The Devil Eats Organic

I'm not sure how to feel about my newfound ability to buy designer salt a mere 5 blocks from my home, but Whole Foods has come to my 'hood.

My cousin called WF "seductive". I have to wonder if a serpent handed me the stunning heirloom tomato I bought today. When I cut the tomato, it smelled so good that I couldn't even bear to rinse the juice left on the cutting board down the drain: I poured it into the bowl with the rest of the tomato.

Then I ate it all plain, with salt.

Sea salt, bought in bulk from my local, family-owned, health food store, Bell Bates. Since WF arrived in Manhattan a few years ago, I've been riding the subway to WF for things that Bell Bates doesn't carry. (And a couple of items that I prefer, like olive oil and bulk almonds.) Now that WF is more easily walkable, I'll continue to direct most of my food spending to Bell Bates.

But that tomato! (And the early/late/weekend hours. Sigh.)

I also stopped in at Tribeca Hardware, another neighborhood institution. For once, they didn't have what I was looking for, but I reveled in the Bob Dylan soundtrack (either theirs, or maybe WFMU). And how it smelled like hardware stores I used to visit with my dad as a kid.

And in fact, Bell Bates also has a distinct scent, redolant of the bulk spices they sell and the food at the steam table. Real places, owned by real people.

In the New York Times on Friday, Susan Saulny covers variations of Community Supported Agriculture, profiling one Illinois organic farm that survives by selling "shares" in its output at the beginning of each growing season, and with labor provided by its owners and customers.

The CSA model acknowledges that there is no free lunch. If we want real places, owned by real people, and real food, we have to be willing to pay more in time and money.

I wonder if anyone has explored the CSA model for maintaining small, locally-owned business as part of our commercial ecosystems? (And I'll poke around on this one.)

Don't get me wrong: I'm a pragmatist and (mostly) a capitalist -- some businesses aren't meant to survive.

But I'd pay a fee to join forces with certain local businesses.

In the meantime, on a quiet summer Saturday afternoon, I was the only shopper at Bell Bates. One of the owners said, "Glad to see you."

Me, too.

Yoga "Props": Conscious Customer Service

I got an email last week from Anusara Yoga's "head office" (I'm not kidding, there is a "head office" for yoga!) Fusion Studio, a Cedar Rapids, Iowa yoga studio had been affected by recent floods.

Fusion's scrappy owner Marsha Nieland had found another spot to set up shop, and she and her team were looking for mats, blocks and other materials (also known as "props") needed by students.

I wrote to a small company that I've done business with before, Yoga Props (www.yogaprops.net). Within hours, one of the owners, Ruth, had written back to commit her help -- and the next day she had shipped off some brand new props.

Thanks, Ruth!

I also wrote to a couple of the larger businesses in this yoga supply space, using generic customer service and sales email forms or addresses.

At a small firm like Yoga Props, the general customer service email address is monitored by the owner, or someone very close to her.

I haven't heard back from the larger firms.

Which doesn't mean that we won't: my request is probably going up a chain of command. (Word from Anusara HQ is that prAna has also chipped in, and Bheka-Bhakti is offering advantageous pricing for community members who want to make gifts to Fusion.)

Which leads me to my favorite speaker at last week's Wharton Leadership Conference, Southwest Airline's Colleen Barrett.

Colleen showed a brief video of customers and employees talking about how they feel about Southwest, customer service stories and their resolution...standard stuff. (The segment about the relationship between the gate agent and passenger who was flying towards life-saving surgery did cause me to brush a little tear away. I'm a sap!)

More powerful was Colleen's anecdote about what happened when planes were grounded on 9/11. She called a hotel, she thought in Sioux Falls, where a Southwest pilot had been billeted with his crew and passengers.

When Colleen asked to speak with the pilot, she was told that he wasn't there -- he had rented a bus and taken everyone to the movies.

When bad stuff happens, how does it affect your customers? Colleen Barrett and Southwest Airlines had no choice but to react: this one was in their faces. The good people at Anusara Yoga saw it, too.

When we hear back from the other yoga-related companies, Marsha and her colleagues at Fusion will probably have been outfitted. Colleen was talking about the service that is possible when you put people at the front lines who understand the Golden Rule, tell them that you expect them to practice it -- and then put policies and processes in place to support that intention.

This kind of thinking gives a company the power to respond in a timely and meaningful way.

