision for the company and the. And the group of companies and what went into that.

Yeah. So when we. So I mentioned the essay about 12 natural laws of business. So they're. Yeah. The idea of it came originally from stuff Paul used to talk about. I took. You know, the idea resonated. But yeah, in the spirit of what we said about dignity, it's like, well, what does that really mean? And what are they? The idea of them is that they're basically like gravity. So, you know, I do not really understand gravity. I'm a history major. But like, I remember when they developed, you know, they discovered it, but I don't really know how it works, but I know which way the phone will go if I let go. And I make my decisions according to accordingly.

So pointing out gravity doesn't care how you feel about it.

Correct. So. So as my. As my friend, the writer Seth Godin says, you don't hear about gravity deniers, do you? Yeah, just saying. Anyways, we'll leave that one alone. But anyway, so the natural laws of business are like gravity. They're just true. They're themes that I have heard from everybody, whether it's Fern Harness, a basketball player, a musician, a parent that's raising kids, a third grade teacher, a great writer. They all basically do these same things. They use their own way to describe them, but they do all of these things. The first one on the list is that they all have a vision. Now we have a process that I could talk about that we use for writing a vision. And our definition of vision is much different than the business school version, which is a very short 3, 4, 5 line statement. Ours are long stories. Our vision for 2032 is 10 pages long. It's the story of the future that you want, not the future others want you to have. But the reality is, whether you write it down or not, everybody who's getting to greatness, greatness of their own choosing, not socially determined greatness from the outside. They all have a vision. So if it's a parent raising a kid, if it's a piano player imagining what their future as a musician is like, whatever it might be. And so Paul And I, in 1982, when we opened, we didn't write a vision, but in hindsight, we had one in our heads. We knew from the beginning that we wanted something really special. I'm drawn to unique things. I'm not that drawn to easily replicated things. We knew we wanted great food, great service, great finance, great place for people to work and do it in a very down to earth setting where you could have what we still have, which is the president of the university at one table. He was just in here a couple weeks ago, and family, little kids at the next table. And it doesn't really matter, you know, everybody gets great food and great service. And then we knew from the get go that we only wanted one. No disrespect to those who open multiple units. My energy is raised by the opposite, which is the place. Like I went there 25 years ago, it was awesome. And I still remember it now.

You know, pause one second because this is a little thing to think about. Many people assume like, if I'm going to grow a significant company, I've got to go to 100 locations or nationwide. No, you could actually build. And that's implied in this group of companies here, 750 people, about $80 million today. Right. And I, I have, I've, I've done a couple restaurant companies over the years, and I have one right now that we're working on growing a group of restaurants.

Right. Yeah.

And so that's one possible way to do it, but not the way that you chose.

Yeah. There's no right or wrong. I don't have any judgment. I have plenty of friends who open multiple units of the same thing. It's just not my thing. And the way we do visioning, it's inside out. So it's not what music is selling well, it's what music do you want to play and then figuring out a way to play it in a way that other people will buy it. But it's not like doing a study of what music's selling. Okay, I'm gonna play that kind of music. Right. So, so anyway, we knew we only wanted one, like a Place that would be really special that when people came here, they, you know, it's not like there's not other great places in the world, there's plenty, but that they would remember it for, for this unique thing. Anyway, fast Forwarding. We opened 1982, 1300 square feet. We did, you know, by our current standards, not a lot, but well, from the beginning, we'll say in quotes. We added onto the building a little 700 square foot addition in 1986, 1991, we renovated the old house next door. We're in the historic district, so it's difficult to make changes. Anyway, fast forwarding again. 1993. So we had been in business 11 years. It was a summer day. I don't know what day, I can't remember, about 10 in the morning. All appropriate operational rights. I should have been indoors getting the sandwich line ready for the lunch rush. And Paul sits me down out front and he kind of looks at me and he goes, okay, in 10 years, what are we doing? Like, what got you off guard in 10 years? That's an understatement. He's like, in 10 years, what are we doing? I'm like, I don't know. And he's like, well, I mean, it's just crazy that we, you know, we said we're not going to open any other places. So we already turned down these offers from other cities and we won't open more units on campus. You know, we're about, I don't know, a mile away. You know, people are eating into our market. Like, what are we, you know, what are we doing? I'm like, paul, man, I got work to do. And he's like, no, this is our work. So in hindsight, what I have come to understand is he probably couldn't sleep for four months worrying about it before he unloaded it on me. In hindsight, what he was asking with our current language is, what's your vision? I didn't have one. I don't think he had one either. But he did have a good intuitive sense that we had essentially fulfilled the original vision. It's. It's what I would now would refer to as organizational midlife, or what John o', Donoghue, the Irish philosopher who theologian, whose work I really love, would call a threshold. So it's where you've made it to something that you didn't quite know you could get there. You hoped you could get there, you thought you could get there. You worked your butt off, then you got there and you realize, like, oh, it's not really done. It's just the beginning. I would equate it to people's kids go away to college. Like you thought you might kill them at seven but you didn't. And now it's 18. They're actually got into college but now you have to go through what's it like not to have them at home? You know people shoot for retirement. I'm not trying for it right now, but people do. Then they get there like oh no, now what do I do? They sell their company for a lot of money but then they don't know what's, you know. So it's not a bad thing, it's just the next stage. It's not like we were satisfied with the status quo because we've always been about getting better every day, no matter whether there was a Toyota way or not. But there's a big difference I've come to understand between improving what you have and going after an inspiring long term vision.

