Latest / Legacy Living with Dr. Gloria Burgess / Leading Strong with Ari Weinzweig | Episode #451

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Leading Strong with Ari Weinzweig | Episode #451 · 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 Weinspeike. Now. Just a few years ago,
0:57
Speaker 1: Ari was named one of the world's ten top CEOs
1:01
Speaker 1: by inc. Magazine. Ari is the CEO and co founding
1:07
Speaker 1: partner of Zingerman's Community of Businesses. Now, that's a mouthful.
1:13
Speaker 1: This community of businesses includes Zingerman's Delicatessen, Bakehouse, Creamery, catering,
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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
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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.
2:59
Speaker 2: That's right. Now you will hear.
3:01
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
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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
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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
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Speaker 1: his team, and he was just on fire at 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
4:45
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 3: Thank you so Ari. We are talking about humility today,
5:29
Speaker 3: and I would love for you to just tell us
5:32
Speaker 3: a little bit about how you think about humility, what
5:35
Speaker 3: it means to you, and how you have come to
5:38
Speaker 3: this place around humility.
5:40
Speaker 4: Okay, well that was I think that was. I'm going
5:42
Speaker 4: to be humble and say that was probably more questions
5:44
Speaker 4: than I can remember, but I'm going to try to
5:48
Speaker 4: start with the last one and then work my way
5:50
Speaker 4: back to the earlier ones. So you guide me if
5:52
Speaker 4: I get off the rails. But sow how I got
5:56
Speaker 4: started on this. 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. None of it
6:52
Speaker 4: even deals with humility. And I'm like, I'd love to
6:56
Speaker 4: help you, but I don't really know anything about it.
6:58
Speaker 4: But my challenge was that the woman who had asked
7:01
Speaker 4: me used to work for us, and she's awesomely wonderful,
7:04
Speaker 4: kind hearted, generous human being. And her husband still works
7:08
Speaker 4: for us, and he is an equally kind and generous
7:10
Speaker 4: human being. And I just didn't have the heart to
7:12
Speaker 4: say no, so I said yes. And then I figured, Okay,
7:16
Speaker 4: I got five months or four months whatever it was,
7:18
Speaker 4: to figure out what I'm going to say. And so
7:20
Speaker 4: that's really what got me to start to study it,
7:22
Speaker 4: and like pretty much anything, and I given the diversity
7:27
Speaker 4: of your studies, which is wonderful and inspiring. I'm sure
7:32
Speaker 4: I'm going to guess you've had similar experience. But almost
7:34
Speaker 4: anything I believe that one starts to really pay attention
7:38
Speaker 4: to it becomes very interesting. So whether you know, I've
7:42
Speaker 4: read a book on the history of trains, which is
7:44
Speaker 4: completely not within my normal area of interest, but once
7:47
Speaker 4: one starts to study it, it becomes very interesting. And
7:50
Speaker 4: so that's what happened with Humility, and so I gave
7:53
Speaker 4: the talk. But then, of course I kept going and
7:56
Speaker 4: I started to study it more, and I started to
7:59
Speaker 4: realize how more and more how important it was to
8:03
Speaker 4: healthy leadership, to healthy organizations, to really to a healthy life.
8:07
Speaker 4: And then I started to look, and we'll get into it,
8:09
Speaker 4: but to the implications, both positive and then unfortunately negative,
8:13
Speaker 4: of what it can do to our communities and our
8:15
Speaker 4: societies when it's lacking. So that's really how I got going.
8:19
Speaker 4: So I'm going to pause there and let you ask
8:22
Speaker 4: another question so we can hear your wonderful voice too.
8:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's great, Thank you, Thank you so much. Ari.
8:27
Speaker 3: So you basically followed an invitation from a speaking opportunity
8:32
Speaker 3: at Michigan and followed that trail, and you became more
8:35
Speaker 3: and more interested, and you have actually written on this topic.
8:41
Speaker 3: You published a slew of books and many, many, many pamphlets,
8:45
Speaker 3: and you have a pamphlet on humility.
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Speaker 4: Right, Can you tell us a.
8:48
Speaker 3: Little bit about that?
8:50
Speaker 4: I can. 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.
10:08
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
10:35
Speaker 3: that you would consider to be humble leaders in your
10:38
Speaker 3: own life?
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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. Humble, hungry, i either
11:05
Speaker 4: 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 3: Congratulations. Yeah.