Having worked with a small business in lower Manhattan after 9/11, I know that the next good thing that can happen for Fusion is for people to use their services. (So maybe my contribution will be send them a check to buy some classes for first responders in the community, who will be in need of stress relief. That is, when they finally come to a stop.)

And BTW, help is still needed in New Orleans...my choice is the Leary Firefighter's Foundation, which is helping to rebuild there, one firehouse at a time.

(Addendum on July 16, 2008: click here for video of Colleen's conversation with Wharton's Mike Useem at the Leadership Conference. And welcome to readers of Knowledge@Wharton (and thanks to my friends at Wharton for the link, which noted my "slash" existence as a management consultant/yoga teacher.) Those interested in my consulting side can click to my website. I'm noodling on how to unify the blog and the site. Yoga means "union". Sigh. )

(Photos of Fusion Studio before and after the flood are from Marsha Nieland.)

Welcome Yogis and Yoginis

I've been a yoga student since the mid 90's. Longer, if you count the practice I did as a suburban Chicago kid, aided by a yoga book from the public library. Since 2002, I've studied Anusara Yoga, working with Amy Ippoliti, John Friend, and a host of wonderful teachers at NYC's Virayoga.

This blog is a bit of my studentship, too. How can we place ourselves most optimally in our professional lives, given the interdependent nature of our (relative) reality?

One of the most frequently viewed posts on this blog is about business partnership. I wrote it in 2007, and have watched the numbers grow since then. At first, I wondered why the post drew readers.

But when you google for information on partnership, much of what you find is focused on "what":

• What form of corporation should you choose?
• What are the components of a partnership agreement?
• What percentage of the company will you own?

No doubt about it, these and other "whats" are key.

"How" is even more important. Primarily, how will the partners work together to set and meet their individual and shared goals? (Including jointly finding answers to all of the "what" questions.)

When I was asked to write a business article for a website serving Anusara students and teachers in our area, I jumped on the opportunity to put a yoga lens on partnership, via an interview with Virayoga owners Elena Brower and Lynn Hazan-Devaul.

So, regular readers and web-seekers interested in one yoga perspective on business partnership may click here (and scroll down the page) for "Elemental Truths About Yoga and Business Partnership". (Down the road, I may cross-post this article...)

And if you arrived here from the Trikula News site, click here for "Business Partnership: 3 Important Questions".

However you arrived at my blog, thanks for visiting!

(and thanks to flickr's Valentina Powers, who allowed use of Yoga On the Bridge under a Creative Commons license)

Conscious Light on the Housing Crisis

After the dot-com meltdown, a friend who works outside of the business world asked me where all the venture capital had gone.

Um, some of it went into my pocket.

Consultants (me, at the time, though most of my work was not in dot-coms), infrastructure providers, commercial real estate providers...and the bankers.

And sellers and purveyors of Aeron Chairs, later to grace the offices of non-profits and other buyers of used office furniture, also prospered.

This American Life did a tremendous show last week about the mortgage industry food chain: where that money came from, and where it has gone.

They connect the dots, showing points of convergence -- and even agreement -- (as they say) for folks who read the WSJ editorial page, and those presumed to be a bit more left-leaning.

(Missing: the complicity of local tax authorities and public officials, glad to have the coffers filled by property taxes based on fat assessments. It's only a 60 minute program!)

My early career was in banking, and I still remember my managers drilling me with the mantra: "The First Rule of Banking is Know Your Customer".

The program shows how financial culture's "first" agreement was violated, over and over.

Download it here. (It's also available for purchase on CD: and excellent tool for forward-thinking managers in the financial world who recognize this point in time as a good teaching moment.)

But if you want an Aeron chair now? It might be a bit too late, but you can always check Ebay!

(Or connect with Aeron via the Herman Miller website, where I snagged this photo.)

Mindfulness of Fast Food in NYC

In NYC, a new law now requires fast food outlets to post calorie counts on menus and menu boards.

People seem generally supportive of this effort, with the exception of the inevitable "nanny-state" complainers.

(And for opinions of some dissenters, check comments at the NY Times City Room blog. And a brief digression, if I may -- I appreciate what seem to be moderated comments on the Times blogs. I recently watched commentary on one of the WSJ blogs devolve to the most juvenile sorts of attack and counter-attack. I won't squander my attention there again.)

In the meantime, and I don't think this is my imagination: Starbucks muffins seem to have shrunk. Significantly.

Calorie counts in the 450 range for the seemingly smaller muffins make me wonder: coincidence? Or solution to a marketing problem?

(photo from the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene website)