So yeah, we've done several episodes on creating vision, but most notably is with Brian Scudamore O2E brands which includes one, 800, got junk. And he.

Yeah, he's the only one that uses a similar process.

Yeah, so.

And I don't know him. I heard him speak once. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's the only other person that. And it. I don't know where he learned it, I don't know him. But that, that is similar to what? Very similar to what they.

Well, it's the vivid vision process, one we use with all the time. And he's a scaling up company and.

Yeah, yep, yep. So. So around the time this is, you know, in technology or whatever, innovation. Steven Johnson's book. Yeah. He says like forget what, he calls it simultaneous something or other. But it's like things happen at roughly the same time in completely disparate places unrelated. Because it's just the time. Yeah, and it's a little like that. But anyway, around the time that shortly after Paul had asked me this question, which started a lot of long, often very difficult conversations, we got to know a guy named Stash. Kazmierson Stash passed away at least six years ago May, which is very sad, but he taught us this process that we call visioning. He had learned it many years earlier from a guy named Ron Lippitt who was a professor at the Institute of Social Research here at University of Michigan, which was really one of the pioneering places of social science in the mid 20th century. Ron Lippitt developed this process. He mostly used it in community work, not in Businesses. And it was essentially getting people out of problem solving and reactivity to either opportunities or crises that came up. And rather than fighting over what to do in a moment, his whole thing was to get people to plant their minds in a positive win, win future where everybody could essentially get what they wanted while letting go of the. How they would get there, deal with that suffering. Because most places flip back and forth constantly between where they're going and how they're going to get there, and then they go nowhere. This is where you just completely disengage from how we'll get the money later, what do we want. And because it's inside out, it's not based on anybody else's opinion. You might shape it based on people's perspective. But whether you want to grow nationally with 500 units or whether you want to stay with one and never grow is your decision like it's not right or wrong. So out of meeting Stash, he taught us this process and that's. I'll finish up in a sec. But that's how we wrote the vision for the community businesses. Go ahead.

So, yeah, tell us about the process. But before you do that, let me. I'd love to underscore this a little bit. I think in large part, whether it's done well or not. A lot of business leadership is vision centered. An entrepreneur, a business leader of some kind, creates a goal, a positive condition for the future, and then expresses it in some way and then leads the team towards it and the team works towards that. And that is different than what we often see in politics and in other realms, which is often against something and defensive and like that kind of thing. So it's for something versus against something. And we're building for four of. But it's not it, it's not that. It never happens. Certainly we see with leaders like.

Like.

Martin Luther King, who is like, I have a dream, right. So he's, he's expressing a vision for the future that's a very positive one where it's win, win and that kind of thing. And, and even Gandhi calling for the English to leave the Brits to leave India. And is, is not calling for death to them or that kind of thing. And I remember there was a mayor of Jerusalem many years ago who talked about Teddy Kollick. Teddy Kollick, an international city on the hill that had dignity for three major religions or all religions and people, and was a deeply moving kind of thing. And in that, continuing that realm, I was actually in the city at the time when one of the leaders said, no, we should learn to live together. And Anwar Sadat traveled to Jerusalem.

