Latest / Legacy Living with Dr. Gloria Burgess / Ari Weinzweig - Change Maker| Episode #502

Transcript

Ari Weinzweig - Change Maker| Episode #502 · Legacy Living with Dr. Gloria Burgess

0:21
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to today's show, Legacy Living, Make Your
0:27
Speaker 1: Life Count. I'm your host, Doctor Gloria Gloria Burgess, international
0:34
Speaker 1: leadership expert and trusted advisor. Welcome to Legacy Living, Make
0:42
Speaker 1: Your Life Count. I'm so delighted that you joined me today.
0:48
Speaker 1: I have a very special guest on our show. His
0:52
Speaker 1: name is Ari wein Spike.
0:55
Speaker 2: Now.
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Speaker 1: Just a few years ago, Ari was named one of
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Speaker 1: the world's ten top CEOs by inc. Magazine. Ari is
1:05
Speaker 1: the CEO and co founding partner of Zingerman's Community of Businesses. Now,
1:11
Speaker 1: that's a mouthful. This community of businesses includes Zingerman's Delicatessen, Bakehouse, Creamery, catering,
1:21
Speaker 1: mail order, zing Train, the Coffee Company, Roadhouse, Coffee Manufactory,
1:29
Speaker 1: events at Corman Farms, Miss Kim, and Zingerman's Food Tours. Wow,
1:38
Speaker 1: that is quite a community. Zingerman's is located in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
1:44
Speaker 1: And you know, those of you who are regular listeners
1:47
Speaker 1: to this show, I'm just gonna say, go blue, that's.
1:51
Speaker 2: One of my hometowns. Now.
1:53
Speaker 1: Ari was recognized as one of the Who's Who of
1:56
Speaker 1: food and beverage in America by the two thousand and
1:59
Speaker 1: Mester James Beard Foundation. He was also awarded a Bonappetite
2:05
Speaker 1: Lifetime Achievement Award among his many recognitions. Ari is also
2:11
Speaker 1: a prolific author. He has written a number of articles
2:15
Speaker 1: and books, including Zigerman's Guide to Good Eating, Zingerman's Guide
2:20
Speaker 1: to Giving Great Service, Zingerman's Guide to Better Bacon, and
2:26
Speaker 1: Zingerman's Guide to Good Leading Part one, Part two, Part three,
2:31
Speaker 1: and Part four. And each of these books have a
2:36
Speaker 1: unique focus. In this four part series, there's building a
2:40
Speaker 1: great business, being a better leader, managing ourselves, and the
2:46
Speaker 1: power of beliefs in business. And all of Ari's books
2:52
Speaker 1: take the perspective of what he calls a lapsed anarchist.
2:58
Speaker 1: A lapsed anarchist. That's right.
3:00
Speaker 2: Now you will hear.
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Speaker 1: More about what that means during our conversation today. Today's
3:06
Speaker 1: topic is humility and leadership, a topic that is near
3:10
Speaker 1: and dear to my heart, and I can't think of
3:14
Speaker 1: a better person, a better leader, a better human being
3:17
Speaker 1: to address this topic than Ari.
3:21
Speaker 2: Now.
3:21
Speaker 1: I met Ari in person just recently when I was
3:25
Speaker 1: in ann Arbor attending to family matters, but we actually
3:30
Speaker 1: met virtually before that through my sister Vera, who connected
3:35
Speaker 1: the two of us via email. Now, when I met
3:39
Speaker 1: Ari through his amazing newsletters and very attentive emails, and
3:44
Speaker 1: then when we finally had an opportunity to meet face
3:47
Speaker 1: to face right outside of his Zingerman's Roadhouse restaurant, I
3:51
Speaker 1: heard him speak so so passionately about his business and
3:56
Speaker 1: his team, and he was just on fire about it.
4:00
Speaker 1: So I can't wait to host this incredible, humble human being,
4:06
Speaker 1: my friend and colleague Ari. Now, before I bring Arian,
4:12
Speaker 1: I want to take just a minute, just a moment,
4:15
Speaker 1: to connect the dots between today's topic on humility and
4:18
Speaker 1: leadership and legacy living. Now, there are many many ways
4:24
Speaker 1: that humility and leadership connect to legacy living, which you
4:28
Speaker 1: will hear more about later, But for now, let me
4:32
Speaker 1: say that legacy living is a way of being and
4:35
Speaker 1: a way of living and moving through the world so
4:38
Speaker 1: that we make the conscious choice to be the difference
4:42
Speaker 1: we want to see in the world. We make the
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Speaker 1: conscious choice now, right here, right now, not in some
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Speaker 1: distant future. We make that conscious choice day in and
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Speaker 1: day out, three sixty five twenty four seven. Now, more
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Speaker 1: about that a little bit later, Let me introduce you
5:03
Speaker 1: to my friend and colleague, Ari find Spike.
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Speaker 3: Welcome to my podcast. Ari, thank you so much for
5:12
Speaker 3: joining us today. I just want to make sure that
5:15
Speaker 3: the listeners get a chance to hear your voice before
5:17
Speaker 3: I start launching into questions.
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Speaker 4: Well, I'm honored to be here with you, Gloria, Thank
5:22
Speaker 4: you for having me on.
5:23
Speaker 5: Thank you so Ari.
5:26
Speaker 3: We are talking about humility today, and I would love
5:30
Speaker 3: for you to just tell us a little bit about
5:32
Speaker 3: how you think about humility, what it means to you,
5:36
Speaker 3: and how you have come to this place around humility.
5:40
Speaker 6: Okay, well that was I think that was.
5:42
Speaker 4: I'm going to be humble and say that was probably
5:43
Speaker 4: more questions than I can remember, but I'm going to
5:47
Speaker 4: try to start with the last one and then work
5:49
Speaker 4: my way back to the earlier ones. So you guide
5:52
Speaker 4: me if I get.
5:53
Speaker 6: Off the rails.
5:54
Speaker 4: But sow how I got started on this.
5:57
Speaker 6: I mean, clearly, I know the word.
6:02
Speaker 4: I've read a lot of books in my life and
6:04
Speaker 4: written a fair few, and humility is not a new
6:08
Speaker 4: human concept. But the way I really started to pay
6:11
Speaker 4: attention to it was four years ago. This coming spring,
6:16
Speaker 4: I got asked to speak at a little symposium on
6:19
Speaker 4: campus at University of Michigan that was about humility, and
6:22
Speaker 4: my initial reaction when the kind woman reached out to
6:26
Speaker 4: me to speak, and I speak pretty regularly as to you,
6:29
Speaker 4: But my reaction was, I really don't know anything about humility.
6:35
Speaker 4: I mean, I clearly, like I said, no, what the
6:37
Speaker 4: word is, but I've never spoken on it. I've never
6:41
Speaker 4: written about it. We teach a lot of classes internally,
6:45
Speaker 4: we teach a whole we have a whole training program
6:47
Speaker 4: called zinc Train, and we have I don't know twelve
6:49
Speaker 4: at the time, twelve two day seminars.
6:51
Speaker 6: None of it even deals with humility.
6:54
Speaker 4: And I'm like, I'd love to help you, but I
6:57
Speaker 4: don't really know anything about it. But my challenge was
6:59
Speaker 4: that the woman who had asked me used to work
7:02
Speaker 4: for us, and she's awesomely wonderful, kind hearted, generous human being.
