Avanti Entrepreneur Avanti Entrepreneur Magazine Fall 2017 | Page 18

ARI WEINWEIG
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PEOPLE DO THEIR BEST
WORK WHEN THEY’RE
PART OF A REALLY
GREAT ORGANIZATION
Ultimately, people want to feel
that their work makes a positive difference,
that their extra efforts are noticed, and that
they can improve the quality of their lives
and the lives of those around them through
their work. When we accomplish this, we
have more fun, service improves, sales go up,
and all those other good things that we like
to see, start to happen—and with amazing
regularity!
Here at Zingerman’s, we’ve always taken
the approach that we are going to treat the
people who chose to work with us as if they
are volunteers. As with our customers, we
need our staff way more than they need us.
So how rewarding does the workplace have
to be? Well, pretty darned rewarding. Please
note that we mean “rewarding” in every
sense of the word—financially, sure, but also
emotionally, intellectually, and physically.
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IF YOU WANT THE
STAFF TO GIVE
GREAT SERVICE TO
CUSTOMERS, THE
LEADERS HAVE TO GIVE
GREAT SERVICE TO THE STAFF
This rule is less obvious and probably less
widely accepted than some of the others.
But it’s every bit as important. It’s one of
the key tenets of Servant Leadership, which
is the core of our leadership philosophy
here at Zingerman’s. (We learned it from
Robert Greenleaf ’s excellent book, Servant
Leadership.) Here’s the deal: the service that
the staff gives to customers is never going to
be better than the service that we, as leaders,
provide to the staff. The tone comes from the
top; although exceptional service providers
may occasionally crop up on their own, they’ll
always be the exception. The rest is up to us.
IF YOU WANT GREAT
PERFORMANCE FROM
YOUR STAFF, YOU HAVE
TO GIVE THEM CLEAR
EXPECTATIONS AND
TRAINING TOOLS
To run a great organization, it’s very clear that
we need to be clear about what we’re asking
from the folks who work for us. And then we
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need to effectively teach them how to meet
our expectations. competitors can’t quite muster up the energy
to make it happen.
The validity of this natural law was confirmed
in Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman’s
book, First, Break All the Rules, in which
the Gallup Organization surveyed a million
workers and 80,000 managers to determine
which factors were most important for
keeping the best workers in their jobs for the
longest period of time. Their single most
important element? Clear expectations.
Second most critical? The tools to do their
work, among which effective training figures
at the top of the list. TO GET TO GREATNESS,
YOU’VE GOT TO KEEP
GETTING BETTER, ALL
THE TIME!
The most successful
organizations and individuals understand this.
From medicine to the arts, from nonprofits
to pro sports—the best in any field are all
going after improvement all the time. You can
call it continuous improvement, kaizen, or
whatever you like. The reality is that if we’re
not learning, growing, and improving, then
the marketplace is going to pass us by.
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“The service that
the staff gives
to customers is
never going to
be better than
the service that
we as leaders
provide to the
staff.”
SUCCESSFUL
BUSINESSES DO THE
THINGS THAT OTHERS
KNOW THEY SHOULD
DO . . . BUT GENERALLY

DON’T
While business books often focus on some
stroke of Steven Jobs – like genius, I think
that more often than not, the real genius is
mostly in doing the sort of drudgerous stuff
that anyone who really thinks about it could
do, but doesn’t. Most people don’t do this
type of work because it seems too hard, too
boring, too unrewarding . . . too something.
For whatever reason, the best businesses
do it anyway, while their (oft-complaining)
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Early on in my leadership life, I used to think
we’d get to some point where success would
allow us to coast. Man, was I ever wrong on
that one. Fortunately I realized the error of
my ways in time. In truth, I think running the
business well actually gets harder, not easier,
the longer you go on. But once I made peace
with that reality, then living this rule was
infinitely less stressful for me.
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SUCCESS MEANS YOU
GET BETTER PROBLEMS
Although most of us are raised
with the belief that effective
work eliminates problems,
the reality is quite different. We’re always
going to have problems. The key is to pick
the problems you want and then appreciate
the chance to work on them, all the while
working to get better problems still.
Don’t believe me? OK, would you rather have
too few customers and struggle to make your
payroll, or have sales so strong that you have
to struggle to keep up? Obviously, I like seeing
sales levels right “on plan” best of all, but the
reality is that generally, I’d rather have sales be
too high than too low. Similarly, I’d far prefer
the problem of having too many good people
in the organization and not quite enough
opportunity for them all in the moment than
to have too few good people.
WHATEVER YOUR
STRENGTHS ARE, THEY
WILL LIKELY LEAD
STRAIGHT INTO YOUR
WEAKNESSES
I used to think there was this big conflict at
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