In it for the long run

Q. How did Zingerman’s Deli get started?

A. We knew from the beginning that we only wanted one deli, Zingerman’s Deli, not a chain or a franchise; we really like unique things. We wanted to have really great food and service, but in a very accessible setting and a great place where people work and feel very bonded into the community. We fought through all of the initial dissonance: the neighborhood was considered a bad neighborhood, there wasn’t any parking, a lot of delis had failed in Ann Arbor and people thought we would never make it, it was difficult to find, etc. By the mid ‘80s, everybody thought we were brilliant and it was a great idea. By the early ‘90s, in hindsight, with the perspective of making it much farther into the future, I would say that we were at a point of organizational mid-life, in that we had achieved that original vision, and expanded twice on the original building. But we weren’t rich, [or] retiring.

Q. What did you do to overcome a less than ideal location in a not-so-safe area with little parking?

A. I think in most industries, if you have a really amazing product and great service, people will find you. In fact, there’s some advantage to being harder to find if you have something that’s truly exceptional, because people take a lot of internal pride in being able to track down something that everybody else hasn’t found.

Q. What is a 10 or 15 year vision, like the Zingerman’s 2020 Vision, and how important is it for retailers?

A. I wrote a lot about visioning in “Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading, Part 1: A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Building a Great Business.” It’s the core of what we do here. It’s a process of writing out in pretty detailed copy what your desired future is. Our vision for 2020 is about six or seven pages long.

I think it’s essential, because if you don’t really know where you want to go, the odds of getting where you want to go are fairly small. It’s about starting with your preferred future in mind, as opposed to what most of the world does, which is that we react to problems and opportunities as they present themselves.

This is more about regardless of what’s going on at the moment, getting clear what you want to do and how you want to live and what your view of success is, because there’s no standard one.

[No one] else can decide how much you want to work or how big you want to be or how much money you want to make or what you want your employees to feel like or how the community relates to you; those are all personal things.

Q. How do you define your business as a brand?

A. We actually have a written look and feel and a description of our look and feel. It has about eight or nine [key] points. Whatever marketing materials, ads, catalogs, brochures, websites [we have] and each of us as individuals needs to be congruent with that feel. When we do that well, we present a consistent creative and innovative, but still consistent, face to the world.

Q. What do you look for when you’re hiring new employees?

A. In general, the key things are shared values. They need to fit the look and feel of the business: engaging, personal (we like people with personality), have independent thinking skills, care about collaborative activities with their colleagues, and who are committed to participating and helping to run the organization.

Q. How do you keep employees motivated?

A. I think that you can’t really motivate anybody, what you can do is create a setting in which they’re self-motivated. I have an essay that’s called the 12 Natural Laws of Business, and I believe that if an organization lives in harmony with those natural laws, that people’s motivation levels will be high because you’re creating a sustainable, organically sound setting that really brings out the best in each of us.

Q. What have you done to keep business going since the ‘80s?

A. I think that when you live with those natural laws of business, you’ll generally do pretty well. Diversity is a more sustainable model. We have a very diverse organization, both with the people that are in it and types of businesses that we’re in and the sizes and everything. Living those natural laws and having a fairly diverse ecosystem makes it easier to survive difficult times like that.

[In] nature, monoculture can produce very high yields in the short term, but it’s also much more vulnerable to any singular disaster that can completely destroy the whole thing. When the economy goes in the tank, it’s very hard to survive when you don’t have engaged staff and people don’t buy into what you’re doing [and] you have a monolithic product line.

I’m a big believer in [the open-book finance model or system] regardless, but in difficult economic times it’s so much easier to get through it and get to the other side when everybody in the team knows what’s going on.

When we were having difficult months, at least everybody knows it and everybody is working together collaboratively to try to make it better as opposed to what happens most places, where they kind of know it’s bad, but they don’t really know it’s bad.

At least this way people have an opportunity to take the action steps early so that you can avoid most of the problems.

For more info about Ari, his books and the community of businesses, visit www.ZingTrain.com and www.Zingermans.com.

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