11:42
Speaker 4: And a crazy Maggie Bayliss, who's the person with whom
11:46
Speaker 4: we started zinc Train. She fits that. Bill Frank Corollo,
11:50
Speaker 4: who I had worked with as a when I was
11:53
Speaker 4: a dishwasher in restaurants and he was a line cook
11:56
Speaker 4: and started the bake house with us, all the way
11:58
Speaker 4: on through to really most of the people I could
12:01
Speaker 4: think of that we work with as leaders in our organization.
12:04
Speaker 4: There's so many. And then also people who've inspired me
12:07
Speaker 4: through philosophical learnings and teachings around the world, many of
12:11
Speaker 4: whom That's how I connected with you is because we
12:14
Speaker 4: share a lot of those. So people like Peter Block,
12:18
Speaker 4: you know, Maya Angelou. I just was quoting Tony Morrison
12:21
Speaker 4: and for the News, I'm working on today. I mean,
12:24
Speaker 4: all of these people. I got Bell Hook's book on
12:26
Speaker 4: Love at the top of my stack. I mean, they're
12:28
Speaker 4: all people who are coming in their own imperfect ways,
12:32
Speaker 4: like all of us, from places of humility. And so
12:36
Speaker 4: I think, really, who's not humble? And I don't say
12:40
Speaker 4: this to place blame, but I mean it's the people
12:43
Speaker 4: who act full of themselves. And I have come to
12:46
Speaker 4: believe mostly that comes out of their own internal insecurities
12:49
Speaker 4: and anxieties, which we all have. Just that's how they
12:52
Speaker 4: deal with it. And in my experience, it's not the
12:56
Speaker 4: most wonderful to manifest it in the world, but I
13:01
Speaker 4: do I believe most of us have the same anxieties.
13:04
Speaker 4: It's really in the same self doubts. And I was just,
13:09
Speaker 4: I'm trying to remember her name. I was just listening
13:11
Speaker 4: to a wonderful scholar. GET did an interview with Brene Brown,
13:16
Speaker 4: and she was sharing her own anxiety as a black
13:20
Speaker 4: woman who had achieved She's written a wonderful book and
13:24
Speaker 4: great achievement, and she was talking about her self doubt
13:27
Speaker 4: and I'm thinking, I have the same self doubt and
13:31
Speaker 4: thirty nine years in business in a world renowned business
13:34
Speaker 4: with whatever. We have five hundred and fifty employees, you know,
13:38
Speaker 4: and I still feel that doubt every day. I feel
13:41
Speaker 4: like I feel like I'm falling short, and I don't
13:43
Speaker 4: know if it's legit. So I really believe it's a
13:47
Speaker 4: universal truth, and then what we can learn to do
13:49
Speaker 4: is to manage that anxiety in a healthy way.
13:53
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, thank you, thank you. Ari. So I am
13:57
Speaker 3: wondering if you can paint a picture 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. And it wasn't no intended, it was not
15:53
Speaker 4: a wasn't ill will, It was just habit, routine way
15:59
Speaker 4: every life. And so that's how I grew up. So I'm,
16:03
Speaker 4: with all due respect to my family, I'm kind of
16:05
Speaker 4: in recovery. From that, because I can get triggered with
16:08
Speaker 4: the best of them and learn and start to just
16:11
Speaker 4: react and talk louder and faster, and it's not the
16:15
Speaker 4: end of the world, but it's not great. And so
16:17
Speaker 4: just learning to slow myself down and back up. And
16:21
Speaker 4: 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 3: Well, thank you. As you were talking, I was actually
17:26
Speaker 3: thinking about music and conducting, which is one of the
17:29
Speaker 3: things that my husband does. So thank you for that.
17:32
Speaker 3: And I will look up that podcast. Sounds wonderful, sounds
17:35
Speaker 3: very interesting. So Ari, what have you learned since writing
17:39
Speaker 3: the pamphlet? I mean you kind of started out wondering
17:42
Speaker 3: about it, and as a learner, what have you now
17:46
Speaker 3: pulled in as a 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 4: Clearly that's not humility. I would not have said, though,
18:38
Speaker 4: that people with very low self esteem are unhumble, because
18:42
Speaker 4: I would have thought, well, clearly they're not egotistical, so
18:45
Speaker 4: they must be humble. But I came through my own
18:49
Speaker 4: readings to change that belief and to really understand that
18:52
Speaker 4: humility is about neither being high nor low. And from that,
18:58
Speaker 4: a second learning that came to me was really starting
19:01
Speaker 4: to believe that humility is when we're at our most human,
19:07
Speaker 4: is when we're in a state of hum what I
19:10
Speaker 4: came to call humbleness. And I can talk about that too.
19:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would love to have you say more about that,
19:17
Speaker 3: 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 of those extremes. I think
19:35
Speaker 4: we all do that when we can stay centered, and
19:38
Speaker 4: it's not that easy. When we can stay centered, that
19:41
Speaker 4: that's when we're true to ourselves, and that is when
19:44
Speaker 4: we're at our most human, imperfect, open to learning, rail
19:50
Speaker 4: and fragile, yet resilient, and so a lot of it
19:56
Speaker 4: comes out of that. And and then I started to
20:00
Speaker 4: so look at the root of the word, which I
20:03
Speaker 4: do often. I'm sure you do you also, because it's
20:06
Speaker 4: always interesting. And and then you mentioned ecosystems, and this
20:11
Speaker 4: connected with work I've been doing, and in a way
20:14
Speaker 4: a different subject. But of course everything in the ecosystem
20:18
Speaker 4: is related one way or the other, and this turned
20:20
Speaker 4: out to be two. But so humility comes from from humans,
20:26
Speaker 4: from the earth. And of course in the Bible, Adam
20:30
Speaker 4: the first man, that his name in Hebrew Adamah means earth.
20:35
Speaker 4: So and of course the story in the Bible is
20:39
Speaker 4: that he was created by God from the earth. So
20:43
Speaker 4: regardless of one's religious beliefs, is not the point. But
20:46
Speaker 4: it's just that it comes from that same place of
20:49
Speaker 4: groundedness and connection to nature and connection to the earth.
20:54
Speaker 4: So it really came out of that, and that the
20:57
Speaker 4: humans the top soil. The most important and piece of
21:01
Speaker 4: what plants grow in is the humans. And in the
21:05
Speaker 4: same way, the most important thing, or one of the
21:07
Speaker 4: most important things for growing healthy people in organizations is
21:12
Speaker 4: also humility, because without the top soil, plants don't grow well.
21:16
Speaker 4: Without the humility, people don't grow well.
21:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you. You must have been reading my mind
21:22
Speaker 3: because I went to that word too, So that's great. Yeah, yeah,
21:26
Speaker 3: I love that. So Ari, can you talk a little
21:30
Speaker 3: bit about what humility has helped you understand about the
21:35
Speaker 3: state of our country right now?
21:39
Speaker 4: Yeah. When I started this study, I didn't really realize
21:45
Speaker 4: at all how important it was going to be in
21:49
Speaker 4: the context of what you just said of understanding the
21:52
Speaker 4: state of society. Not like the society, and I'm a
21:55
Speaker 4: part of it, so I'm not looking at it as
21:57
Speaker 4: an outside critic. We're all part of the problem, all
22:00
Speaker 4: potentially part of the solution. But I didn't know when
22:05
Speaker 4: the pamphlet was going to come out. It was not
22:08
Speaker 4: planned as some sort of massive social statement and commentary.
22:12
Speaker 4: It was just work I had been doing for a
22:14
Speaker 4: long time. But a couple very current event related subjects
22:20
Speaker 4: that are at hand. So one is if we're in
22:23
Speaker 4: a state of what I now would refer to as humbleness,
22:25
Speaker 4: and we can come back to that in a bit,
22:27
Speaker 4: but if we're in a state of humbleness, we're not
22:30
Speaker 4: better than anybody, and we're not worse than anybody. And
22:34
Speaker 4: this is going back to the ecosystem in nature, there's
22:36
Speaker 4: really no hierarchy. Everyone and everything is important. We're all different,
22:41
Speaker 4: we all play an important role in the moment. One
22:44
Speaker 4: person's role might be different as the conductor of the orchestra.
22:48
Speaker 4: If I'm in the audience and I go to the bathroom,
22:51
Speaker 4: nothing's going to happen if you do where the show's
22:54
Speaker 4: in big trouble. Doesn't make you a better person or
22:57
Speaker 4: me a worse person. It just means in that moment,
22:59
Speaker 4: you have a particular important So this is not to
23:03
Speaker 4: deny that important role that you play, but it just
23:07
Speaker 4: to not tie value as a human being to the
23:10
Speaker 4: role people are playing, or of course to age, gender, race, religion,
23:16
Speaker 4: political beliefs, and to come back to the belief that
23:19
Speaker 4: I have long held, and this goes into the anarchist stuff,
23:22
Speaker 4: that everybody is equitable, everybody is equal, not the same.
