Tag Archives: life lessons

July 18, 2014 · 8:09 am

Chef Pepin And Reality TV

Foodie Friday, and this week I read an article written by Jacques Pepin, one of my culinary idols, which serves as the basis for today’s screed.

English: Photograph of chef Jacques Pépin at A...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Writing for The Daily Meal, Chef Pepin took off after the antics commonly seen in “reality TV” kitchens.  You can read this piece by clicking through this link and it’s worth your time.  It seems as if his primary complaints were specifically addressed to “Hell’s Kitchen” and Gordon Ramsay although he never calls the latter out by name.  I think a fair amount of what he says is accurate and, for our purposes, applicable outside of the kitchen to other businesses.

His first issue is that the shows portray the restaurant kitchen in a chaotic and negative light.  Putting aside the fact that there is very little real about reality TV, it’s very difficult to show something on TV which isn’t actually happening.  The fault isn’t of the medium but of the person in charge.  The best managers with whom I’ve worked over the years will raise their voices and verbally kick someone in the butt, but generally the team runs efficiently and with minimal stress.  In every case they’ve been quite good at specifying what it is they expect in general and excellent at making the specific mission clear.  They were also superior teachers, making up for the staff’s lack of knowledge on a topic with guidance and patience.

Chef seems to love quiet in the kitchen, as he states “A real, well-run professional kitchen has dignity and order.”  I find quiet disquieting.  I like to hear the team interacting, bouncing ideas off one another and helping move the team forward.  Dignity always; order is more a controlled chaos.  After all, one needs to break a few eggs in order to create a soufflé.

This is my favorite part of the piece and something I think we all need to keep in mind in the broader business sense:

Julia Child used to say that you have to be happy when you cook for the food to be good, and you also have to be happy in the eating and sharing of the food with family and friends. Otherwise the gastric juices will not do their job and you won’t digest the food properly. I agree with her assessment. It is impossible to enjoy food when you’re angry and tense.

That’s really a key point today.  If you hate your job, whether you’re the lowest level employee or the boss, it will come out in your work.  The disorder of the kitchen or any other workplace is reflected in the final product.  If you’re running a team, maybe a little introspection is the seasoning your product needs.  If you’re a line cook and you’re that miserable, perhaps it’s time for a change.

Thoughts?

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July 16, 2014 · 10:20 am

The Skills That Matter

Some of you know that my professional training was as an educator.  Hopefully that shows on the screed from time to time.  In fact, my wife and eldest child are also trained teachers and my youngest does education as part of her profession.  Focusing on the skills people need is a big deal in our house and that got me thinking about what those skills might be.

I spend a ton of time in the tech world.  There are new skills that my clients feel as if they need to acquire almost every day.  What is the latest and greatest way to code?  How do we employ the social media platform du jour in order to stand out and engage our customer base?  What’s the best way to run an A/B test of landing or other pages to optimize conversion rates?  Those are only a few of the components of the rapidly changing skill set business people might need these days.  You probably won’t find me working with them on those initially.

Instead, I like to start with the skills that matter.  First and foremost of these is critical thinking.  How would I define that?  This is from The National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking, way back when in 1987 and I think it says it pretty well:

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.

That skill trumps the others.  It’s the ability to figure out what data points matter and why.  It’s understanding core business issues and not permitting the noise of the business world to clutter up that understanding.  It’s what you use, having achieved that understanding, to choose the tools with which to carry out the business goals, strategies, and tactics.  The point is this:  the tools will change; the need to possess the ability to think critically won’t.  Kids learning Word in the schools today may not use it in 10 years.  I guarantee they will need to be able to figure out the world around them.

There are other key skills, of course.  Writing and speaking clearly are the next in line for me since if you can’t explain your excellent thinking it does little good to the business.  First things first, however.  That’s how I see it.  You?

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July 1, 2014 · 9:14 am

Woodshedding

This TunesDay I want to focus on something that every musician does – woodshed. That isn’t a non-sequitor.

woodshed

(Photo credit: The Year of Mud)

With respect to music “woodshedding” means practicing your instrument but it’s so much more than that. The term comes from that people would go to their woodshed to practice without being overheard.  Well, more like not imposing their unrefined craft on people until it had been honed.  As a young guitar player, I’d sit in my room for hours listening to music and trying to play along.  I think I did that all the way through college even though I was playing in a band (for pay!) by then.  It wasn’t just about learning to play – I knew how to do that after a while.  It was about getting better, internalizing the actions my fingers would take on the fretboard so they’d happen without thought.  The goal was to let my brain hear what I wanted to play and for my fingers to play it, almost like walking or breathing.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the 10,000 hour rule.  While “Outliers” may have popularized it, the concept can be traced back to a 1993 paper written by Anders Ericsson, a Professor at the University of Colorado, called The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance.  The notion is that “many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 years”.  But Gladwell (“Outliers”) oversimplified the concept and ignored the fact that talent has something to do with the progress one makes.  You can practice all you want and you might get better, but the true elite at an activity generally have some natural gifts that are brought out and improved by all the practice.

Why this thought today?  Sometimes when I encounter a young businessperson they ask about how to grow:  improve their skill set, learn more, make better decisions. We talk about woodshedding and the fact that a musician plays something wrong the first dozen times but eventually learns it.  Making mistakes – playing it wrong – is an important part of the process.  So are the hours you put in practicing.  In business terms that can mean reading books, going to seminars, or taking online courses to refine and grow.  You want to pick the right instrument too.  You must have some basic talent – if you are terrible at math and not detail-oriented, accounting might not be your best choice.

If you aren’t always practicing, you’re falling behind those competitors who are.  Your call.

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