FOREWORD

The Everyday Application of Energy

Let me begin with a very significant and sincere expression of gratitude to the woman who wrote this book: what I’ve learned from Anese Cavanaugh over the past 10 years, the way we’ve implemented it here in the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, the way it’s resonated with nearly everyone I’ve taught it to, the way readers have responded to what I’ve written about it in my own books . . . all indicate that Anese is deserving of enormous appreciation. Her work and her insight have engendered an enormous amount of positive change for the people I work with, and those we serve. So Anese, let me simply start out by saying, Thank you!

Let me then back up a bit, to share some background. When my partner, Paul Saginaw, and I opened Zingerman’s Delicatessen on March 15, 1982, we had two employees in a little 1,300-square-foot space at the corner of Detroit and Kingsley Streets in the Kerrytown neighborhood of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Now, 37 years later, the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses is made up of a dozen unique businesses, each located in the Ann Arbor area. The organization overall now employs about 700 staffers (plus 300 more to help ship you food at the holidays).

Through the years, clearly, we’ve done a lot to increase our sales. But, behind the scenes, we’ve worked just as hard at developing our philosophy of business. We’ve spent thousands of hours studying business, read who knows how many books, attended other people’s seminars, and started teaching lots of our own, all the while making sandwiches, bussing tables, picking up paper towels off the floor, and trying to make a positive difference in the lives our coworkers, customers, and community. Of all the ideas we’ve taken in, and all of those we’ve built on, I will say with great certainty that what we’ve adapted from Anese has become one of the most important elements of our organizational ecosystem. During the past decade we’ve turned Anese’s teachings into an important part of our everyday organizational culture. It’s had enormously positive impact.

Here’s a quick anecdotal example. This afternoon I was at the weekly “huddle” in the kitchen at Zingerman’s Roadhouse (our 200-seat, James Beard Award–nominated restaurant serving regional American food). To be clear, these aren’t a bunch of yoga teachers or positive psychology professors. This is an hour-long meet up of line cooks, prep cooks, chefs, and a dishwasher or two . . . coming together for their weekly reporting and forecasting, and a quick, to-the-point conversation about what’s happening in the kitchen. Their icebreaker this week, as it does most every week, included our standard question of: What’s your energy? We use a zero to 10 scale. Energy is so incorporated into the culture that pretty much everyone here can comfortably converse about it. Newer employees, senior staff, people who don’t speak English as their first language . . . they each pretty easily report their energy. Because we’ve been doing it so long, as they go around the room, folks have fun with it in a good way. People often take the scale into hundredths—“9.3,” “9.66,” or “8.8.” One line cook, who’s leaving soon for the summer to go work at a resort in Montana laughingly said she was so good today she’s at an 11, and shares how much she’s going to miss everyone while she’s gone. One staff member says, “I’m at 8.5 or 9.” The facilitator, another line cook, kindly shoots back, “We know you—you’re not a 9 today.” She adds with a smile, “We’ll put in the notes that you’re at 8.5.” His response, “You’re right. Thanks for calling me on it.” He was smiling when he said it too.

I’m pretty sure that this was the only restaurant kitchen in the country where an interaction like that was taking place that afternoon. But I’m equally confident that it could be happening in hundreds or thousands of them. What the Roadhouse kitchen crew—and folks all over the Zingerman’s Community—are doing almost daily, could be happening in any organization, in any part of the world. If it was, every single spot would surely be better for it. Banks, baseball teams, and bricklayers—all would benefit. It would help in Congress, and it would contribute just as positively at your local coffee shop. This mindful energy management—what Anese calls Intentional Energetic Presence (or IEP)—always, always makes things better!

Here’s the bottom line: The work that Anese is sharing in this book (and in Contagious Culture before it) has the power to have an enormously positive impact on your organization. And really your whole life! Beyond the cost of this book, making the changes Anese is advocating will cost you next to nothing. But the benefits they can bring to your organization, to your own work, and to your life outside of work are—no exaggeration—enormous.

