"No one's born a good cook," says Samin Nosrat. "You have to learn and practice."
Nosrat, an Iranian-American chef who has done more for home cooking than maybe anyone in the past 10 years, didn't grow up like many other master chefs.
In fact, she only learned how to cook as an adult.
The mastermind behind Netflix's Salt Fat Acid Heat series, along with the author of the bestselling book by the same name, Nosrat's food philosophy is both an inspiration and has implications for life outside the kitchen, I think.
"A long time ago, cooking and working in food stopped being about food for me, and it’s been about people, and I feel now like I have to really hold myself to task for what I’m trying to convey with my work—does it really matter? Can food make a difference?" she explained in a New Yorker Q&A.
That purpose for why she cooks got me to start thinking about what else Nosrat had to teach me about how we work and lead, as well.
Lesson 1: Screwing up is a lot easier when you understand your purpose
Nosrat's love for food and what it represents made me rethink my own. I thought about the times when my family felt like, well, a family and how food played an integral part in those moments. Seeing food as less a conduit for consumption, and more a bridge to community helped me actually put my focus into both learning and making dishes that I was proud to put in front of others. Previously, when I made a mistake and used a wrong ingredient or created something that tasted like trash, I'd be disappointed. Now, I see it much more as an opportunity to reflect on what led me to make that mistake in the first place. As a result, I'm less likely to repeat it.
It made me think how often we take our, and our people's, purpose for doing something for granted. Asking ourselves, "Why is this important to me, based on my own values?" And asking others, "Why is accomplishing this outcome important to you, based on your own values?" is a powerful, simple prompt that creates a much deeper well of motivation than simply plodding ahead into a project or task.
Lesson 2: Know when to follow the rules ... and when not to
I've had three phases of learning more about cooking. Phase 1: Use the recipes as guidelines to ignore if I felt like it. Phase 2: Follow each step so precisely that all room for creativity was thrown out the window. Phase 3: Start to realize when to be precise and when to improvise.
Now, I've come to realize when to follow the rules (e.g., baking) and when you can be creative (e.g., making soup). Joy in cooking for me, a novice at best, is in intentionally planning when, within a meal and across a week, there will be opportunities for both.
That stands true for the people we lead, too.
When are we providing opportunities for them to determine their own pathways to achieving the outcomes they're responsible for? And, when are we providing a clearer path for them to follow? How can we be more explicit and intentional in communicating with them when we're in one of those scenarios and when we're in the other?
That clarity is likely to breed more experimentation and innovation from them, as they are clear on the difference between the situations, rather than having to guess on their own.
Lesson 3: Pilot on a micro scale
Cooking is about experimentation. That's how we learn. The problem is, too often, we test too big or too small. We make a change to an entire dish, and it becomes unrecoverable. Or, we cook with our tail between our legs making only the slightest of adjustments, scared to fail at the risk of screwing up an entire dish.
Instead, Nosrat taught me to make changes on a small scale. Season a spoonful, taste it, adjust, and then season something larger. Not only do we make our dishes better, we learn things along the way.
When we think about piloting at work, we think of all the people, the resources, and the time required to make it worth our while. Nosrat, I think, would tell us to get over ourselves.
What's the smallest way to test a new product, idea, or method? It's much smaller than you and I realize. Shrink the pilot, and guess what? It also becomes a lot easier to run more of them without a lot of resources.
How fun would it be to work on a team where each month, every member of the team had to run, no matter how small, a micro pilot of an idea or concept? And then, monthly, get to share the learnings together as a team and decide which to continue to evolve? That's a team I'd love to be on.
Lesson 4: Understand the context you're in to contribute more effectively
A surefire way to ruin a dish is to start substituting ingredients that don't belong in that cuisine. Each culture's cuisines, through generations, have been carefully curated, resulting in the spices, protein, vegetables, and fat pairings that have made it to the present era. Yet, too often, we fail to appreciate that legacy and context.
Once you understand the palate you're working toward, it becomes a lot easier to start to see how a Lebanese cook, like my wife's grandmother, can cook without a recipe, make something delicious each time, and in so doing, celebrate the flavor combinations she grew up learning.
As leaders working with clients or supporting others to achieve goals, we fall into this trap, as well: We come in with preconceived notions of what might work and how to accomplish goals without fully understanding the environment we're working within, the culture that has contributed to that environment, and the people who have helped shaped that culture. As a result, our approaches fall flat, overlook some important connection that we should have seen, or don't fully address the root cause of an issue we're trying to tackle.
Before starting a project, asking ourselves, "What do I already know about this context? What do I need to know? Who can I talk to and what research can I do to find out?" sets us up to engage more meaningfully with a level of appreciation and care for the history, culture, and context we're working in.
Nosrat writes in her introduction, "This book will change the way you think about cooking and eating."
I'd make just one revision: And "leading," too.
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