This week, as you might have guessed from the headline, our Foodie Friday Fun topic is the radish. More specifically, the business lessons we can learn from using radishes in cooking. If you’re like me, your exposure to radishes has been mostly through salads, at least for the most common variety, the red radish. You might also have had daikon radish in Japanese food, and if you’re a fan of French eating you might even have smeared butter on a breakfast radish and eaten it to start your day.
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If I asked you to describe the taste and texture of the radish, you’d probably say it was crisp and firm, with a sharp (it is a member of the horseradish family, after all) taste. And that’s where the business point begins.As you might know, I’ve changed my diet to exclude potatoes, among other things. While I generally don’t miss them, when making certain dishes – stews, certain soups – there is definitely something lacking. Someone told me to try substituting radishes, because once they’re cooked for a while, as one would cook cubed potato, the strong flavor and hard texture is transformed into something pretty close to the potato. Skeptical as I was, I tried it and while the texture is a bit different, you’d never guess that radishes had stepped in to do the job.
The business point is that we tend to view people the same way. We peg them as we do radishes: the marketing guy, the gal from PR. They’re relegated to certain places and we don’t ask ourselves if they can be used in other ways. Just as I was shocked as to how well the radish did the job of the potato, you might be shocked to find out that your accountant has an aptitude for sales or your numbers guy actually writes marketing pieces beautifully.
As a manager, it’s all about recognizing that potential and trying it out. As a business person, keeping an open mind about any business solution is more critical each day. You never know when there’s a radish in the bunch that’s just ready to transform everything.
Consult Keith 