7:07
Speaker 4: And her husband still works for us, and he is
7:09
Speaker 4: an equally kind and generous human being. And I just
7:11
Speaker 4: didn't have the heart to say no, so I said yes.
7:15
Speaker 4: And then I figured, Okay, I got five months or
7:17
Speaker 4: four months whatever it was, to figure out what I'm
7:19
Speaker 4: going to say. And so that's really what got me
7:21
Speaker 4: to start to study it, and like pretty much anything,
7:25
Speaker 4: and I given the diversity of your studies, which is
7:29
Speaker 4: wonderful and inspiring. I'm sure I'm going to guess you've
7:33
Speaker 4: had similar experience. But almost anything I believe that one
7:36
Speaker 4: starts to really pay attention to it becomes very interesting.
7:40
Speaker 6: So whether you know, I've read a book on.
7:42
Speaker 4: The history of trains, which is completely not within my
7:45
Speaker 4: normal area of interest, but once one starts to study it,
7:48
Speaker 4: it becomes very interesting. And so that's what happened with Humility,
7:52
Speaker 4: and so I gave the talk. But then, of course
7:55
Speaker 4: I kept going and I started to study it more,
7:58
Speaker 4: and I started to realize how more and more how
8:01
Speaker 4: important it was to healthy leadership, to healthy organizations, to
8:05
Speaker 4: really to a healthy life. And then I started to look,
8:08
Speaker 4: and we'll get into it, but to the implications, both
8:11
Speaker 4: positive and then unfortunately negative, of what it can do
8:14
Speaker 4: to our communities and our societies when it's lacking.
8:18
Speaker 6: So that's really how I got going. So I'm going
8:20
Speaker 6: to pause there and let you.
8:21
Speaker 4: Ask another question so we can hear your wonderful voice too.
8:25
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's great, Thank you, Thank you so much.
8:27
Speaker 3: Ari. So you basically followed an invitation from a speaking
8:31
Speaker 3: opportunity at Michigan and followed that trail, and you became
8:35
Speaker 3: more and more interested, and you have actually written on
8:39
Speaker 3: this topic. You published a slew of books and many, many,
8:43
Speaker 3: many pamphlets, and you have a pamphlet on humility.
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Speaker 6: Right, Can you tell us a.
8:48
Speaker 5: Little bit about that?
8:50
Speaker 6: I can.
8:50
Speaker 4: It came out last fall. This is the culminator. Well,
8:54
Speaker 4: actually I'm still learning, but at the time it was
8:56
Speaker 4: the culmination of the work that I had done that
8:59
Speaker 4: started with that invitation to speak. It's called humility, a
9:03
Speaker 4: humble anarchistic inquiry. We can talk about anarchism later if
9:07
Speaker 4: you want. This turns out to be I mean, it's
9:09
Speaker 4: something I've been studying for a long time and working
9:11
Speaker 4: hard on its application to progressive business and to sustainable life.
9:17
Speaker 4: I guess was a way to say it, but this
9:20
Speaker 4: is really just a summation of my learnings and how,
9:24
Speaker 4: like I said, how I came to get focused on it,
9:26
Speaker 4: and then what it really means. How I realized in
9:30
Speaker 4: hindsight why Jamie Vanderbrook had asked me to speak, which
9:33
Speaker 4: is that although I had been completely unconscious about it,
9:36
Speaker 4: we were actually doing it in a healthy way within
9:39
Speaker 4: the organization. And I started to understand how we had
9:43
Speaker 4: woven humility into so much of our existing training, we
9:46
Speaker 4: just didn't call out the word. And then also I
9:50
Speaker 4: started to realize how important it was for leadership skills
9:54
Speaker 4: and really an important piece of the hiring and training
9:58
Speaker 4: and job expectations. And then lastly I ended up with
10:02
Speaker 4: some different perspectives on what humility is and how to
10:06
Speaker 4: frame it in a meaningful way.
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Speaker 3: All right, Well, so you think about humility at the
10:14
Speaker 3: intersection of leadership, at the intersection of organizational effectiveness ecosystems.
10:20
Speaker 3: But I don't want to get ahead of you, so
10:22
Speaker 3: I want to just let our listeners know we're going
10:24
Speaker 3: to go there and talk about those different aspects of
10:28
Speaker 3: humility from your perspective. ARI, but for right now, can
10:32
Speaker 3: you just give like one or two examples of people that.
10:35
Speaker 5: You would consider to be humble leaders in your own life?
10:41
Speaker 4: Well, well, one of the interesting things so Patrick Lincioni
10:47
Speaker 4: whose works I know you know, has a book out
10:51
Speaker 4: called The Ultimate Team Player, and he distills his research
10:56
Speaker 4: down to three characteristics that one ought to look for
11:01
Speaker 4: to find the ideal team player.
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Speaker 6: Humble, hungry, i.
11:05
Speaker 4: Either pursuit of mastery or greatness, and what he calls smart,
11:09
Speaker 4: which doesn't mean intelligence but more emotional intelligence or the
11:14
Speaker 4: ability to work collaboratively with others, etc. And when I
11:18
Speaker 4: read those, I realized that actually those three characteristics were
11:22
Speaker 4: essentially true of everyone I had really enjoyed working with
11:26
Speaker 4: over the years. And so some of those include partners
11:31
Speaker 4: of mine. So Paul Saganaw who I started Zingerman's with
11:35
Speaker 4: back March fifteenth, nineteen eighty two. We're going to have
11:38
Speaker 4: our thirty ninth anniversary next roum.
11:40
Speaker 5: Congratulations.
11:41
Speaker 3: Yeah.
11:42
Speaker 4: And a crazy Maggie Bayliss, who's the person with whom
11:46
Speaker 4: we started zinc Train.
11:47
Speaker 6: She fits that.
11:48
Speaker 4: Bill Frank Corollo, who I had worked with as a
11:53
Speaker 4: when I was a dishwasher in restaurants and he was
11:55
Speaker 4: a line cook and started the bake house with us,
11:58
Speaker 4: all the way on through to really most of the
12:00
Speaker 4: people I could think of that we work with as
12:02
Speaker 4: leaders in our organization.
12:04
Speaker 6: There's so many.
12:04
Speaker 4: And then also people who've inspired me through philosophical learnings
12:10
Speaker 4: and teachings around the world, many of whom That's how
12:12
Speaker 4: I connected with you is because we share.
12:14
Speaker 6: A lot of those. So people like Peter Black, you know,
12:18
Speaker 6: Maya Angelou.
12:19
Speaker 4: I just was quoting Tony Morrison and for the News,
12:22
Speaker 4: I'm working on today.
12:23
Speaker 6: I mean, all of these people.
12:25
Speaker 4: I got Bell Hook's book on Love at the top
12:27
Speaker 4: of my stack. I mean, they're all people who are
12:30
Speaker 4: coming in their own imperfect ways, like all of us,
12:33
Speaker 4: from places of humility. And so I think, really, who's
12:38
Speaker 4: not humble? And I don't say this to place blame,
12:41
Speaker 4: but I mean it's the people who act full of themselves.
12:44
Speaker 4: And I have come to believe mostly that comes out
12:47
Speaker 4: of their own internal insecurities and anxieties.
12:50
Speaker 6: Which we all have. Just that's how they deal with it.