Yes, good history work.

It didn't, didn't turn out that way, but I was deeply moved by that. And it's hard because there's a lot of fairly negative violent opponents. But in business, one of the things that's really beautiful about it is generally we're describing a win, win kind of future and we're building towards that thing a hundred percent.

So I. It's another podcast, but I wrote a very big book on beliefs called the Power of Beliefs in Business. I knew nothing about beliefs up until whatever, eight years ago when I started working on it, I learned a ton. Yeah, it's a whole other conversation. We now have a statement of beliefs within the organization. Organization. We teach about it regularly. It's hugely important. I mentioned the 12 natural laws of business. There's actually 12 more that have come clear to me in the years since I wrote that first essay. And one of them underscores what you just said, which is that you cannot get positive outcomes from negative beliefs. You can tear down buildings, you can overthrow governments, as you could see in the news. You can go to war, you can go up into an emotional frenzy, you can get divorced, you can end partnerships. But you could not, could not create a positive, lasting, healthy ecosystem out of negative beliefs. And so there's, there's. That doesn't mean there's no problems. This is not false positivity. There's plenty of problems. It's just what you describe are examples of people inspiring people to me who saw problems, identified a positive future, in essence a vision that they could work for, which in the pro, in the process of getting to that vision would eliminate the problem. But they weren't react. They weren't reactive to the problem. They imagined a positive future, a future.

That includes everyone, with dignity, for everyone. Right. So do you want to say a little bit more about that visioning process before we talk about the elements?

So the answer to your question about the community, we call it Zingerman's community of Business. So we, in, over the course of a year after Paul asked me that question, we had a lot of long walks and a lot of long talks, eye rolls and swear words and whatever. But. But by the end of that, with Stash's help on writing A Vision, is the first time we wrote a vision. It's in the back of the story of visioning. At Zingerman's pamphlet, we called it Zingerman's 2009. If you do quick math, you'll see we actually went 15 years in the future, not 10. So that vision described a Zingerman's in 2009 that would be a community of businesses. We would still have the only one, the one deli. So we could stay true to that original idea of a unique place. But we would open other Zingerman's businesses so that there would be growth and opportunity. Each business would be a Zingerman's business. So from the beginning we wanted one organization with these semi autonomous pieces in the way that state and federal power are supposed to relate to each other in a supportive, collaborative way, not in a confrontational way. And that we would have managing partners in each business because our experience was when there's an owner on site, generally the energy is more alive and better. And although startups are a ton of work, the real work in my mind is 20 years later who's still trying to make it better long after the glamorous gone. And, and, and so. And that they would all be located here in the Ann Arbor area. Because again, not saying what others should do, but I have a strong belief about doing business where one lives. It's just different, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that's where that came from and that's what we do since then. There's been a vision that we wrote in 07 for 2020 and then the current one we wrote in 2000 started in 2018. We were supposed to roll it out. We do a lot of. Actually what I taught at Scaling up conference was about our bottom line change process many years ago. It was the keynote one day and General McChrystal was the keynote the other day, which was. He was awesome.

And how fun to have an anarchist and a general find affinity for each other in their worldviews. Right?

No, it was the same stuff and that's just reinforces why they're natural laws because. Because he's saying the same things. And I loved it.

One of my favorite quotes from him there was a farmer doesn't grow anything.

Right.

A farmer only creates the conditions for growth. The plants do the growing.