23:28
Speaker 4: In fact, no two people are the same, but everybody
23:31
Speaker 4: is equal, and that everybody is an important, creative, intelligent
23:34
Speaker 4: human being. And at my job, and I don't get
23:38
Speaker 4: it right every day. At my job is to treat
23:40
Speaker 4: them with dignity and honor them for who they are.
23:43
Speaker 4: And that's anover ending challenge because I fall short. But
23:47
Speaker 4: 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 4: There's no reason to rank them. The problem is when
25:03
Speaker 4: we're thinking hierarchically, then either I need to be better
25:07
Speaker 4: than you or you're better than me, because we can't
25:09
Speaker 4: really be on par If that makes sense, I mean
25:13
Speaker 4: it doesn't make sense, but that's the way we've been
25:15
Speaker 4: trained to think. And there's a second piece of this too,
25:18
Speaker 4: which I think is antithetical to true humility, and that's
25:22
Speaker 4: that we've we've been trained to hold the belief that
25:26
Speaker 4: we can assign an identity to a group of people.
25:30
Speaker 4: Women do this, you know how men are. And then
25:35
Speaker 4: it degenerates from there into this is how black people are,
25:38
Speaker 4: this is how Jews are, this is how Catholics are.
25:42
Speaker 4: And it's just whether it's ill intended or not, it
25:46
Speaker 4: creates what I would suggest as a dehumanization that's antithetical
25:52
Speaker 4: to true humility or humbleness. And so when you combine
25:55
Speaker 4: that kind of group assignment of identity with hierarchical thinking,
26:00
Speaker 4: doesn't take you long to arrive at the conclusion that
26:02
Speaker 4: either my group's going to be better than yours or
26:04
Speaker 4: yours is going to be better than mine. In a
26:06
Speaker 4: hierarchically minded world, who wants to be worse? Somebody has
26:10
Speaker 4: to be on the bottom and So this thinking manifests
26:14
Speaker 4: in the US a lot through racism, and manifested in
26:17
Speaker 4: Nazi Germany and much of Europe for centuries in the
26:21
Speaker 4: treatment of Jews. There has to be somebody who's pushed
26:24
Speaker 4: to the bottom, and maybe it was women. It was
26:27
Speaker 4: traditionally women in the household. But the point is just
26:30
Speaker 4: to really come at it alternatively from a place of humility,
26:34
Speaker 4: of humbleness, where we treat everybody with dignity, where we're
26:38
Speaker 4: no better and no worse than anyone else.
26:41
Speaker 3: Yes, thank you, thank you. I often think about birthright dignity,
26:46
Speaker 3: that everyone has that, and you know, if we begin there,
26:51
Speaker 3: then we create a whole different paradigm.
26:54
Speaker 4: Right absolutely, I have come. I wrote a piece about
26:59
Speaker 4: dignity over the summer, and uh, I started to realize
27:03
Speaker 4: that's really one of the key metrics I would suggest
27:06
Speaker 4: of a healthy culture, whether it's at our business or
27:10
Speaker 4: or in society at large. If everyone's treated with dignity,
27:13
Speaker 4: we're still gonna make mistakes. Absolutely. If I forget to
27:18
Speaker 4: call you back, but I treat you with dignity, life's
27:20
Speaker 4: gonna You're you're gonna forgive me, and life's gonna go on.
27:24
Speaker 4: If if I slip, and but it comes from a
27:26
Speaker 4: dignity based relationship. We're gonna be okay. So that that
27:30
Speaker 4: was that's one big piece of current events. And then
27:32
Speaker 4: the other big piece is it's a pandemic mm hmmm,
27:39
Speaker 4: which no one alive has been through.