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Speaker 4: And in my experience, it's not the most wonderful to
12:58
Speaker 4: manifest it in the world, but I do I believe
13:02
Speaker 4: most of us have the same anxieties. It's really in
13:05
Speaker 4: the same self doubts. And I was just, I'm trying
13:10
Speaker 4: to remember her name. I was just listening to a
13:11
Speaker 4: wonderful scholar. GET did an interview with Brene Brown, and
13:16
Speaker 4: she was sharing her own anxiety as a black woman
13:20
Speaker 4: who had achieved She's written a wonderful book and great achievement,
13:25
Speaker 4: and she was talking about her self doubt and I'm thinking,
13:28
Speaker 4: I have the same self doubt and thirty nine years
13:32
Speaker 4: in business in a world renowned business with whatever. We
13:35
Speaker 4: have five hundred and fifty employees, you know, and I
13:38
Speaker 4: still feel that doubt every day. I feel like I
13:41
Speaker 4: feel like I'm falling short, and I don't know if
13:44
Speaker 4: it's legit. So I really believe it's a universal truth,
13:48
Speaker 4: and then what we can learn to do is to
13:50
Speaker 4: manage that anxiety in a healthy way.
13:53
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, thank you, thank you.
13:55
Speaker 6: Ari.
13:56
Speaker 5: So I am wondering if you can paint a picture
14:00
Speaker 5: for our listeners.
14:01
Speaker 3: I read a quote and I don't know if this
14:03
Speaker 3: is your quote or somebody else writing about your work, Ari,
14:07
Speaker 3: but it talks about Mozart and music, and Mozart once
14:11
Speaker 3: said that music is not in the notes, but in
14:13
Speaker 3: the silence in between, and that humility is analogous to
14:18
Speaker 3: that in that humility is the space between the sounds.
14:23
Speaker 3: And I love that image, and so I'm wondering if
14:26
Speaker 3: you might talk about either yourself or one of your
14:29
Speaker 3: colleagues or somebody else that you mentioned, and how they
14:33
Speaker 3: manifest that space between the sounds. I mean, it sounds
14:36
Speaker 3: poetic and lyrical and lovely, but what does that really
14:39
Speaker 3: look like on the ground.
14:41
Speaker 4: Well, I think in a way it's a funny thing,
14:44
Speaker 4: but it actually doesn't look like anything. That's why it's
14:47
Speaker 4: the space between the sounds. It's part of what has
14:53
Speaker 4: happened in the world. And I don't know that it's
14:56
Speaker 4: really new, but I guess it's probably been exaggerating and
15:00
Speaker 4: exasperated in recent years. It is those who make the
15:05
Speaker 4: loudest noise get the most attention. And I think humility
15:11
Speaker 4: by definition means that, of course, there's times for us
15:15
Speaker 4: to speak, and of course there's times for us to
15:17
Speaker 4: quotes make noise through our actions, but sometimes, many times,
15:22
Speaker 4: oftentimes it's really through our silence and our ability to
15:27
Speaker 4: keep our mouths quiet and to let others step forward
15:30
Speaker 4: and lead, to ask better questions, and to watch as
15:37
Speaker 4: others develop and grow and learn to struggle and collaborate
15:41
Speaker 4: as we are, because we're all struggling. But I mean,
15:45
Speaker 4: I grew up in a loving family where they showed
15:48
Speaker 4: love and affection by cutting you off and telling you
15:50
Speaker 4: were wrong.
15:51
Speaker 6: And it wasn't no intended, it was not a wasn't
15:55
Speaker 6: ill will, It was just.
15:57
Speaker 4: Habit, routine way every life. And so that's how I
16:01
Speaker 4: grew up. So I'm, with all due respect to my family,
16:04
Speaker 4: I'm kind of in recovery. From that, because I can
16:07
Speaker 4: get triggered with the best of them and learn and
16:10
Speaker 4: start to just react and talk louder and faster, and
16:14
Speaker 4: it's not the end of the world, but it's not great.
16:17
Speaker 4: And so just learning to slow myself down and back up.
16:21
Speaker 4: And then as you described it as is in a pamphlet,
16:24
Speaker 4: to live in the silence between the notes and just
16:27
Speaker 4: let things unfold. Not to be absent or to abdicate
16:32
Speaker 4: our responsibility, because as leaders are, the responsibility is the
16:36
Speaker 4: same whether we're listening or we're talking, but to really
16:39
Speaker 4: allow others to come forward and shine. And I was
16:42
Speaker 4: actually just while I was out running today listening to
16:45
Speaker 4: a podcast with Krista Tippett and a gentleman who I
16:47
Speaker 4: had not heard of named Gordon Hempton h gmpt O
16:50
Speaker 4: N who's it's about silence and he studies silence out
16:56
Speaker 4: in the world and goes out and listens to nature,
16:58
Speaker 4: and it just I was thinking about I was going
17:01
Speaker 4: to getting ready to speak to you, and so I
17:03
Speaker 4: was thinking, this is a perfect segue for it. And
17:07
Speaker 4: with your musical background, of course, I'm honored that it
17:12
Speaker 4: resonated for you, because anybody who does what you do
17:15
Speaker 4: in the musical world as well as you do. And
17:18
Speaker 4: your husband does understand this really even better than I do.
17:23
Speaker 5: Well, thank you.
17:24
Speaker 3: As you were talking, I was actually thinking about music
17:27
Speaker 3: and conducting, which is one of the things that my
17:29
Speaker 3: husband does. So thank you for that. And I will
17:33
Speaker 3: look up that podcast. Sounds wonderful, sounds very interesting. So Ari,
17:38
Speaker 3: what have you learned since writing the pamphlet? I mean
17:40
Speaker 3: you kind of started out wondering about it, and as
17:43
Speaker 3: a learner, what have you now pulled in as a
17:47
Speaker 3: result of finishing that.
17:49
Speaker 4: Well, quite a few things, really, I'll start with a
17:52
Speaker 4: couple and we'll see where we go with that. But
17:55
Speaker 4: so one big one was I before I had started
17:58
Speaker 4: this work, I think it was clear to me, of course,
18:02
Speaker 4: that people who were very full of themselves and who
18:06
Speaker 4: were not able to ever sit in the silence, but
18:09
Speaker 4: needed to be the noise in the notes, not the
18:12
Speaker 4: silence between the notes. That clearly people when and we
18:16
Speaker 4: all have ego, when we get caught up in that
18:18
Speaker 4: ego and we take it to an exaggerated state to
18:22
Speaker 4: dominate others, either emotionally or in some cases physically, or politically,
18:28
Speaker 4: or spiritually, and in very bad cases, in an abusive way.
18:34
Speaker 6: Clearly that's not humility.
18:36
Speaker 4: I would not have said, though, that people with very
18:39
Speaker 4: low self esteem are unhumble, because I would have thought, well,
18:43
Speaker 4: clearly they're not egotistical, so they must be humble. But
18:47
Speaker 4: I came through my own readings to change that belief
18:50
Speaker 4: and to really understand that humility is about neither being.
18:54
Speaker 6: High nor low.
18:57
Speaker 4: And from that, a second learning that came to me
19:00
Speaker 4: was really starting to believe that humility is when we're
19:04
Speaker 4: at our most human, is when we're in a state
19:08
Speaker 4: of hum what I came to call humbleness. And I
19:12
Speaker 4: can talk about that too.
19:14
Speaker 5: Yeah, I would love to have you say more about that,
19:17
Speaker 5: at our most human.