Right, Exactly. So anyways. But we use our bottom line change process, which is a very inclusive process, to get to the end of the vision. Anyway, a long story short, after two years or whatever working on it, we were all set to pull it out, I think in the third week of 2020. I mean most people had seen drafts, but this was like the formal. Okay, we're going. So third week of 2020. I'm smiling now. I was not smiling then I felt like my business life was passing in front of my eyes. What had seemed stable suddenly seemed like I was going to lose my house. We survived. And thanks to the ppp, money from the government and a lot of hard work by people here and a good community, we came out the other side. The process itself is, I've written quite a bit about. It's an inside out process. So it's not call the expert and ask them what you should do. Call your mother and ask her what you should do. It's imagining the future that you want. It's a whole nother call, but it's basically a free writing exercise where you sit down and it's like the vivid vision stuff that you mentioned. So you're basically sitting down and we just would write non stop for 45 minutes describing the future that you're in. So it's not a bullet point list, it's not a strategic analysis, it's not a SWOT analysis. It's not calling the business school and asking the students to tell you, yeah, like I'm trying to work more, I got a lot to do and I'm running out of years. Other people are retired. It's not right or wrong, it's just getting clear on what you want and what's going to happen.

Feel. Yeah, yeah. You know, I do, I update my business one a little bit every year and then I do sort of big swaps at it like about every five years. And in my marriage we do this every five to ten years we, we do a review of the marriage and then we're like, okay, that marriage was, is over. Now what is there a future? Like what are we going to create? What do you want? Well, what is our. And, and it's so, so it's a little terrifying, but it's really powerful. Right and correct. You know, married 30 years this year, so it's working for me.

Yeah, well, the visioning is when it's used well what happens is as has happened here over 30 years, it, it becomes part of the daily work of the organization. So we don't just do vision for the organization. Overall it's a process that we teach in quotes to everybody. So, so every project starts with a vision. People write personal visions. Every business has its own vision within the greater vision. And ultimately I would suggest through neuroplasticity, it basically changes our brains. Most of us are raised to your earlier point to think of what's wrong, who's at fault, who's the jerk who messed me up. And it's so reactive and negative, like you said earlier. Whereas what happens when people work with this all the time is, yeah, we can all start down that mental road, but we self correct pretty quickly because we spent years thinking about, yeah, what do we want? The mind can shift there instead of getting locked into, oh yeah, that Bill guy is keeping me from. I can't do anything because of Bill. Oh, you know, and this is, you.

Know, it's interesting as you say it, I'm reminded that all of that other against stuff, it comes from a place of victimhood and powerlessness. Right. Like, like when you're creating a vision you're taking charge of and you're the author of your future, designing and powerfully creating your world. And that's very different than blaming someone else for what went wrong, which is inherently victimhood. Like, oh, they're so bad and I'm being persecuted by this group or that group. That's all powerlessness, victimy nonsense, right?

Yes. 150. If people are interested in the history, you can read Erich Fromm's book, Escape from freedom from the 1930s. He showed how Hitler was extremely adept at, in practice, bonding with the wealthy and helping them, but emotionally bonding with the poor and helping them feel better about themselves. By just what you said, you're victims of this other group. In that case, it was Jews, along with gay people, black people, Roma people, etc. But he, he, he helped them feel better because, yeah, they were in a bad space, but there it was all the fault of these other people. And if you just got rid of them, everything would be better. These themes have been repeated throughout history. I'll leave it at that. But it doesn't ultimately do anything other than whip people up into a state of destructive frenzy. And in the end, everything comes down. So you feel better while you're raging. Like when I was, I don't know, eight, I got really mad one day and I whipped my toy against the wall and it broke. And I still, you know, remember the feeling after. It's like, oh my God, I just ruined my most favorite toy because I was so upset. Well, I mean, at the time it was a big deal, but the, it's the same thing. Like you could destroy your country.

You're going to have anger, right? Anyway, to process it, there's ways.

No, anger is normal. It's healthy. But learning to manage it in a way that doesn't take it out on other people is the key.

Yes, yes. Doesn't have to be destructive. In fact, A woman in my workshop yesterday in Las Vegas has a smashroom business and they invite individuals and company groups to come in and don some protective gear and just thrash away at stuff while they play, you know, know energetic music. And I'm like, that's really great. Getting a good sweat on going and doing a boxing match. Like a vigorous workout, like dance even. These are great to work through your anger.

I'm gonna go run after this. I do it every day. Just clears my mind and it's outstanding. Super slow, but I just keep going.

All right, so talk about the elements of dignity. And I think it'll be self evident why it matters so much in creating a healthy business that can grow together.

Absolutely. And this is all in the pamphlet that I'm coming out pretty soon on.

If you're watching live right now, it's not yet out, but it'll be any couple weeks.

