Testimonials from attending:
Zingerman’s: Creating a Vision of Greatness 2-Day Workshop March 21-22, 2019 4 members from the Trinity community attended a 2-day training at the Zing Train Center in Ann Arbor. We were exposed to the process and purpose of how “creating a vision of greatness” can deeply and profoundly impact an organization at every level. We learned about the process, had an opportunity to experiment ourselves, and spent significant time together as a team discerning if this would be the right next step for Trinity. We concluded not only would it be advantageous but we believe it would be best for us to engage the Zing Trainers to come and lead the process so we could all participate fully and leverage their expertise. Below are short testimonials from those who attended the 2-day training session. Roberta Durham, Clerk, Vestry Member: Deliberate visioning can take us beyond the idle thoughts of a foggy-looking future that begins, "Wouldn't it be nice someday if...?" If each of us aches (as I hope we do) to belong to a faith community whose actions are provoked by our love of God and, by extension, one another and everyone else beyond our red doors, visioning is a powerful tool for transforming that ache into a vivid, specific, achievable picture. Visioning can help us dream (big!) -- not in our sleep, but in our wide-awake, loving lives. Heather Meyer, Director of Operations & Community Development: There was such power in the hot pen writing exercises. I am a planner, a list maker, a note-taker... It took the first entire day to shift my thinking away from "how am I going to get to those dreams or visions?" Once I let go of that "how" and let myself feel all my dreams for Trinity, I got out of my own way. It shifted from being overwhelming to exciting. The singular best feeling was losing that debilitating deer in the headlights fear of where to begin. Alice Todd, Sr. Warden, Vestry Member: During the training each of us were asked to write about our views and wishes for Trinity’s future. As individuals, we all wrote and thought differently. When we combined our thought of Trinity’s future, key themes came together and created a vision with substance that was exciting and felt very possible. At that point, I saw the power of Zingerman’s Visioning process and believe we will be amazed at the strength of our Trinity community and vision we can jointly create to move forward over the next 10 years. Lisa Tucker-Gray, Rector: I have now been using and teaching this particular process of visioning for 3 years and each time I engage the process I am grateful and deeply rewarded. I shared recently while this is not magic, it does often feel “magical” in its ability to pull out of us beautiful pictures of a preferred future. And from that place in the future it is finally possible to turn around and carve out a path to get there. The hardest part at first was learning to just write and to trust. This is, I believe in my heart of hearts, exactly what Trinity needs right now. This process will not only be energizing and unifying but will also align our passions and purpose as we move forward together. 1
Why and How Visioning Works By Ari Weinzweig, Zingerman’s Co-Founding Partner originally written for Specialty Food Magazine, September 2008 When we start any project, we use the process of visioning—figuring out what we want success to look like—to get it going. I’m selling visioning because it tangibly improves the quality of the organization and the personal lives of those who use it. Without visioning, it’s easy to be dragged down by pressures and problems, but with it we are lifted to a more positive energy level. What is Visioning? As we define it at Zingerman’s, a vision is a picture of the success of a project at a particular time in the future. A vision is not a mission statement. We see those as being akin to the North Star, a never-ending piece of work that we commit to going after for life. It also isn’t a strategic plan— which is the map to where we want to go. A vision is the actual destination. It’s a vivid description of what “success” looks and feels like for us—what we are able to achieve, and the effect it has on our staff. We start our planning work with a draft of a positive vision of the future—and we do that visioning work at every level of the organization, whether it’s working on visions for a business five years out, a project that will be done in five months, or a dinner special that will be on the menu at 5 p.m. For Zingerman’s, an effective vision needs to be: • Inspiring. To all that will be involved in implementing it. • Strategically sound. That is, we actually have a decent shot at making it happen. • Documented. You really need to write your vision down to make it work. • Communicated. Not only do you have to document your vision but if you want it to be effective, you actually have to tell people about it too. The Innovation Benefit I used to think that innovation came from a flash of brilliance. But I’ve learned that it actually comes when you build in (and regularly use) processes that encourage it. Zingerman’s visioning work is based on a concept that dates to the late 1950s and early 60s. The late Ron Lippitt called it ‘Preferred Futuring” and found that when people focused on the end result rather than the litany of logistical issues, the energy level in a room went up. And by getting people to start thinking about what success was going to look and feel like, creative, out- of-the-box ideas flowed more freely. It gets people to go after the future of their choosing. Small Project Visioning To make this process more tangible for you, I’ve included a draft vision for a small project:
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A Thursday evening Farmer’s Market in the parking lot of Zingerman’s Roadhouse – The Vision: Throngs of people are milling around the Roadhouse parking lot on this Thursday, amazed and excited at the abundance of locally produced goods and services ranging from several varieties of tomatoes to handmade soap and artisan crafts, to herbs and plants, plus Zingerman’s items—cheese from the Creamery, breads from the Bakehouse and the ever-energetic Roadshow crew caffeinating all the vendors and customers. Every vendor is selling the best of what they are growing or producing. There’s a tangible truth patrons have come to trust—that all these products have a story and none of them traveled far to get here. Tents and awnings cover the stalls, creating a colorful and festive mood. There are 15-20 vendors at the West Side Farmer’s Market so it’s accessible and maintains variety but remains magnetic and welcoming. The Market continues to provide customers with the best products available and serves as a catalyst for community development by offering an educational component and a local music scene. We have space reserved for weekly acts, including local musicians, demonstrations and other activities. Several people recognize the Roadhouse chefs selecting vegetables from the Market’s vendors for their weekend’s menus. The Market is a family event, where parents bring their children to shop for fresh produce and enjoy a snack at our picnic tables. Guests are thrilled with the produce, the chance to visit with neighbors, and best of all, connect with the farmers who actually grow their food. This year, the planning committee is generating support throughout the business community. Local businesses hang posters about the Market and participate in promotions. These companies recognize the potential for the Market to draw additional patrons to the area, enabling the Market to become a more selfsustaining entity. The Market planning committee operates under an inspiring mission statement and is taking steps toward making it a fiscally independent operation. The Market manager is working closely with the Zingerman’s liaison to ensure organization and success, from honing job descriptions to developing and proposing paid Market positions. We have a great group of vendors working together who are already excited to build on these successes for next year. Visions and action steps are laid out for the coming years at our annual Market debrief. This was written in 2005, before the market began. It’s pretty much exactly what happened when we started the season for the Market this year. In fact, I checked with our market manager, Jen Salisbury, and we had 20 vendors participating. Large-Scale Visioning To show an example of what a long-term organizational vision can look like, I’ll share our 2020 vision. I’m not saying it’s the “right” vision. There isn’t a right or wrong vision. This is simply the future we’ve agreed we’re going after at Zingerman’s, one that’s inspiring for us and also strategically achievable. It’s been finalized by consensus of the 15 managing partners in our organization, after gathering input from more than 200 staff members along the way.
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By documenting and actively communicating the 2020 vision we have a clear sense of where we’re going as an organization. As a result, we each understand how our work contributes to the building of this future, which helps keep each of us engaged. We can make decisions more effectively. And we can also turn down opportunities that would distract us from the work we need to do to achieve that vision. Personal Visioning At Zingerman’s when we write business visions we stress the importance of incorporating personal passions and desires into what we write. While the vision needs to be inspiring and strategically sound for the business overall, it also should include things that will help us as individuals live our own dreams. If you own the business and you want to travel all over the world, write a vision of greatness for the future that includes travel. If you want to take long summer vacations with your family, then write that in too. The point is to create a future in which you and I as leaders and as writers of the vision will feel fulfilled and rewarded. We also talk about our commitment to leaving everyone we work with—customers, suppliers, community, environment and staff—a bit better for that interaction. In the context of the latter, teaching and using the visioning process has turned out to play a surprising role. Charlie Frank and Katie Janky, two of our long-time managers, are getting married this fall and use it to plan their wedding. Carlos Souffront, Deli cheese specialist, uses visioning in his after-work job as a DJ. A big benefit of visioning is that it helps us stay the course. Author Rosabeth Moss Kanter writes that, “everything can look like a failure in the middle.” Having a written vision helps overcome that sense of impending doom. It’s easier to keep going when we’ve already committed that we’re going to get a successful conclusion, and when we all know what that conclusion (or vision) is. Visioning in Action—Beyond Zingerman’s It could be easy to dismiss this visioning stuff as flavor-of-the-moment management-speak. But, my own experiences, and those of so many others, have me believing that it has helped make the world a better place in sometimes small, but meaningful ways. The creativity that comes out of it is all around, both from folks at Zingerman’s, and from others who come to learn it at the ZingTrain seminars. Here are some of their stories: Turning a Business Around: Laurey Masterton, owner of Laurey’s Catering in Asheville, N.C., came to one of our seminars when she was faced with the closing of her business. She shares that, “I was about to quit…But I attended the Zingerman’s Experience seminar and I listened to the part about creating a vision and realized I did want to keep my business going and that I did have some ideas about what my vision for the future of my business was. That vision included the look, the feel, the food, the descriptions, the finance piece…and a pretty complete, sensory description of my deepest thoughts about my creation.” Instead of tossing it in, Masterson turned it around—her store today is doing well, it’s a financially viable, sustainable, healthy business with a lot of happy staff, that’s well grounded in the community. And as a postscript to the story, Laurey also went on to become president of the Asheville Chamber of Commerce.