19:19
Speaker 4: Yeah, So there's a number of pieces of that. So
19:22
Speaker 4: when we're neither overly full of ourselves nor stuck in
19:27
Speaker 4: the state of self duprecation, and certainly I can run
19:30
Speaker 4: my cycles on both ends.
19:32
Speaker 6: Of those extremes.
19:34
Speaker 4: I think we all do that when we can stay centered,
19:37
Speaker 4: and it's not that easy.
19:39
Speaker 6: When we can stay.
19:40
Speaker 4: Centered, that that's when we're true to ourselves, and that
19:44
Speaker 4: is when we're at our most human, imperfect, open to learning,
19:49
Speaker 4: rail and fragile, yet resilient, and.
19:54
Speaker 6: So a lot of it comes out of that. And
19:57
Speaker 6: and then I.
19:59
Speaker 4: Started to so look at the root of the word,
20:03
Speaker 4: which I do often. I'm sure you do you also,
20:05
Speaker 4: because it's always interesting. And and then you mentioned ecosystems,
20:11
Speaker 4: and this connected with work I've been doing, and in
20:14
Speaker 4: a way a different subject. But of course everything in
20:16
Speaker 4: the ecosystem is related one way or the other, and
20:19
Speaker 4: this turned out to be two. But so humility comes
20:23
Speaker 4: from from humans.
20:26
Speaker 6: From the earth.
20:27
Speaker 4: And of course in the Bible, Adam the first man,
20:32
Speaker 4: that his name in Hebrew Adamah means earth. So and
20:37
Speaker 4: of course the story in the Bible is that he
20:39
Speaker 4: was created by God from the earth. So regardless of
20:44
Speaker 4: one's religious beliefs, is not the point. But it's just
20:46
Speaker 4: that it comes from that same place of groundedness and
20:51
Speaker 4: connection to nature and connection to the earth. So it
20:54
Speaker 4: really came out of that, and that the humans the
20:58
Speaker 4: top soil. The most important and piece of what plants
21:02
Speaker 4: grow in is the humans. And in the same way,
21:05
Speaker 4: the most important thing, or one of the most important
21:08
Speaker 4: things for growing healthy people in organizations is also humility,
21:13
Speaker 4: because without the top soil, plants don't grow well.
21:16
Speaker 6: Without the humility, people don't grow well.
21:20
Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you. You must have been reading my mind
21:22
Speaker 5: because I went to that word too, So that's great.
21:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I love that. So Ari, can you talk
21:30
Speaker 3: a little bit about what humility has helped you.
21:34
Speaker 5: Understand about the state of our country right now?
21:39
Speaker 6: Yeah. When I started this study, I didn't really.
21:45
Speaker 4: Realize at all how important it was going to be
21:49
Speaker 4: in the context of what you just said of understanding
21:52
Speaker 4: the state of society. Not like the society, and I'm
21:55
Speaker 4: a part of it, so I'm not looking at it
21:57
Speaker 4: as an outside critic. We're all part of the problem,
22:00
Speaker 4: all potentially part of the solution.
22:02
Speaker 6: But I didn't know when the pamphlet was going to
22:06
Speaker 6: come out.
22:06
Speaker 4: It was not planned as some sort of massive social
22:11
Speaker 4: statement and commentary. It was just work I had been
22:14
Speaker 4: doing for a long time. But a couple very current
22:17
Speaker 4: event related subjects that are at hand. So one is
22:22
Speaker 4: if we're in a state of what I now would
22:24
Speaker 4: refer to as humbleness, and we can come back to
22:26
Speaker 4: that in a bit, but if we're in a state
22:28
Speaker 4: of humbleness, we're not better than anybody, and we're not
22:32
Speaker 4: worse than anybody. And this is going back to the
22:35
Speaker 4: ecosystem in nature, there's really no hierarchy. Everyone and everything
22:39
Speaker 4: is important. We're all different, we all play an important role.
22:43
Speaker 6: In the moment.
22:44
Speaker 4: One person's role might be different as the conductor of
22:46
Speaker 4: the orchestra. If I'm in the audience and I go
22:50
Speaker 4: to the bathroom, nothing's going to happen if you do
22:54
Speaker 4: where the show's in big trouble. Doesn't make you a
22:56
Speaker 4: better person or me a worse person. It just means
22:58
Speaker 4: in that moment, you have a particular important So this
23:02
Speaker 4: is not to deny that important role that you play,
23:06
Speaker 4: but it just to not tie value as a human
23:09
Speaker 4: being to the role people are playing, or of course
23:12
Speaker 4: to age, gender, race, religion, political beliefs, and to come
23:18
Speaker 4: back to the belief that I have long held, and
23:21
Speaker 4: this goes into the anarchist stuff, that everybody is equitable,
23:25
Speaker 4: everybody is equal, not the same. In fact, no two
23:29
Speaker 4: people are the same, but everybody is equal, and that
23:32
Speaker 4: everybody is an important, creative, intelligent human being. And at
23:35
Speaker 4: my job, and I don't get it right every day.
23:38
Speaker 4: At my job is to treat them with dignity and
23:41
Speaker 4: honor them for who they are. And that's anover ending
23:44
Speaker 4: challenge because I fall short.
23:46
Speaker 6: But that's that work. So if we're all coming at our.
23:50
Speaker 4: Lives treating everyone as an equal, then racism can't exist
23:58
Speaker 4: because racism, antisemitism, the belief women can't be leaders, these
24:02
Speaker 4: things all come from hierarchical thinking, which is so implicit
24:08
Speaker 4: embedded in our culture that all of us me included,
24:11
Speaker 4: grew up with it and we don't even know what's happening.
24:15
Speaker 4: I tell the little anecdote in the book, in the pamphlet,
24:19
Speaker 4: which I didn't make up, out of the two fish
24:21
Speaker 4: swimming along having a conversation, and one fish says, yeah,
24:24
Speaker 4: that guy, he's like a fish out of water, And
24:26
Speaker 4: the other fish goes, what's water? And that's really what
24:31
Speaker 4: I've come to realize. Hierarchical thinking is like, and it's
24:34
Speaker 4: so endemic that people, unwittingly, we just fall into it.
24:40
Speaker 4: So people say, like, what's the most important thing we
24:42
Speaker 4: need to know? What's the key element, what's the biggest
24:45
Speaker 4: mistake you've ever made, what's your biggest success, what's your
24:49
Speaker 4: proudest moment of your life? And I'm thinking, in hindsight,
24:55
Speaker 4: in a natural ecosystem model, why do I have to pick?
25:00
Speaker 6: There's no reason to rank them.
25:02
Speaker 4: The problem is when we're thinking hierarchically, then either I
25:06
Speaker 4: need to be better than you or you're better than me,
25:08
Speaker 4: because we can't really be on par If that makes sense,
25:12
Speaker 4: I mean it doesn't make sense, but that's the way
25:15
Speaker 4: we've been trained to think. And there's a second piece
25:17
Speaker 4: of this too, which I think is antithetical to true humility,
25:22
Speaker 4: and that's that we've we've been trained to hold the
25:25
Speaker 4: belief that we can assign an identity to a group
25:28
Speaker 4: of people.
25:30
Speaker 6: Women do this, you know how men are.
25:35
Speaker 4: And then it degenerates from there into this is how
25:38
Speaker 4: black people are, this is how Jews are, this is
25:40
Speaker 4: how Catholics are.