27:41
Speaker 3: 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. But we I don't really se want to
28:07
Speaker 4: get into politics. But if we have leadership that is
28:13
Speaker 4: not humble, then we flail around intellectually and emotionally trying
28:18
Speaker 4: to hide the problem, deny the problem, yell at the
28:22
Speaker 4: people who know more than we do so that we
28:24
Speaker 4: feel better about ourselves, et cetera, et cetera. And none
28:28
Speaker 4: of that goes to finding quicker solutions that are more
28:32
Speaker 4: holistically sound. So I didn't think about either of those
28:35
Speaker 4: per se when I took on the challenge of learning
28:37
Speaker 4: about humility. But as you know, and I know, I
28:41
Speaker 4: mean the horrible killings over the course of the spring
28:45
Speaker 4: and summer, which of course are not really new. I mean,
28:48
Speaker 4: as horrible as they are, we know it's been going
28:51
Speaker 4: on for centuries, and certainly this is not the first
28:55
Speaker 4: time a leader acted unhumble in 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 3: So yeah, thank you, Ari. I want to just pause
29:08
Speaker 3: here just a moment, because you know what you have
29:14
Speaker 3: been addressing are complex. I'm not going to say complicated,
29:20
Speaker 3: but complex. I actually think that there's also simplicity in
29:25
Speaker 3: what you are talking about as well, because I think
29:28
Speaker 3: human beings at our best, we know, you know, we
29:32
Speaker 3: know how to we know how to collaborate, we know
29:35
Speaker 3: how to pull together. Yeah, we know how to be humble.
29:39
Speaker 3: And yet because of whatever whatever, whatever power systems, hierarchy,
29:45
Speaker 3: whatever is in the air, we tend sometimes not to
29:49
Speaker 3: not to go into that place of humility, 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. Maybe I'm maybe to
30:02
Speaker 3: become an assumption, but you strike me as a humble leader.
30:07
Speaker 3: And from the moment that I met you over email,
30:13
Speaker 3: and then when we had a COVID conversation, not a
30:16
Speaker 3: conversation about COVID, but you know, outside with social distancing,
30:20
Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera. And I'm just wondering how you
30:23
Speaker 3: do what you do managing a very sizeable enterprise, a
30:28
Speaker 3: profitable enterprise, sustaining it over four decades. And you talked
30:33
Speaker 3: a little bit about an ecosystem, and I wonder if
30:37
Speaker 3: you can just tell us about that and how it
30:39
Speaker 3: 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 with a not super
33:49
Speaker 4: great franchise e. We're just going to be two more
33:52
Speaker 4: cynical people counting the minutes till we can get out
33:56
Speaker 4: of work. And it's not said disrespectful to you or
34:00
Speaker 4: to me. It's just if you're in unhealthy soil, it's
34:03
Speaker 4: very difficult to sustain. And then it kept going and
34:07
Speaker 4: hope started to appear as the sun because we all
34:09
Speaker 4: go towards hope. I think you can see that. Unfortunately
34:13
Speaker 4: through the behaviors of the last year on a political level,
34:16
Speaker 4: even when the hope is negative or destructive, in the
34:18
Speaker 4: long run, people still go hopeless. People will still when
34:21
Speaker 4: hope comes for them, will go towards it. Spirit of generosity.
34:27
Speaker 4: I started to see like water, because nothing grows without it. Purpose.
34:31
Speaker 4: I started to see is air because I was reading
34:33
Speaker 4: Rebecca Soulnett, whose books I love, and she asked, but
34:36
Speaker 4: I know she did an event, but I saw it
34:38
Speaker 4: in her book, so I give her credit. Which is
34:40
Speaker 4: what goes faster uphill than downhill? And I had no clue,
34:43
Speaker 4: And the answer is wind. So I realized it if
34:46
Speaker 4: wind or air is purpose. Of course, when we're purpose driven,
34:50
Speaker 4: as you know from your own books, and you're teaching
34:52
Speaker 4: we will go work way harder at something difficult that
34:56
Speaker 4: we believe in, and we will at something we don't
34:58
Speaker 4: believe in, even if it's easy. Anyway, the concept continued
35:02
Speaker 4: to has continued to evolve, and now it's becoming clear
35:05
Speaker 4: that it's a whole book and to itself. So it's
35:07
Speaker 4: probably going to be part five in the series. But
35:11
Speaker 4: I like it for many reasons. I think I have
35:14
Speaker 4: like twenty on my list, but just to give you
35:16
Speaker 4: one or two. It's not hierarchical, which we talked about earlier.