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Getting an Idea Off the Ground: Renée Malone, owner of the consulting company Kick the Moon, says, “When I enrolled to attend the ZingTrain Small Giants seminar two months ago, I was feeling the weight of a stalled dream upon my shoulders. A year had passed since I began negotiations with a prospective business partner and we still didn’t have an arrangement! It was during the visioning exercises that it dawned on me that I had to build his vision of our partnership before any decision would be made. …In the end, we finalized our business agreement. We have a deal. And this week, I launched my dream, our dream.” I feel good that we have been able to take what Lippitt was teaching and bring it—through ZingTrain and through staff members who move on—to the business world in practical and helpful ways. Because while most of our day-to-day work may be mundane, the vision is special—it’s a picture of the beautiful ‘cathedral’ that we’re all working together to build. And it helps keep us excited to overcome the inevitable challenges that come up.
The Power of Visioning By Ari Weinzweig, Zingerman’s Co-Founding Partner of Zingerman’s Deli (Ann Arbor Michigan)originally written for Specialty Food Magazine, October 2008 In a previous article, Why and How Visioning Works I wrote about how the process of visioning which, as we define it at Zingerman’s, is a picture of the success of a project at a particular time in the future. I noted that a vision isn’t a strategic plan—which is the map to where we want to go. A vision is the actual destination. It’s a vivid description of what “success” looks and feels like for us—what we are able to achieve, and the effect it has on our staff. The results of practicing visioning for many years have been remarkable on both a professional and personal level. It’s helped us create a success that may not have been possible without the vision. If you haven’t read about this concept before I strongly recommend you read the previous article to understand the benefits of this process. This article focuses on the actual writing of the vision with steps for getting it down quickly and effectively. Step 1: Pick Your Topic Visioning is appropriate for projects of all sizes and every budget. We use it for creating goals for a project that will be done in five months, a dinner special that will be on the menu at 5 p.m. or big business changes that we want to achieve in five years. Step 2: Pick the Time Frame Most organizational visions will be somewhere between two and ten years out. Five is a fairly typical place to start. But if you are wanting to start with a smaller project, the time frame can be one week or six months.