Yeah, it'll be on the Zingerman's press website. Yep.

And most of our audiences are listeners later. So they will get this in the donuts.

Yeah, yep. And they can also email me. My email is ariatzingermans.com you can put it in the show notes. And there's the title of the pamphlet right there. But so yes, so the six elements. And I again, I've been essentially challenged myself to work with these every day. I've taught them in a fair number of places. Done. Big groups, small groups, internal groups. And they seem to resonate and they seem to help. They will be intuitive or in quotes, obvious to those who are already living this way. But in the context of organizations, if we have employees, it's not just enough for us to do it, we gotta teach other people how to do it. And I'll say for me, like, it's not in the least out of sync with my intentions, but I've slipped on all these and having the construct in front of me just like our three steps to great service makes it infinitely easier.

Yeah, there's a big difference between knowing something and doing something. You could know how to lose weight and then if you. But if you actually ate less and exercised more, you probably.

Yeah, I saw this one post of I don't really look at social media. I'm sure other people have seen it. I just don't look enough to seen it before. But it was sort of like this thing of like, yeah, I bought a gym membership six months ago and I haven't lost any weight. I'm gonna go down there and see what's going on. Anyway. Anyway, the first element of dignity on the list is to honor the humanity of everybody we work with. Yeah. Regardless of whether we like them, regardless of whether they're doing a good job. Back to your earlier point. We may disagree over politics or food preference or whatever. It doesn't matter. We still want to honor their humanity. It doesn't mean the manager has to be the therapist. But to honor that their kid is in the hospital, to honor that their parent is going through difficult aging issues, whatever it might be, go ahead, think about this.

Anytime you've had to fire somebody and let somebody go, and especially if you're entirely justified in being deeply angry at them for having done something wrong or end a contract or customer relationship because you're really angry about something. And even if you're right about it, if you could honor their essential humanity, even making the line to do it, you'd avoid lawsuits.

Well, and you avoid. You avoid strat. Like, it's. It's not helping. The person who acts with indignity like Vladimir Putin, back to where we started. This has more money probably than any other person in the world. His enormous amount of power. I don't think he's living a really rewarding life because he has to look around every corner. It's. It's constant controlling, you know? Yeah. So. So anyway, to honor the humanity, who are they? What do they do out of work? How old are their kids? What are they struggling with? What are they interested in? It doesn't have to take more than a minute or two. It's not like you're giving up your whole work life, but it's just, hey, how did your kid do in that football game last week? Simple. Yeah. The second element is to be authentic. And then. But it says in parentheses, back to your earlier point, without acting out.

Yeah.

That's very important. So yelling at the employee and going, hey, I'm just saying how I feel is not helpful.

Right. Dumping on people, voicing your opinion is not really what anybody's talking about in authenticity.

Right.

Speaking your mind.

Not in my world, but I put it down there to be clear with people that yelling at the customer because they acted badly is not what we're talking about. It's learning to your earlier point about being able to express one's emotions and anxieties, enthusiasms and fears, but do it in a way that still allows the other person to hold their dignity. So that. That's the second you want to know.

What there is to be authentic about. I would tell people on the regular, be real and open. About your fears, about your failings. Right. And that. That's a great place to start.

Absolutely. The third one is to make sure that people have a meaningful say in what's going on. So that doesn't mean they have. You have to vote on everything. We happen to use consensus at the partner level here. We happen to be very inclusive. But even if people aren't part of the decision, it's still giving them time to ask what's going on. Believe me, people in Russia have no say in what's happening. I know they're going to vote next week, but we all know it's a joke. So it's finding systemic ways, whether it's in your church, in your family, in your business, whatever, that people have some meaningful say. The fourth one is to back to what I said earlier, is to start with positive beliefs. So even if you're doing a lousy job, I'm still going to start with the belief you're doing the best you're able to right now. It doesn't mean it's okay. You still may not be able to work here. But I'm not going to start with, you're not committed, you don't care, you're trying other. It's, it's just so destructive and unique.

Helpful. And you, you said that inherent generosity in that starting with a positive interpretation in a universe of infinite possible interpretations.