35:21
Speaker 4: Another thing is that everything impacts everything else, and so
35:24
Speaker 4: hierarchical thinking 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 food that we need to grow. So in
35:57
Speaker 4: the ecosystem, the greeting that the host gives at the
36:00
Speaker 4: front door of Ingraman's Roadhouse could gain or lose us
36:05
Speaker 4: one of our most loyal customers. Yes, and who cares
36:08
Speaker 4: what I say that that smile or lack thereof, that energy,
36:12
Speaker 4: that lack thereof. So all of that, and then also
36:15
Speaker 4: it's very important to understand that everything is impacting everything else.
36:19
Speaker 4: And so we had some guests last night at the
36:23
Speaker 4: roadhouse who had never been there before. Their friend brought them.
36:27
Speaker 4: They're from New York. They were blown away by their meal. Well,
36:30
Speaker 4: I'm gonna bet you they're going to end up spending
36:33
Speaker 4: way more money at our mail order over the next
36:35
Speaker 4: ten years. They and they went home with a coffee cake.
36:40
Speaker 4: And 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. But she's like, well, did you do that
37:31
Speaker 4: on purpose? I'm like, not really, I just didn't think
37:33
Speaker 4: about it. So her question got me thinking and I
37:36
Speaker 4: realized that humiliation and it makes sense. I mean, in essence,
37:39
Speaker 4: it's taking the other person's top soil. We're making it
37:44
Speaker 4: hard for you to be human by pushing you to
37:49
Speaker 4: be lower than us. And not shockingly, this is what
37:55
Speaker 4: human 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. 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. 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, which is pretty You know,
38:40
Speaker 3: it's hard for some people to understand. Like you said,
38:43
Speaker 3: you come from an asphalt right and for those of
38:47
Speaker 3: us who are blessed to live in a world with
38:50
Speaker 3: old growth trees as a natural way of being and breathing,
38:55
Speaker 3: it's a little bit easier to understand. So thank you
38:57
Speaker 3: for writing, Ari, thank you for for thinking, thank you
39:01
Speaker 3: for being, and thank you for breathing life into these ideas,
39:06
Speaker 3: these big ideas, and bringing them down to earth in
39:09
Speaker 3: a way that people can hold on too. And I
39:13
Speaker 3: want to ask you just a couple more questions.
39:14
Speaker 4: 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, it
39:54
Speaker 4: wouldn't go it wouldn't go well because they're always mad,
40:00
Speaker 4: they're always frustrated, they never appreciate it or rarely. And
40:07
Speaker 4: then I realized, like it's people like I think about
40:13
Speaker 4: food all the time because I love it and I
40:16
Speaker 4: work with it. But I don't have eating disorders. I
40:19
Speaker 4: just like food and appreciate its beauty. And I'm fortunate
40:24
Speaker 4: that I can afford to eat good food. And I'll mean,
40:27
Speaker 4: I'm super wealthy, but I'm doing fine, and I am
40:30
Speaker 4: around good food all day, and I feel really fortunate
40:33
Speaker 4: for that. Many people don't have access to the healthful, wonderful,
40:37
Speaker 4: nutritious food that I do. But in the same way,
40:40
Speaker 4: I think it's true at time, and I guess I
40:42
Speaker 4: realized that Sam Teine, who's work you probably also know,
40:47
Speaker 4: is another wonderful, humble human being. He said, we always
40:50
Speaker 4: make time for what we truly want to do. And
40:53
Speaker 4: I know this is true, Like I don't play golf
40:56
Speaker 4: at all, but I listen to you know, when we
40:59
Speaker 4: do zinc train where and I listened to whatever stereotyping.