How do we use IEP here at Zingerman’s? The icebreaker at the kitchen huddle at the Roadhouse is just one small example. Much more significantly, we’ve made positive energy a performance expectation. That’s right—the stuff Anese is teaching is not just a bit of extra information, or fancy icing on your organizational cake. It’s not human resources happy talk, or a pretty poster to put on the wall in the break room. It’s a hardcore, real-life part of people’s daily job duties—mine as well as the newest staff member we just hired to work the night shift. What does that mean in practice? If you’re a great baker, but you bring bad energy every day . . . we need to talk. If you’re an amazing accountant, but your energy is abrasive, we need to have a productive conversation about performance. While of course we coach folks who have suboptimal or negative energy on how to improve, we treat energy just as seriously as we would a bread baker whose dough doesn’t rise, or an accountant who can’t add. Energy (that is, IEP) is a critical part of every one of the 700 jobs at Zingerman’s!

What do we get out of that? Better everything! Better service; better staff work experience. Less accidents in the workplace. Lower stress. More love. Better financials. Better food. And, because most staff take this learning into the rest of their lives, what happens to them outside of work starts to go better too. Which means that they feel better when they get to work! It’s certainly one reason that we were included in Tracie McMillan’s article in Food and Wine magazine called “19 Great Restaurants to Work For.”¹ It’s a very virtuous energetic cycle. And it’s all built on what we learned from Anese.

What tips will you find in this beautifully wise book? There are so many. It’s filled with literally dozens of ways that you can put Anese’s approaches to work—super simple, easy-to-understand ways to use at work and in every other part of your life as well. (Mind you, they’re simple, but I didn’t say they were easy—changing a lifetime of habits can, to state the almost obvious, be really hard!)

One of my other intellectual mentors, Russian anarchist prince Peter Kropotkin wrote in his 1899 book, Memoirs of a Revolutionist:² “One must have some question addressed to the book one is going to read.” I agree. And so would Anese. So, before you dive into the book, let me help you practice, with my own simple, in-the-moment, structure, what she’s about to teach you in much greater depth in the rest of this tome. Based on the little bit I just shared with you about our own experiences at Zingerman’s, or on what you knew about Anese’s work before you bought the book, reflect for a few minutes on what you want to get out of it! As per everything Anese has written, setting your intention is sure to have a positive impact. I will guarantee that your experience will be infinitely better if you decide in advance the sort of impact you want it to have. What do you hope to learn? How are you hoping the learnings from the book will benefit you? How willing are you to open your mind and your heart to what Anese is advocating? The better you set your intentions, the better your learning and the bigger the benefit you’ll get from the book!

Last thought before I let you get to your reading. Although I took it on as part of our growth about 20 years ago, I never loved the title CEO. Chief Executive Officer, to me, sounds grim—like you execute people for a living. But after getting to know Anese’s work, I realized that the acronym was fine. It just needed a different interpretation. As per everything you’re about to learn in this book, I believe that a much better explanation of CEO would be Chief Energy Officer. It’s how, very happily, I’ve been looking at my own job for years now. The energy in our organization starts with me!

I’ll end this short bit the way I began—with an enormous appreciation. Having already read the book you’re holding in your hands, I can say with confidence that you’re about to encounter 200-plus pages of life-altering material. I can’t thank Anese enough. And the really good news? Thanks to Anese, I also know that meaningful appreciation like this, improves our energy! I feel better for it already!

Ari

Ari Weinzweig

CEO and Cofounding Partner

Zingerman’s Community of Businesses

Ann Arbor, Michigan

Author of Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading, Part 2: A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Being a Better Leader, the full Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading Series, Parts 1–4, and other books

P.S.: The spirit of generosity is also a big contributor to the effectiveness of IEP. If you’re interested to learn more about how we live what Anese is advocating, feel free to email me at [email protected]. I’d be happy to hear more about your own experiences and to share whatever I can of ours!