100%. And in the beliefs book, there's a quote from Isaac Asimov, the science fiction writer. I'm weird enough that I read his autobiography. Anyway, I'm paraphrasing, but he, he's. It's on page 145. But in my, in my book, not in his. It basically it says choosing to believe the best about everyone is so much more effective. And he goes, occasional disappointments will occur, but you make your own life better by believing the positive. And it's worth the trade off for the occasional disappointment. And I, I believe he's right because if I go around thinking you're out to get me all day, it's exhausting.

Yeah. Yeah.

So the fourth, the fourth element is to help everybody go for greatness. That greatness for some of the people we employ might be they have a good work experience for the summer and they go off to college. Some people it's to be a managing partner in his Ingerman's business. But the point is to help them get to how they imagine greatness. If it's outside the frame of our vision and values, I can still help them. It's just not going to be here. The sixth one is that we get to some.

That's a useful thing to think about for people again and again. If you believe that everybody has the possibility and opportunity to be great and you know they're never going to win in your place and you let them go because you're committed to there being great somewhere beyond the business, then that's going to go a lot better than it could otherwise. Right. Like absolutely can't. You're not ever going to win here but you could be great somewhere. And although this transition's difficult, you should start doing that now.

Everybody comes out ahead and the society gets better, the community gets better, they feel better. When they feel better, their family does better. It's, it's, it's all an ecosystem. The sixth one is some reasonable level of equity. Now as I say in the new staff orientation, it's not going to shock the new employees that my pay is higher than theirs. Duh. Of course. But if my pay is whatever you see in the news 500 times what their pay is, it's, it's ridiculous. So it's, I don't know what the right level of equity is but the active collective effort to attain something reasonable I think helps give people a sense of dignity. If they feel like they're being exploited and they're getting paid as little as you have to while taking as much as you can, it doesn't work. So those six elements are what, what.

I look at selfish scarcity mindset is always going to create issues with and going to create a condition that lacks dignity. Right?

Yep. I agree. And Russia for what it's worth has the highest inequity in or incongruity between what the people at the top earn and what people at the bottom.

That's really great. Zingerman's. We should put up the URL the link there.com is a place that's for.

Mail order and for books and stuff. Zingermanspress.com we're off the grid like farm to table for books.

All right.

And then sing train.com is all our training stuff and my email ari zinger.com and I do A E news every week. If people email me I will send it back to them.

That's awesome.

And it's really that answers, not some robot.

Yeah. There's so much to learn from a really well run business and a family of businesses in a particular area. Like you've got, you've got a nice restaurant, you've got a deli, you've Got a mail order business, you've got the training business, you've got an event space, you've got all of these different things that all revolve around each other and then an underlying philosophy and a way of running stuff that has embedded deeply in it this notion of dignity. And that creates 750 people can work together and the company can thrive and go through the difficult kinds of challenges that we've all gone through recently with that kind of foundation. So that's the point of all of this conversation.

Yeah. And we, you know, look, we, we have plenty of flaws. We mess up daily. It's not like everything's perfect by any means. It's just the reality. Like if you, that you can make a li. You know, I don't know. It's been 42 years. We're still here in the food business. We're like 80. Closed in 18 months. It's already guessing.

Listen, it's been a great conversation. Reminder to our listeners, viewers. We've got a workshop that you can attend every month to get started in the world of scaling up. Learning and applying the tools, getting your mindset sorted out for growth. By the time you hear this on the podcast, we'll have a free course you can download to go through the whole stages of growth and the secrets that separate the big companies. So we've got coaching, all kinds of things, from free to a lot of money, a big range of them. Whatever works for you. I'm out to help 5 million business leaders before I retire in my 80s and that's my personal goal, to make a profound difference with 5 million people. So scalingcoach.com is where you'll get all that and more. And that's our website, scalingcoach.com. there it is on the screen and then some shout outs. And thanks to Christelle and Cameron and the team at store on who are producing our show and getting our guests ready and our things out every week. And to my friend and mentor, Vern Harnish, who created this whole scaling up framework of the Rockefeller habits that came before it. Thanks again for watching. For listening. Subscribe, turn on notifications, share it with somebody else. Come from a place of abundance. Give this show to somebody who could use it today. Thanks again for watching. We'll talk to you again next time.