My knives are dull … maybe they need sharpening …?

“This won’t last, just like all the other flavors of the month” … how often do we hear that phrase? I believe that we hear it far too often. It ranks up there with “we tried that before and it didn’t work.” Both are often employed as shields or excuses for not implementing change or putting a new lens on the world. Why do these programs and efforts suffer the indignities of such pejoratives? There is little doubt that they all appear on the scene, and they gather momentum because they actually work for most, then diminish in enthusiasm and perceptions of value. Then, we bury or shelve the “flavors”, mourn or sigh, then shift our focus to buy the next.  How many golfers are forever chasing a better game with newer clubs?

My very favorite activity is cooking. I can’t really call it a hobby, and it is far too much work to make a profession. Cooking has kept my attention for a long time, so it won’t qualify as a fad or temporal flavor. My love for cooking is well known to family, many friends, colleagues, and business relationships because many of us have shared great experiences between the kitchen and the dining table. Some of these folks might kindly say that the food was pretty good. It’s been enough to prod me on for more.

For today, we’ll turn our focus on the ones away from the home kitchen and to the meals when I travel. There are a few things worth noting about these shared culinary experiences:

·       The majority of these experiences have taken place in kitchens I had never seen before, with the tools and appliances that were available. The range of differences has been extensive. We’ve done these with small kitchens in Brazil and England to a dreamy TV show quality layouts facing a golf course. We’ve done it with a kitchen comprising only two electric burners and a tiny oven to a kitchen with state-of-the-art gas units, multiple ovens and extensive space. The assortment of cookware, tools and stock in pantries had even more variation.

·       The menu had to be adapted and tailored to what I found available, interesting and fresh at the local market and to accommodate special needs of participants. Always ask…

·       The meals were usually four to five different courses or dishes.

·       Assistance was welcome, commensurate with skills and enthusiasm. Safety and safe behavior in “my” kitchen were absolutes and not negotiable. If participants crossed into the kitchen it was to work. This was not like military school, but a consequence of many years on the road with customers whose values and behaviors taught me the primacy of safety. These friends, particularly from Bechtel and BHP Billiton, remain examples, gave me a different lens, allowed to truly see.

·       The food had to come out on time and in the proper sequence, when appropriate.

·       In many instances, wine was paired with the meals. On one unforgettable occasion, the host has the most enviable wine inventory I have experienced and a lovely spouse who kept it all working like a Food Channel show.

·       We had one fun evening using the kitchen, barbeques and outdoor fryers (inside and outside in a two story home) with the guests doing all of the cooking and our chef’s team preparing the components, me moving about, supervising and keeping the gang on track.

·       There was no room for excuses, high investment in preparation, and execution was fast paced. After all, the food is all about the eating experience, not about the cooking, or the cooks. Knives needed sharpening, pans had more than one cycle of use, and multiple techniques were applied to fit the circumstances.

·       All of the recipes are my own and I don’t measure ingredients. Well, I do, but without measuring tools.

All of this has nothing to do with my cooking, but rather the level of investment in knowledge, methods, tools and skills and their application across unpredictable conditions and environments. These have all come over many years and none have come without a high degree of personal passion.

So, let’s leave the food, cooking, and kitchens, since they serve as a metaphor for preparation, execution, delivering results and memorable experiences to our customers and returns to our investors. I believe it has even more to do with the level of personal passion we bring to what we do. There are priceless capabilities that came and went, not because they could not work ….. They may have been abandoned because they demanded focus, discipline and follow-through. Our enterprises demand no less from us.

We could go on with a stream of analogies, but I believe we have the point. We are all fulfilling roles in our enterprise kitchens. Most of the knives in the kitchen will work, that is, if we sharpen them and learn how to use them.

So, what’s cooking?