41:02
Speaker 4: So I apologize, but whatever bankers and they're like, I
41:05
Speaker 4: can't get it. That's sold behind and what are you
41:08
Speaker 4: doing this weekend? 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. I really
41:29
Speaker 4: out of frustration, to be honest with the way other
41:31
Speaker 4: people were writing our newsletter. And in hindsight, it wasn't
41:34
Speaker 4: their fault, it was mine. But so the more I
41:37
Speaker 4: did it, the more I learned. The more I learned,
41:39
Speaker 4: the more I put that to work in the organization,
41:42
Speaker 4: the more it helped us as an organization, the more
41:44
Speaker 4: energy I felt because I was learning, and so it
41:47
Speaker 4: got me on a good cycle. So I just try
41:50
Speaker 4: to be mindful of my time and type fast and
41:54
Speaker 4: keep moving, 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 4: Well? I talk about anarchism because it's so misunderstood. Okay,
42:28
Speaker 4: Anarchism is about respect for every individual. It's about freely
42:33
Speaker 4: choosing collaboration and generosity and positive beliefs. It's it's really
42:38
Speaker 4: a 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 in their own unique way. So what I
43:18
Speaker 4: This is a longer story, But as I started to
43:21
Speaker 4: restudy it ten or twelve years ago, because I got
43:25
Speaker 4: asked to speak somewhere else at the Jewish Studies Department
43:29
Speaker 4: and Devor Dashmore titled the talk Rybread and Anarchism because
43:33
Speaker 4: I had just written a ten thousand word essay on
43:35
Speaker 4: the history of Jewish ryebread, and she knew I had
43:38
Speaker 4: studied the anarchists, and I was getting once again. I
43:42
Speaker 4: took the agreement to speak, but then I didn't. I'm like, man,
43:45
Speaker 4: I haven't looked at my books in twenty years. I mean,
43:47
Speaker 4: I'm going to look like an idiot in front of
43:50
Speaker 4: Like these are professors who study this stuff, and I
43:52
Speaker 4: don't know. I'm way out of touch. So I got
43:55
Speaker 4: all my old books out and I started to restudy
43:57
Speaker 4: and it totally blew me away in a quick sense.
44:01
Speaker 4: For two reasons. Ay, I had not realized how much
44:05
Speaker 4: what Paul and I and everyone around us had created
44:08
Speaker 4: was aligned with a lot of those anarchist beliefs that
44:11
Speaker 4: I hadn't consciously done, but it was happening anyway. And
44:15
Speaker 4: then be more, even more importantly, it just totally hit
44:19
Speaker 4: me upside ahead is how much what's now called progressive
44:22
Speaker 4: business was aligned with anarchist thinking. So getting out of hierarchy,
44:29
Speaker 4: self organizing, work, team flattening, organizations, engagement, these are all
44:37
Speaker 4: take away the business seek It's all anarchist stuff that
44:40
Speaker 4: was being written about one hundred years ago, because anarchism
44:43
Speaker 4: came as a reaction to the dehumanization of the Industrial Revolution.
44:48
Speaker 4: It's the same, although many of them did not deal
44:51
Speaker 4: with race very well at the time, but it's the
44:54
Speaker 4: same dehumanization that was done that justified racism and hierarchical
44:59
Speaker 4: thinking around the made up concept of race, which of
45:02
Speaker 4: course is a whole other subject that you know and
45:05
Speaker 4: teach very beautifully about. So it really I started to
45:10
Speaker 4: realize that all of this stuff you and I have
45:12
Speaker 4: been talking about for the last hour, treating everyone with dignity,
45:15
Speaker 4: positive beliefs, including everybody actively, these are all the themes
45:20
Speaker 4: of progressive life and organizations, and they're all themes that
45:23
Speaker 4: are embedded in anarchism. And interestingly, Gustav Landauer, who's an
45:28
Speaker 4: anarchist whose work I never read in school because at
45:31
Speaker 4: the time it was only in German, which I am
45:33
Speaker 4: afraid I'm not able to read, but it was translated
45:36
Speaker 4: about fifteen years ago by a guy named Gabriel Kuhn,
45:40
Speaker 4: which allowed me to read it, and it's wonderfully inspiring stuff.
45:43
Speaker 4: He was a good friend of Martin Boeber's. He was
45:45
Speaker 4: a pacifist, very spiritual guy. He said many interesting things,
45:51
Speaker 4: but one that totally blew me away. As he said,
45:55
Speaker 4: I'm paraphrasing, but he said, the people who pursue the
45:59
Speaker 4: destruction of the state, which is a common theme in
46:02
Speaker 4: anarchist conversations. He said, it's misguided because when you're trying
46:07
Speaker 4: to destroy the state, you're locked in a relationship with it,
46:11
Speaker 4: in the same way that I was locked in a
46:13
Speaker 4: relationship with my mother while arguing with her, refusing to
46:17
Speaker 4: do what she wanted. But in hindsight, it was completely
46:19
Speaker 4: reactive and it felt like I was freeing myself. It's
46:23
Speaker 4: really freedom from which is a very unfree way to be.
46:28
Speaker 4: And Endauer said the answer is not to destroy anything,
46:31
Speaker 4: is to go and create free communities where people can
46:35
Speaker 4: learn to treat each other with dignity, to think freely, etc.