25:42
Speaker 6: And it's just.
25:44
Speaker 4: Whether it's ill intended or not, it creates what I
25:47
Speaker 4: would suggest as a dehumanization that's antithetical to true humility
25:53
Speaker 4: or humbleness.
25:54
Speaker 6: And so when you combine that kind of group assignment of.
25:57
Speaker 4: Identity with hierarchical thinking, doesn't take you long to arrive
26:01
Speaker 4: at the conclusion that either my group's going to be
26:03
Speaker 4: better than yours or yours is going to be better
26:05
Speaker 4: than mine. In a hierarchically minded world, who wants to
26:08
Speaker 4: be worse? Somebody has to be on the bottom and
26:11
Speaker 4: So this thinking manifests in the US a lot through racism,
26:16
Speaker 4: and manifested in Nazi Germany and much of Europe for
26:20
Speaker 4: centuries in the treatment of Jews. There has to be
26:23
Speaker 4: somebody who's pushed to the bottom, and maybe it was women.
26:26
Speaker 4: It was traditionally women in the household. But the point
26:30
Speaker 4: is just to really come at it alternatively from a
26:33
Speaker 4: place of humility, of humbleness, where we treat everybody with dignity,
26:38
Speaker 4: where we're no better and no worse than anyone else.
26:41
Speaker 5: Yes, thank you, thank you.
26:43
Speaker 3: I often think about birthright dignity, that everyone has that,
26:49
Speaker 3: and you know, if we begin there, then we create
26:53
Speaker 3: a whole different paradigm.
26:54
Speaker 6: Right absolutely, I have come.
26:58
Speaker 4: I wrote a piece about dignity over the summer, and uh,
27:02
Speaker 4: I started to realize that's really one of the key
27:05
Speaker 4: metrics I would suggest of a healthy culture, whether it's
27:08
Speaker 4: at our business or or in society at large. If
27:12
Speaker 4: everyone's treated with dignity, we're still gonna make mistakes.
27:16
Speaker 6: Absolutely.
27:17
Speaker 4: If I forget to call you back, but I treat
27:19
Speaker 4: you with dignity, life's gonna You're you're gonna forgive me,
27:22
Speaker 4: and life's gonna go on. If if I slip, and
27:25
Speaker 4: but it comes from a dignity based relationship.
27:28
Speaker 6: We're gonna be okay.
27:29
Speaker 4: So that that was that's one big piece of current events.
27:32
Speaker 4: And then the other big piece is it's a pandemic
27:37
Speaker 4: mm hmmm, which no one alive has been through.
27:41
Speaker 6: Uh.
27:42
Speaker 4: And so humility would dictate that we would ask for help.
27:48
Speaker 4: Humility would dictate that we acknowledge that we don't really
27:52
Speaker 4: know what to do. Humility dictates that we understand our
27:56
Speaker 4: essential helplessness in the face of it, and then together
28:00
Speaker 4: come up with ways to start to address the issues
28:02
Speaker 4: at hand.
28:05
Speaker 6: But we I don't really se want to get into politics.
28:08
Speaker 4: But if we have leadership that is not humble, then
28:15
Speaker 4: we flail around intellectually and emotionally trying to hide the problem,
28:20
Speaker 4: deny the problem, yell at the people who know more
28:23
Speaker 4: than we do so that we feel better about ourselves,
28:26
Speaker 4: et cetera, et cetera. And none of that goes to
28:30
Speaker 4: finding quicker solutions that are more holistically sound. So I
28:33
Speaker 4: didn't think about either of those per se when I
28:36
Speaker 4: took on the challenge of learning about humility.
28:38
Speaker 6: But as you know, and I.
28:41
Speaker 4: Know, I mean the horrible killings over the course of
28:44
Speaker 4: the spring and summer, which of course are not really new.
28:48
Speaker 6: I mean, as horrible as they are, we.
28:50
Speaker 4: Know it's been going on for centuries, and certainly this
28:54
Speaker 4: is not the first time a leader acted unhumble in.
28:57
Speaker 6: The face of a crisis.
28:58
Speaker 4: But we know that humility and humbleness leans to better outcomes,
29:03
Speaker 4: will help more people.
29:04
Speaker 5: So yeah, thank you, Ari.
29:07
Speaker 3: I want to just pause here just a moment, because
29:13
Speaker 3: you know what you have been addressing are complex. I'm
29:19
Speaker 3: not going to say complicated, but complex. I actually think
29:23
Speaker 3: that there's also simplicity in what you are talking about
29:26
Speaker 3: as well, because I think human beings at our best,
29:30
Speaker 3: we know, you know, we know how to we know
29:34
Speaker 3: how to collaborate, we know how to pull together. Yeah,
29:37
Speaker 3: we know how to be humble. And yet because of whatever, whatever,
29:42
Speaker 3: whatever power systems, hierarchy, whatever is in the air, we
29:47
Speaker 3: tend sometimes.
29:48
Speaker 5: Not to not to go into that place of humility,
29:52
Speaker 5: to deep humility.
29:55
Speaker 3: I just have to tell you, I know you probably
29:58
Speaker 3: would not say this about yourself.
29:59
Speaker 4: Ma.
30:00
Speaker 3: Maybe I'm maybe to become an assumption, but you strike
30:04
Speaker 3: me as a humble leader. And from the moment that
30:10
Speaker 3: I met you over email, and then when we had
30:14
Speaker 3: a COVID conversation, not a conversation about COVID, but you know,
30:18
Speaker 3: outside with social distancing, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm
30:22
Speaker 3: just wondering how you do what you do managing a
30:26
Speaker 3: very sizeable enterprise, a profitable enterprise, sustaining it over four decades.
30:33
Speaker 3: And you talked a little bit about an ecosystem, and
30:36
Speaker 3: I wonder if you can just tell us about that
30:38
Speaker 3: and how it connects to humility for you.
30:41
Speaker 4: Yeah, I well, thank you. I spent a lot of
30:45
Speaker 4: years in therapy to learn to take a compliment, so
30:48
Speaker 4: I'm just going to leave it at that. There's no
30:55
Speaker 4: one thing to answer your question. I mean, really, I
30:58
Speaker 4: guess it's fun. But because we're here in the academic community,
31:04
Speaker 4: I get interview requests from students weekly. I try to
31:09
Speaker 4: actually talk to all of them, although I have come
31:12
Speaker 4: to suggest that they do some reading from what I've
31:15
Speaker 4: written before they interview me, so I don't need to
31:17
Speaker 4: repeat all of the same stuff from scratch. But it's
31:22
Speaker 4: funny because they'll all ask me what's the most important
31:24
Speaker 4: thing right the hierarchical thinking, So the best answer I
31:28
Speaker 4: could give them now is the most important thing or
31:30
Speaker 4: the best advice is to stop looking for the most
31:32
Speaker 4: important thing. There's many reasons why I have arrived at
31:39
Speaker 4: this ecosystem model, and I'm still evolving. I started thinking
31:46
Speaker 4: about it back when I was working on part four
31:49
Speaker 4: of the Guide to Good Leading series, which I mentioned
31:51
Speaker 4: is about beliefs. As I studied beliefs, and it became
31:55
Speaker 4: ever clear to me that all really all of our
31:57
Speaker 4: conscious all of our behaviors, other than some instinctive reaction
32:03
Speaker 4: if somebody throws a rock at you or whatever. Other
32:05
Speaker 4: than that, every action we take, including you and me
32:08
Speaker 4: being on this podcast together, the work that we do,
32:11
Speaker 4: how we relate to our significant others, the way we
32:14
Speaker 4: treat our colleagues or the person at the drug store,
32:18
Speaker 4: all of that is based on our beliefs. And I
32:20
Speaker 4: started to realize that although no one really talks about
32:23
Speaker 4: those beliefs or rarely talks about them, they are what
32:28
Speaker 4: underlies the actions. And so the image came into my
32:31
Speaker 4: head that the beliefs were very much akin to the
32:33
Speaker 4: root system of our lives, and that you couldn't see them,
32:40
Speaker 4: like I said, but what was happening above ground was
32:42
Speaker 4: always correlated. Alexander Berkman the anarchist once, very helpfully for me,
32:48
Speaker 4: said you can't grow a rose from a cactusy. So
32:52
Speaker 4: I came to realize you can't. Negative beliefs will always
32:56
Speaker 4: lead to negative outcomes. You can make action and noise,
33:00
Speaker 4: as we've experienced nationally, but you can't really create healthy,
33:04
Speaker 4: positive outcomes except from positive beliefs. And that doesn't mean
33:07
Speaker 4: there's no problems. But you can have a negative believe
33:09
Speaker 4: about a problem, like we're victims, or you can have
33:11
Speaker 4: a positive belief, which is this is horrible. It's a tragedy.
