One of the founding partners of Zingerman’s Community Businesses and the author of a number of articles and books on food and businesses, Ari Weinzweig commented on what it takes to lead an organization. An excerpt from the podcast is below. However, I encourage you to skip the blog post and review the entire transcription.
Related Podcast and Transcription: The Aroma of a Good Vision – Ari Weinzweig
Ari Weinzweig: Something that I realized as I was working on all this is that we really, I think, are creating a new way to work, or a new approach to work. Wendell Berry, who, I think is probably in his late seventies in Kentucky, is a fabulous writer about traditional American life and rural life, and very reflective and interesting. He wrote a piece about the difference between good work and bad work.
Good work really is about vocation, and about passion, and feeling good about what you do. I believe that that’s what we do. I believe when you live the natural laws of business; that’s what you create. Bad work is what most of the world knows, which is where you don’t really like what you do, but you tolerate it in order to make a living.
Not that that’s evil, but life is short, and it’s a whole lot of hours spent doing something you don’t really want to do. I believe that creating a new way to work is about creating a relationship to work that’s really positive, where people can be at work and enjoy themselves.
Feel nurtured, supported, and learn things that are of value in their life, and that they can move back and forth between what they do at home and what they do at work in a really relatively seamless way.
That is very different from the old model, which is exhausting and where people are burning out and not enjoying themselves, and that work is this onerous burden that you tolerate getting through to retirement or to the weekend. I don’t mean people shouldn’t take time off for retire, but I mean, it’s just creating a setting in which people are excited and enthusiastic about their work. We’re working with people; we’ve got 18?year?old bussers and, whatever. People who…it’s not like they’re coming here for a career, necessarily, but they can find a positive setting in which they feel honored and respected, in which they contribute positively to the organization. It’s a pretty cool thing.
Related Podcast and Transcription: The Aroma of a Good Vision – Ari Weinzweig
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