46:38
Speaker 4: And when I read that, I was like, oh, man,
46:41
Speaker 4: that's what we're doing, and the last quote, and I'll
46:44
Speaker 4: leave you alone, is Landauer said, which really helped me understand.
46:48
Speaker 4: He said, we have no political beliefs. We have beliefs
46:53
Speaker 4: against politics, and that made me realize that anarchism is
46:58
Speaker 4: not a political program. It's not about taking power. It's
47:01
Speaker 4: the opposite. It's a way of life, and it starts
47:05
Speaker 4: with how I treat you, how I treat Tammy, how
47:08
Speaker 4: I treat myself, so that it's not about gaining power,
47:12
Speaker 4: it's about being powerful in a humble way within ourselves.
47:16
Speaker 4: 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. For who you are,
47:29
Speaker 3: because that's where your leadership comes from, and all that
47:32
Speaker 3: you do in the world, at Zingerman's and in the community.
47:36
Speaker 3: I just have such high regard and respect for who
47:39
Speaker 3: you are and just all that you bring. So thank
47:42
Speaker 3: you again.
47:43
Speaker 4: Well, thank you. I feel the same way, and one
47:46
Speaker 4: day I'm going to get out to Seattle or hear
47:48
Speaker 4: you on stage and see you at work. You got
47:51
Speaker 4: to see a tiny bit of what I do. But
47:55
Speaker 4: I look forward to more conversations to come. And thank
47:59
Speaker 4: you so much 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.
48:40
Speaker 2: To learn more about.
48:41
Speaker 1: Ari's work with the Zingerman's Community of Businesses, you can
48:45
Speaker 1: go to this website that's www dot Zingerman's dot com.
48:51
Speaker 1: Www dot Zingerman's dot com. And when you go to
48:55
Speaker 1: that site, just be sure to scroll all the way
48:58
Speaker 1: down to the bottom and click on about us, and
49:01
Speaker 1: you can learn all about Zingerman's vast community of businesses
49:06
Speaker 1: and you can take a 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
49:41
Speaker 1: to tell somebody. You can find me right here on iTunes, Audible, Alexa, SoundCloud, iHeart,
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Speaker 1: many other places. Now, before I close, I just want
50:00
Speaker 1: to give a shout out to all the women, men
50:02
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Speaker 1: what we are. We are the ones. We are the
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50:14
Speaker 1: you don't want to wait for somebody else to step
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50:20
Speaker 1: able to do that for yourself. You can be the one.
50:24
Speaker 1: In fact, you are the one. You are the one
50:28
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50:31
Speaker 1: that you can make a difference in the lives of others. Now,
50:37
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50:39
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50:53
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50:56
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51:00
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51:41
Speaker 1: type in my name to find me there. Before I
51:46
Speaker 1: close today, I want to thank each one of you
51:49
Speaker 1: for tuning in for allowing me to share a bit
51:51
Speaker 1: about my journey with what legacy living is all about,
51:56
Speaker 1: not just living and learning, but living, learning and serving
52:00
Speaker 1: so that you make a difference in your own life
52:02
Speaker 1: and in the lives of others. It's about being on
52:06
Speaker 1: purpose every single day. Three sixty five twenty four to seven.
52:11
Speaker 1: Legacy living is a powerful way to make your life
52:15
Speaker 1: count once again. Thank you for joining me for today's show.
52:21
Speaker 1: I'm your host, doctor Gloria Gloria Burgess, and this is
52:26
Speaker 1: Legacy Living. Make your life count. Please join me again
52:31
Speaker 1: next time right here for another episode of Legacy Living.
52:37
Speaker 1: Make your life count. Don't just count the days in
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Speaker 1: your life. Make the days in your life count. That's
52:47
Speaker 1: what Legacy Living.
52:49
Speaker 2: Is all about.
52:50
Speaker 1: Have a fantastic day and remember make the days in
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Speaker 1: your life count.
52:58
Speaker 2: God bless that's our show today.
53:13
Speaker 1: I'm your host, doctor Gloria Gloria Burgess. I hope you'll
53:18
Speaker 1: join me again next time. Until then, don't just count
53:23
Speaker 1: the days in your life, Make the days in your
53:27
Speaker 1: life count. That's what Legacy Living is all about. Here's
53:32
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53:36
Speaker 1: make it a yes kind of day. Remember to celebrate
53:41
Speaker 1: the music of your life.
53:45
Speaker 2: Make the days in your life count.