33:14
Speaker 4: It's terrible. Let's get to work and try to do
33:17
Speaker 4: something about it. And then from there it grew and
33:20
Speaker 4: I started to realize the culture was like the soil
33:22
Speaker 4: because anybody who does agricultural work, and I'm a city kid,
33:26
Speaker 4: but I've been learning, and my girlfriend's a farmer, the
33:30
Speaker 4: soil is always what holistic farmers, sustainable farmers, organic farmers
33:34
Speaker 4: always talk about feeding the soil because when the soil
33:37
Speaker 4: is healthy, the plants are going to do better. And
33:38
Speaker 4: it's the same in organizations. So if you put you
33:41
Speaker 4: and me, with all due respect, on a five year
33:44
Speaker 4: tenure at a fast food franchise within not super great
33:49
Speaker 4: franchise e. We're just going to be two more cynical
33:54
Speaker 4: people counting the minutes till we can get out of work.
33:56
Speaker 4: And it's not said disrespectful to you or to me.
34:00
Speaker 4: It's just if you're in unhealthy soil, it's very difficult
34:04
Speaker 4: to sustain. And then it kept going and hope started
34:07
Speaker 4: to appear as the sun because we all go towards hope.
34:11
Speaker 4: I think you can see that. Unfortunately through the behaviors
34:14
Speaker 4: of the last year on a political level, even when
34:16
Speaker 4: the hope is negative or destructive, in the long run,
34:19
Speaker 4: people still go hopeless.
34:20
Speaker 6: People will still.
34:21
Speaker 4: When hope comes for them, will go towards it. Spirit
34:26
Speaker 4: of generosity. I started to see like water, because nothing
34:29
Speaker 4: grows without it. Purpose. I started to see is air
34:32
Speaker 4: because I was reading Rebecca Soulnett, whose books I love,
34:35
Speaker 4: and she asked, but I know she did an event,
34:37
Speaker 4: but I saw it in her book, so I give
34:39
Speaker 4: her credit. Which is what goes faster uphill than downhill?
34:42
Speaker 4: And I had no clue, And the answer is wind.
34:45
Speaker 4: So I realized it if wind or air is purpose.
34:48
Speaker 4: Of course, when we're purpose driven, as you know from
34:51
Speaker 4: your own books, and you're teaching we will go work
34:54
Speaker 4: way harder at something difficult that we believe in, and
34:57
Speaker 4: we will at something we don't believe in, even if
34:59
Speaker 4: it's easy. Anyway, the concept continued to has continued to evolve,
35:04
Speaker 4: and now it's becoming clear that it's a whole book
35:06
Speaker 4: and to itself. So it's probably going to be part
35:08
Speaker 4: five in the series.
35:11
Speaker 6: But I like it.
35:12
Speaker 4: For many reasons. I think I have like twenty on
35:14
Speaker 4: my list, but just to give you one or two.
35:17
Speaker 4: It's not hierarchical, which we talked about earlier. Another thing
35:21
Speaker 4: is that everything impacts everything else, and so hierarchical thinking
35:25
Speaker 4: leads us to weight things out and to say, hey,
35:28
Speaker 4: the elephant is clearly way more important than to be
35:31
Speaker 4: because look how big the elephant is. But of course
35:35
Speaker 4: we start to learn that seemingly infinitesimal, statistically present things
35:40
Speaker 4: like bees have this enormous impact on the ecosystem, and
35:44
Speaker 4: when they're absent, you don't even notice if you're not
35:46
Speaker 4: a farmer or somebody who keeps bees. But all of
35:51
Speaker 4: a sudden, we're not able to grow the fruit and
35:54
Speaker 4: grow the.
35:55
Speaker 6: Food that we need to grow.
35:56
Speaker 4: So in the ecosystem, the greeting that the host gives
36:00
Speaker 4: at the front door of Ingraman's Roadhouse could gain or
36:03
Speaker 4: lose us one of our most loyal customers. Yes, and
36:07
Speaker 4: who cares what I say that that smile or lack thereof,
36:11
Speaker 4: that energy, that lack thereof. So all of that, and
36:14
Speaker 4: then also it's very important to understand that everything is
36:18
Speaker 4: impacting everything else.
36:19
Speaker 6: And so we had some.
36:22
Speaker 4: Guests last night at the roadhouse who had never been
36:24
Speaker 4: there before. Their friend brought them. They're from New York.
36:28
Speaker 4: They were blown away by their meal. Well, I'm gonna
36:31
Speaker 4: bet you they're going to end up spending way more
36:33
Speaker 4: money at our mail order over the next ten years.
36:38
Speaker 4: They and they went home with a coffee cake. And
36:40
Speaker 4: the guy's favorite food in his life is coffee cake.
36:43
Speaker 4: So our bakery's going to do well. So although they
36:46
Speaker 4: entered through the roadhouse, the long term impact might be
36:50
Speaker 4: really show up even more prominently in other parts of
36:53
Speaker 4: our organization. So when we understand that we're all related,
36:57
Speaker 4: and that how the dignity with which I treat you
37:01
Speaker 4: as impacting my own life, Because if I treat you badly,
37:04
Speaker 4: it's going to manifest in a way. I greet Tammy
37:07
Speaker 4: when she comes home from the farm tonight, etc. So
37:10
Speaker 4: all of those things are part of the ecosystem. And
37:12
Speaker 4: then the humbleness, as we talked about as the humans,
37:16
Speaker 4: it's the top soil and out of that, as I wrote,
37:19
Speaker 4: you probably saw the piece a couple of weeks ago,
37:22
Speaker 4: as somebody asked me, and I didn't know the answer,
37:24
Speaker 4: what does humiliation mean? You didn't write about it in
37:27
Speaker 4: the pamphlet, And I'm like, you know what, You're right,
37:29
Speaker 4: I didn't.
37:29
Speaker 6: But she's like, well, did you do that on purpose?
37:31
Speaker 6: I'm like, not really, I just didn't think about it.
