“We sell sandwiches until the bread runs out and nothing’s going to change that”. In a year where the conversation has been more focussed on pandemic pivots, some leaders are staying the course. Jimmy Graziano owner of JP Graziano, an 80 year old Italian grocer in Chicago maintains the same business model of serving his local community with the passion and consistency that made it through WWII, the recession of the 80’s and several significant turnovers of it’s now iconic West Loop neighborhood.

“It’s not always about the things you’re willing to change… it’s about recognizing the things you need to hold on to.” — Jimmy Graziano

These words remind us that when uncertainty entices us to think about quickly changing our direction, sometimes we need to pause and open our eyes to what is working right in front of us… and double down on that. (full episode of this incredible discussion with Jimmy below)

Jimmy Graziano, owner of JP Graziano’s grocer in Chicago challenges fellow business owners to focus on what works throughout the pandemic.

By day Thoughtium is a management consulting firm with an experience-driven approach to transforming individuals, teams, and organizations. Our team is learning that before any of the work we do with our clients we are in service to a much broader community… one that has been drastically redefined in the last 12 months.

Here are a few lessons learned that not only shaped our business over the last 12 months but also redefined “community” for our team forever.

We Opened Our Eyes to Our “Six Block Radius”

Consultants know the perks and the downfalls of business travel all too well. This past year our 3-day trips to the West Coast for client work and business development were traded for Zoom meetings and virtual client interactions. Personally, being grounded gave me the first “walk to work” in my career. What came from this was an opportunity to connect with the pulse of my local neighborhood. It was on my short 6-block walks to our (nearly empty) Chicago WeWork office that I would run into Jimmy Graziano early mornings preparing for the mid-day sandwich rush. We talked business and life but more-so without words, we held each other accountable for putting in the day’s work when we didn’t know what tomorrow promised.

On these same 6 block walks, I met other local business owners like Jeremy Jones, the owner of Uncooked, Chicago. Jeremy is a passionate business owner hell-bent on blurring the lines between the emerging brand’s incredible plant-based products and putting the same organic goodness back into the community through his foundation, Chicago’s Next. A brief run-in with Jeremy on my walk to work turned into he and I starting a small weekly gathering of local entrepreneurs getting together for (virtual) lunches to support each other’s growth through, well… absolutely anything and everything.

My new six block walk to work became an opportunity to connect with local small business owners in ways that couldn’t have been done in our pre-pandemic world of traveling 2 weeks out of the month.

We Started a New Community of our Own

As we started to really invest more in our “6 block radius” we began to realize that so many entrepreneurs were experiencing the same thing… the connection we have to the people closest to us gets stronger when times get tough, and this is no different in business. There were more small business owners, entrepreneurs, and employees alike wanting to connect and share how they too were “Navigating NOW”. And this connection transcends industry lines.

Thoughtium, a Chicago-based management consulting firm, started to learn from the local Italian grocer that stayed the course in the eyes of the pandemic, the local gym owners that had to flip to a completely virtual model within a week of the shelter in place, and a host of individual leaders that almost instantly shifted their focus on ensuring peace and stability with their people during this incredibly unique time. We knew we were the company that could create the space for this new dialogue in business and local community.

In April 2020 we launched Navigating NOW, a virtual roundtable series where we go live each week with community and business leaders, addressing topics that matter most in our personal and professional lives. Our goal is to meet the business “news cycle” with real leadership perspective almost as quickly as things are changing before us. Our discussions are weekly; they are robust and unscripted. They touch on everything from changing business models to vulnerability and trust in the workplace.

The common theme is real authentic discussion with the speed and authenticity that cuts through the standard circulating HBR article in the traditional leadership and development communities.

Join us, or let us know if you’d like to be a guest on the show.

We Made Every (Small) Conversations Count

This goes without saying, but after 6–8 months of focus on continuity planning and the (over-played) discussions of “the new normal” we realized that all we really have is each other, our clients, our growing community, and all of these are made almost exclusively of small conversations. The daily ones… the check-ins… the “call after the call”. These are all small examples of showing up for each other even when our personal and professional lives are completely up in the air.

Here are a few things that have really helped remind us that small conversations are the new currency of survival in business:

• A few days a week we end our daily standup with a short recording of our team, on Zoom, sending love to a client, community member, or even family member. We call it our “Daily Digital Dose” and it has given us an incredibly special cadence of expressing gratitude and paying it forward.
• We’ve adjusted our workshops, coaching, and community development to smaller cohorts of individuals to promote more authentic and at times emotional discussions that might not happen in a virtual 1–1 or a large webinar.
• Most importantly we have literally dropped any requirement or reservation we might have in engaging in small conversations with completely tangental leaders, prospective clients in completely new industries, or individuals who have interviewed with us and didn’t get the job but want to stay connected.

Surely we will forever see this time as an inflection point in our personal and professional lives. At Thoughtium, we will also see this as a time to prioritize those immediately around us and those who make our community so special.

We will never take these connections for granted and in some ways we will surely push back against the “opening back up” of our giant world around us.

From our community to yours. Thank you for being “in this” with us.

For more information please visit us at thoughtium.com or check out more of our content at youtube.com/thoughtium.