The Coolest Small Company in America

In her new role, Emberling not only makes bread and pastries but, as an owner, has major responsibility for the present and future success of the business. "I love it here," says Emberling. "I don't make as much money as the investment bankers I went to school with, but I make enough, and I'm never bored. We face the same questions that big companies face, without the stock-market worries, and there are so many interesting people to talk to. It's very stimulating and challenging."

There's a concept taught in ZingTrain's seminars concerning the mastery of a skill. When you know absolutely nothing about a skill, you are unconsciously incompetent -- that is, you don't know what you don't know. As you learn more, you become consciously incompetent: you know what you don't know. With training and practice you can become consciously competent, while total mastery makes you unconsciously competent, meaning that you use the skill so effortlessly that you're not even aware you're doing it.

Here's the kicker: in order to teach a skill, you have to go backward, from being unconsciously competent to being consciously competent. Until you can teach it, moreover, you don't really know what you know. That concept helps to explain the process Zingerman's went through that earned it a reputation for management equal to its reputation for food.

The catalyst was ZingTrain, which was launched in 1994. Over the years Zingerman's had received numerous consulting requests, mostly from other specialty-food retailers interested in emulating the deli's culinary acclaim and customer service. Maggie Bayless, ZingTrain's cofounder and original managing partner, wanted to offer training instead. "Rather than figure out what someone was doing wrong and trying to fix it, we'd show people what worked for us," she says. At the same time, ZingTrain would provide training for ZCoB managers and staff.

First, however, ZingTrain had to come up with the language to explain what Zingerman's did. That meant distilling various practices into easily understandable, and teachable, concepts and principles. "We already had the 3 Steps to Great Service," says Weinzweig, referring to a maxim applied at Zingerman's since its early days. "We just kept building from there." One by one, the handy rules of thumb emerged: the 5 Steps to Handling Customer Complaints, the 4 Steps to Order Accuracy, the 3 Steps to Great Finance, the 4 Steps to Productive Resolution of Differences, and on and on. Each rule was more a set of talking points than a rigid formula -- a way to get people to focus on a subject and remember it afterward. Some rules simply codified practices Zingerman's had been using for years. Others expressed management ideas that Weinzweig believed in but had never fully implemented. Still others were developed in response to issues that arose as the company evolved.

At some point you have to roll your eyes at the sheer number of rules. "Ari talks about the 18 Steps to Calming Amy Down," says Emberling. ("I guess I forgot to tell her the 8 Points of Talking to Journalists," says Weinzweig.) Yet each rule does contain a nugget of management wisdom. To give good service, after all, you really do have to "1. Figure out what the customer wants. 2. Get it for them -- accurately, politely, enthusiastically. 3. Go the extra mile." What's more, it's important for employees to know that.

Soon Weinzweig and his colleagues began applying the same thinking to more challenging and sophisticated aspects of management, such as leadership, training, and organizational development. A voracious reader of business books and a prolific writer, Weinzweig turned out long papers on Zingerman's application of concepts like stewardship and entrepreneurial management. He then worked with the ZingTrain partners to break down those concepts into a series of steps, points, and definitions, thereby turning ideas into management tools for both ZCoB's employees and ZingTrain's customers. "What we look for is elegant simplicity," he says.

Through that process, ZingTrain got a steady supply of material for its seminars, which began to fill up fairly regularly. ZingTrain's curriculum, in turn, had a huge effect on ZCoB itself. Employees who took the courses were challenged to wrestle with management philosophy in all its complexity. As people were baking bread, selling cheese, or making gelato, they were also studying business, not to mention the history and sociology of food, another part of the curriculum. As a result, the company became a kind of school -- the University of Zingerman's, people called it.

The result was a culture both intellectually stimulating and unifying. "All those three-step things really do work," says Emberling, "but they also gave us a language to talk to each other. Everyone in the different businesses had the same vocabulary, which helped create the culture in the community as a whole."

Other factors also contributed to a common culture. The deli, for example, had long used distinctive lettering and cartoons on its signs and printed material. Following the formation of ZCoB, those design elements were standardized across the businesses to ensure they all had the same look and feel. "The more common themes you have throughout, the more effectively you can build the community," says Weinzweig. "We want to leave a lot of flexibility while providing enough structure for people to be successful. That way, the ZCoB doesn't become a collection of businesses that have nothing in common but ownership."

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