37:34
Speaker 4: So her question got me thinking and I realized that
37:36
Speaker 4: humiliation and it makes sense. I mean, in essence, it's
37:40
Speaker 4: taking the other person's top soil. We're making it hard
37:44
Speaker 4: for you to be human by pushing you to be
37:49
Speaker 4: lower than us. And not shockingly, this is what human
37:55
Speaker 4: beings are doing to the planet. Top soil is eroting,
37:58
Speaker 4: disappearing in a rate to the point that it's going
38:03
Speaker 4: to threaten our existence on the planet.
38:05
Speaker 6: And this comes.
38:06
Speaker 4: Also from humans, which includes all of us to some degree,
38:10
Speaker 4: treating nature as if we're better than nature rather than
38:14
Speaker 4: what's true. And I've come to understand, which I never
38:17
Speaker 4: understood as a kid growing up in Chicago, where asphalt
38:21
Speaker 4: was a comforting phenomenon, that we're part of nature and
38:26
Speaker 4: that we have a responsibility, but we aren't better than
38:29
Speaker 4: anything in nature.
38:30
Speaker 6: We're just part of it.
38:33
Speaker 3: Well, thank you, thank you, And I love your system's
38:36
Speaker 3: view and making it an ecosystem.
38:39
Speaker 5: Which is pretty You know, it's hard for some people
38:42
Speaker 5: to understand.
38:43
Speaker 3: Like you said, you come from an asphalt right and
38:46
Speaker 3: for those of us who are blessed to live in
38:49
Speaker 3: a world with old growth trees as a natural way
38:53
Speaker 3: of being and breathing, it's a little bit easier to understand.
38:57
Speaker 3: So thank you for writing, Ari, thank you for for thinking,
39:01
Speaker 3: thank you for being, and thank you for breathing life
39:04
Speaker 3: into these ideas, these big ideas, and bringing them down
39:08
Speaker 3: to earth in a way that people can hold on too.
39:12
Speaker 5: And I want to ask you just a couple more questions.
39:14
Speaker 6: Yes, sure.
39:15
Speaker 3: First of all, where do you find time to write?
39:17
Speaker 3: I mean, Mercy, It seems like you have just so many,
39:21
Speaker 3: you know, things going on in your embraces so wide.
39:24
Speaker 3: Where do you find the time to write?
39:26
Speaker 4: I wrote an essay on time management in part three
39:31
Speaker 4: of the book, which is on managing ourselves as a whole.
39:34
Speaker 4: You can have me back and we can talk about time.
39:36
Speaker 4: But I came to realize that most of us have
39:40
Speaker 4: relatively unhealthy relationships with time, and that the way most
39:46
Speaker 4: Americans talk about time not consciously. If they were to
39:51
Speaker 4: speak about their significant other like that all day.
39:54
Speaker 6: It wouldn't go it wouldn't go well.
39:58
Speaker 4: Because they're always mad, they're always frustrated, they never appreciate
40:05
Speaker 4: it or rarely.
40:07
Speaker 6: And then I realized, like it's.
40:12
Speaker 4: People like I think about food all the time because
40:15
Speaker 4: I love it and I work with it. But I
40:17
Speaker 4: don't have eating disorders. I just like food and appreciate
40:21
Speaker 4: its beauty. And I'm fortunate that I can afford to.
40:25
Speaker 6: Eat good food.
40:26
Speaker 4: And I'll mean, I'm super wealthy, but I'm doing fine,
40:29
Speaker 4: and I am around good food all day, and I
40:32
Speaker 4: feel really fortunate for that. Many people don't have access
40:35
Speaker 4: to the healthful, wonderful, nutritious food that I do. But
40:39
Speaker 4: in the same way, I think it's true at time,
40:41
Speaker 4: and I guess I realized that Sam Teine, who's work
40:45
Speaker 4: you probably also know, is another wonderful, humble human being.
40:49
Speaker 4: He said, we always make time for what we truly
40:52
Speaker 4: want to do. And I know this is true, Like
40:55
Speaker 4: I don't play golf at all, but I listen to
40:58
Speaker 4: you know, when we do zinc train where and I
41:00
Speaker 4: listened to whatever stereotyping. So I apologize, but whatever bankers
41:04
Speaker 4: and they're like, I can't get it. That's sold behind
41:07
Speaker 4: and what are you doing this weekend?
41:09
Speaker 6: Oh I got two games of golf.
41:10
Speaker 4: I'm like, okay, so you got time to golf. I'm
41:13
Speaker 4: not judging it, but if you got time to golf,
41:15
Speaker 4: then you got time to write. So I think for me,
41:19
Speaker 4: it's just a conscious choice to put time into certain places.
41:23
Speaker 4: And the writing is not something I really ever set
41:26
Speaker 4: out to do. I just came to it really out
41:29
Speaker 4: of frustration to be honest with the way other people
41:31
Speaker 4: were writing our newsletter. And in hindsight, it wasn't their fault,
41:34
Speaker 4: it was mine. But so the more I did it, the.
41:38
Speaker 6: More I learned. The more I learned, the more.
41:40
Speaker 4: I put that to work in the organization, the more
41:42
Speaker 4: it helped us as an organization, the more energy I
41:44
Speaker 4: felt because I was learning, and so it got me
41:47
Speaker 4: on a good cycle. So I just try to be
41:50
Speaker 4: mindful of my time and type fast and keep moving,
41:55
Speaker 4: get over the perfectionism with which I grew up.
41:58
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, it's really important when you when you write, so,
42:03
Speaker 3: thank you, thank you Ari. So my last question for
42:06
Speaker 3: now is you know you've you've spoken a little bit
42:10
Speaker 3: about anarchism, and I would love to hear again in
42:13
Speaker 3: your own words, what is the relationship between what you
42:18
Speaker 3: do anarchism and who you are as well?
42:21
Speaker 6: Well?
42:22
Speaker 4: I talk about anarchism because it's so misunderstood. Okay, Anarchism
42:29
Speaker 4: is about respect for every individual. It's about freely choosing
42:33
Speaker 4: collaboration and generosity and positive beliefs. It's it's really a
42:39
Speaker 4: way of being. And anarchism is perceived to be chaos,
42:44
Speaker 4: but it's actually all about order. It's just that we
42:48
Speaker 4: freely choose order. And in hindsight, studying ecosystems in permaculture,
42:53
Speaker 4: I would actually say that permaculture is anarchism in nature
42:58
Speaker 4: and anarchism is permical for people because all the same
43:02
Speaker 4: principles show up in both philosophies, about interconnectivity, about getting
43:07
Speaker 4: out of hierarchy, about treating everything and everybody with dignity
43:10
Speaker 4: and respect, about seeing the beauty and benefit that each
43:14
Speaker 4: person brings.
43:15
Speaker 6: In their own unique way.
43:16
Speaker 4: So what I This is a longer story, But as
43:20
Speaker 4: I started to restudy it ten or twelve years ago,
43:24
Speaker 4: because I got asked to speak somewhere else at the
43:27
Speaker 4: Jewish Studies Department and Devor Dashmore titled the talk Rybread
43:32
Speaker 4: and Anarchism because I had just written a ten thousand
43:34
Speaker 4: word essay on the history of Jewish ryebread, and she
43:38
Speaker 4: knew I had studied the anarchists and I was getting
43:41
Speaker 4: once again. I took the agreement to speak, but then
43:44
Speaker 4: I didn't. I'm like, man, I haven't looked at my
43:46
Speaker 4: books in twenty years. I mean, I'm going to look
43:48
Speaker 4: like an idiot in front of like, these are professors
43:51
Speaker 4: who study this.