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Step 3: Quickly List Achievements Think about the work you’re embarking on and quickly list past, positive achievements that seem related to it. Don’t spend more than ten minutes on this, you can always add more. The idea is to create a base of positive energy on which you can build success. The more people put their energy into the positive, the more likely we are to attain greatness in the visions of the future we’re engaged in creating. Step 4: Rules for Writing the Vision Give yourself somewhere between 15 and 30 minutes to complete the first draft. While writing a vision is hugely important, don’t let its perceived weight work against you. The results will be great regardless. You can compose your vision in any style you like, but I want to emphasize the importance of putting the word “draft” on your document. Unless you’re writing a vision for a shift that starts in a few minutes, what you’re working on is going to get revised as you gather input from others. That said, there are a few rules to follow that really do work. If you find yourself rolling your eyes at them, I can relate because I did the same once upon a time. But I’ve done this so many times now that I can tell you flat out—if you use these, the whole thing works way better. A) Go for something great. The work here is about writing visions of greatness—if we don’t describe something special in the first draft, it’s not likely to get more inspiring later. Put something wild out there—I like to think about John Kennedy’s call to go to the moon; that was out there. If the early draft isn’t kind of scaring you a bit (or at least won’t scare the practical minded amongst your peer group) then you probably haven’t pushed yourself or let out your true desires. B) Write from the heart. A vision of greatness is about your passion and hopes for the future. If you’re the one writing it, it’s about what you believe in, what gets you excited. Even if it includes things that others have said you couldn’t or shouldn’t do. C) Send yourself to the future. This may sound silly, but from having done visioning work a few thousand times, I can tell you that it’s essential—write as if you’ve achieved your goal already. For example, if you’re writing a vision of a wedding you’re catering this Saturday, you might start out with: “It’s a few minutes before midnight on Saturday night. The bride and groom just headed for home, the rest of the family members are lingering. Everyone is tired, but feeling really good about the event . . .” Again, this may seem strange, but it is critical. You are always writing “we have” or “we are,” not “we will.”
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D) Write very quickly. In my experience, the visions that we’ve written quickly have turned out the best. So start writing. Don’t wait until the stars are perfectly aligned. E) Use the “hot pen” technique. Once you start writing, keep writing for 15 minutes regardless of what you’re saying or how silly or smart it might seem. Keep the pen or keys on the keyboard moving and don’t stop to self-edit. My own experience is that sometimes the most important/insightful elements of the vision are the ones that I almost didn’t write down. F) Don’t be afraid to get personal. Blend both personal and professional goals so that you arrive at one holistic vision or two visions (one personal and one for the organization) that are compatible and mutually supportive. If you’re running the business it makes sense that you build your passions into what you write. If you want to teach, put that in the vision. Weave in what you want to do, what gets you excited, motivated. Step 5: Write the First Draft of the Vision With all of those rules in mind, put down a vision draft. (See an example of a small project vision in the sidebar.) We usually start by writing: “It’s (fill in the date you’ve chosen above). I’m about to head out for the evening. There are so many great things that are going on that make it clear that our long-term vision has come to be the reality that we hoped and believed it would back when we wrote it.” Start listing what they are and just keep going until your time is up. Then put the draft aside for several days. (Obviously if you have to get it done sooner, adjust the time frame appropriately.) Step 6: Review and Redraft Read the statement from start to finish. My experience is that 80 or 90 percent of what I put down in that first scary rendition is right on track, but I can still work on both the content and the language. As you read through it, keep in the back of your mind: Does it sound inspiring? Do you get more excited when you’re reading it? Note that in this context, “excited” does not preclude anxiety about how to actually implement it. For some of us, the two almost always go together! How specific should you get in your writing? Very. Don’t just say, “I want to be wealthy,” give an actual salary number or savings amount. Use a sales number that’s meaningful rather than just saying, “I want high profits.” If it is a personal goal, say, “I’m spending two weeks traveling with my kids,” rather than, “I’m spending more time with my children.” If necessary you can have up to four redrafts, but that’s the most I’d recommend. If you aren’t the sole decision-maker, it is critical to make sure that all of the key people are on board with the vision. Without that alignment, it’s almost impossible to move forward effectively. One technique we use is to set a topic and time frame for the vision and then have each of the partners in the group draft their own vision. 7
Once that is done, we compare the written vision drafts, combine common themes and move forward. Step 7: Get Input from Advisers This is when you ask people whose opinion you value to review the draft. The idea is to keep improving it and get clarity on what you mean and what it says. You can start by asking more supportive readers and then later move to more challenging ones. Remember, at this stage, most input can be helpful although you aren’t obligated to use everything that is offered up. Step 8: Get Going! It’s time to move forward and share the vision with everyone that will be involved in implementing it. Having a vision of greatness in writing certainly doesn’t guarantee success, nor does not having a written vision mean you’re doomed to failure. But a vision sets us up to work together toward a shared, inspiring, attainable (if also challenging) positive picture of the future. Take it from someone who came at this all with a fair degree of skepticism and uncertainty, and resisted doing it for many years—in the end, it’s worth the effort. It’s a way more inspiring way to do business and it’s a heck of a lot more fun.
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