Risk & Business Magazine Sterling Insurance Fall 2017 | Page 30

BELIEFS IN BUSINESS
The Power Of Beliefs
In Business
ARI WEINZWEIG, ZINGERMAN’S COMMUNITY OF BUSINESSES
F
or as much as I’ve studied,
taught, and written about
both business and self-
management over the years, up
until recently, I’d hardly paid
a coffee cup’s worth of attention to the
ways in which beliefs were impacting
my world. In the course of Parts 1, 2,
and 3 of the books that make up the
Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading
series, I’ve covered mission, vision,
values, culture, Servant Leadership,
self-management, and a whole lot more.
And yet it’s only in the last few years that
beliefs are finally getting their just due.
Although beliefs can shift in a split
second, more often than not they change
slowly. Some small thing happens,
usually unexpected, that makes us
take pause and wonder. We listen to a
different perspective, see something
surprising, read an insightful book,
hear a new song, or meet a particularly
interesting person. Any or all of these
occurrences can present us with beliefs
that are not aligned with our own.
Seemingly small shifts in beliefs can
develop over time into deep roots,
from which enormous benefits—or
if your beliefs pull you in a negative
direction, potentially big problems—
may eventually grow. One day, whether
we fully realize it or not, our belief has
changed. In some cases, this new belief
could be the complete opposite of what
we’d once thought to be truth.
Today, many of my beliefs about
business, leadership, and life couldn’t
be further from what they once were. If
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they hadn’t changed, Zingerman’s would
surely never have happened. Even if my
partner Paul Saginaw and I had opened
the deli in 1982 (in a 1,300-square-foot
space with just two employees on our
payroll), we wouldn’t have transformed
it into the thriving, engaging, imperfect,
and interesting community of ten
businesses (all here in the Ann Arbor
area), with over 700 staffers and
$60,000,000 in sales that it has become
thirty-five years later. My life—both
personally and organizationally—is
about 1,800 times more rewarding and
in alignment than it ever would have
been had I held tightly to my original
beliefs.
Beliefs may be the biggest single force
at work in our organizational lives.
Economics, education, environment,
and employee engagement are all
important, but beneath the surface,
most of what is in play are the beliefs of
the various folks whose views are being
bandied about. While everyone has some
beliefs that he or she is conscious of—
politics, religion, sports, and popular
social issues seem to provoke speedy
expressions of support or scorn—we
actually have far, far more beliefs at play
in our lives than that. The difficulty
is that those beliefs are frequently
framed as facts, certitudes, thoughts,
theories, norms, shoulds, and should
nots. Most of us fail to recognize them
for the beliefs they are. They’re down
there in the dirt, below the surface,
sitting solidly in our subconscious
minds. Many are so far below our levels
of consciousness that we never even
realize we have them. Whether we know
it or not, though, our beliefs are almost
always calling the shots. As William
James wrote, “Belief creates the actual
fact.”
After living most of my life with beliefs
that I barely even realized I had, the
last few years of studying this subject
have been life- and business-altering
for me. In the past, while I paid a lot of
attention to actions, arguments, and
analysis, I gave little or no thought to
beliefs. That too has changed nearly
180 degrees. I work hard almost every
day to be in touch with my own beliefs.
I’ve also become far more sensitive to
others’ beliefs. I now watch the way that
beliefs are being reflected—for better
or worse—in relationships, projects,
problems, profits, and, perhaps most
importantly, the growth and success
of the people who are part of our
organization.
While specific beliefs may come and go
(the world, it turns out, isn’t flat), the
role of beliefs has surely been in place
for all of human history. Belief has
always been at the core of organized
religion, to take one powerful example.
Psychologists have been studying this
subject in depth for decades. But in my
experience, beliefs are rarely discussed
in the context of business, a place
where logic and reason and strategy
are generally said—or I could say
“believed”—to dominate the dialogue.
I suppose this isn’t surprising. Most of