43:52
Speaker 6: Stuff, and I don't know. I'm way out of touch.
43:55
Speaker 4: So I got all my old books out and I
43:56
Speaker 4: started to restudy and it totally blew me away in
44:00
Speaker 4: a quick sense.
44:01
Speaker 6: For two reasons.
44:02
Speaker 4: Ay, I had not realized how much what Paul and
44:06
Speaker 4: I and everyone around us had created was aligned with
44:09
Speaker 4: a lot of those anarchist beliefs that I hadn't consciously done,
44:13
Speaker 4: but it was happening anyway. And then be more, even
44:16
Speaker 4: more importantly, it just totally hit me. Upside ahead is
44:20
Speaker 4: how much what's now called progressive business was aligned with
44:24
Speaker 4: anarchist thinking. So getting out of hierarchy, self organizing, work,
44:30
Speaker 4: team flattening, organizations, engagement, these are all take away the
44:38
Speaker 4: business seek It's all anarchist stuff that was being written
44:41
Speaker 4: about one hundred years ago because anarchism came as a
44:44
Speaker 4: reaction to the dehumanization of the Industrial Revolution. It's the same,
44:49
Speaker 4: although many of them did not deal with race very
44:52
Speaker 4: well at the time, but it's the same dehumanization that
44:56
Speaker 4: was done that justified racism and hierarchical thinking around the
45:01
Speaker 4: made up concept of race, which of course is a
45:03
Speaker 4: whole other subject that you know and.
45:05
Speaker 6: Teach very beautifully about.
45:08
Speaker 4: So it really I started to realize that all of
45:11
Speaker 4: this stuff you and I have been talking about for
45:12
Speaker 4: the last hour, treating everyone with dignity, positive beliefs, including
45:17
Speaker 4: everybody actively, these are all the themes of progressive life
45:21
Speaker 4: and organizations, and they're all themes that are embedded in anarchism.
45:25
Speaker 4: And interestingly, Gustav Landauer, who's an anarchist whose work I
45:29
Speaker 4: never read in school because at the time it was
45:31
Speaker 4: only in German, which I am afraid I'm not able
45:34
Speaker 4: to read, but it was translated about fifteen years ago
45:37
Speaker 4: by a guy named Gabriel Kuhn, which allowed me to
45:40
Speaker 4: read it, and it's wonderfully inspiring stuff.
45:43
Speaker 6: He was a good.
45:43
Speaker 4: Friend of Martin Boeber's. He was a pacifist, very spiritual guy.
45:49
Speaker 4: He said many interesting things, but one that totally blew
45:53
Speaker 4: me away. As he said, I'm paraphrasing, but he said,
45:57
Speaker 4: the people who pursue the destruction of the state, which
46:01
Speaker 4: is a common theme in anarchist conversations, he said, it's
46:05
Speaker 4: misguided because when you're trying to destroy the state, you're
46:09
Speaker 4: locked in a relationship with it, in the same way
46:12
Speaker 4: that I was locked in a relationship with my mother
46:14
Speaker 4: while arguing.
46:15
Speaker 6: With her, refusing to do what she wanted.
46:18
Speaker 4: But in hindsight, it was completely reactive and it felt
46:22
Speaker 4: like I was freeing myself. It's really freedom from which
46:25
Speaker 4: is a very unfree way to be. And Endauers said,
46:29
Speaker 4: the answer is not to destroy anything, is to go
46:32
Speaker 4: and create free communities where people can learn to treat
46:36
Speaker 4: each other with dignity, to think freely, etc. And when
46:38
Speaker 4: I read that, I was like, oh, man, that's what
46:41
Speaker 4: we're doing. And the last quote, and I'll leave you alone,
46:45
Speaker 4: is Landauer said, which really helped me understand. He said,
46:49
Speaker 4: we have no political beliefs. We have beliefs against politics,
46:56
Speaker 4: and that made me realize that anarchism is not a
46:58
Speaker 4: political program. It's not about taking power. It's the opposite.
47:02
Speaker 4: It's a way of life, and it starts with how
47:06
Speaker 4: I treat you, how I treat Tammy, how I treat myself,
47:10
Speaker 4: so that it's not about gaining power, it's about being
47:13
Speaker 4: powerful in a humble way within ourselves.
47:16
Speaker 6: So it starts with us, and it starts with.
47:19
Speaker 3: Me, absolutely, absolutely, So thank you so much Ari again
47:25
Speaker 3: for being my guest on this podcast.
47:27
Speaker 5: For who you are, because that's where your leadership comes from,
47:31
Speaker 5: and all that you do in the world, at Zingerman's
47:34
Speaker 5: and in the community. I just have such high regard
47:37
Speaker 5: and respect for who you are and just all that
47:41
Speaker 5: you bring. So thank you again.
47:43
Speaker 6: Well, thank you.
47:44
Speaker 4: I feel the same way, and one day I'm going
47:46
Speaker 4: to get out to Seattle or hear you on stage
47:49
Speaker 4: and see you at work.
47:50
Speaker 6: You got to see a.
47:51
Speaker 4: Tiny bit of what I do. But I look forward
47:56
Speaker 4: to more conversations to come. And thank you so much
47:59
Speaker 4: for the honored Banana show.
48:03
Speaker 1: So inspiring. Clearly, Ari is a leader's leader. He makes
48:10
Speaker 1: a difference in his own life and in the lives
48:12
Speaker 1: of so many others, in his own family and throughout
48:16
Speaker 1: the world in his work as the CEO of Zingerman's
48:20
Speaker 1: Community of Businesses. And as I mentioned earlier, Ariu was
48:24
Speaker 1: voted one of the world's top ten CEOs by inc Magazine.
48:29
Speaker 1: Now you know why they lead differently, all of them,
48:34
Speaker 1: including Ari, They lead in a totally unique way. To
48:40
Speaker 1: learn more about Ari's work with the Zingerman's Community of Businesses,
48:44
Speaker 1: you can go to this website that's www dot Zingerman's
48:50
Speaker 1: dot com. Www dot Zingerman's dot com. And when you
48:55
Speaker 1: go to that site, just be sure to scroll all
48:57
Speaker 1: the way down to the bottom and click on about us,
49:01
Speaker 1: and you can learn all about Zingerman's vast community of
49:05
Speaker 1: businesses and you can take a.
49:07
Speaker 2: Peek at their array of offerings.
49:10
Speaker 1: And hey, why don't you just shop while you're online?
49:13
Speaker 2: Right?
49:14
Speaker 1: Just shop right there while you're there, if you're just
49:17
Speaker 1: joining us. I'm doctor Gloria and this is legacy living.
49:22
Speaker 1: Make your life count. We just heard from my very
49:25
Speaker 1: special guest, are A Weinsweig, CEO of Zingerman's community of businesses. Now,
49:31
Speaker 1: if you want to make your life count, if you
49:34
Speaker 1: want to be the change you seek, be sure to
49:37
Speaker 1: listen to this episode again and again, and be sure
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50:00
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50:02
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51:46
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51:51
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52:00
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52:02
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52:06
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52:17
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52:21
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52:58
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53:13
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53:18
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