Make excellence our unifying theme. I'm a huge fan of MasterClass, which shares the process and mastery of luminaries in many fields. Steph Curry teaches basketball, Bob Woodward investigative journalism, Steve Martin comedy, Chris Hadfield space exploration, and so on. Wolfgang Puck shares his story.
What shapes a master? Wolfgang Puck grew up poor in Austria, without television or telephone. Failing in an internship in a hotel kitchen, he almost washed out and considered the unthinkable. But he came back and got a mentor in Raymond Thuilier at L’Oustau de Baumanière in
Provence. He worked his way up through Maxim's in Paris to Ma Maison (in LA), eventually starting his own restaurant, Spago. He persisted.
But he took a different direction from high-end French, cooking local, fresh ingredients, perhaps founding "California Cuisine." He chose unconventional, with an 'open kitchen' and took risks with an innovative menu like duck sausage pizza (above). His open kitchen allows customers to see the food prepared and Puck to oversee the workflow from the kitchen. The rest is history.
Puck prioritized the quality of the ingredients, the taste of the food, and the customer experience. He mingled with the guests...who might include Madonna or Prince.
There's an easy analogy here. Wolfgang's journey parallels ours. We develop the players, the basketball, and team culture and the player experience. Basketball at a high level is conversation and collaboration. There's no cookie cutter and we can turn good resources into dreck or local, fresh ingredients into art. Everyone won't enjoy each dish, but nobody should question how hard we're going after it.
Lagniappe:
It's not as simple as family. High performance teams have highly conditional operations. You get love by doing the right things...with profound trust.
Lagniappe 2: Mental Model (Criticality)
Criticality occurs when materials reach the point where their state changes. That might include water boiling to become steam, mass for nuclear fission, or spontaneous combustion of oily rags as they oxidize and release heat. In a team sport, a critical mass of talent might inform championship play. A critical mass of dysfunction might effect chaos.
Lagniappe 3: Wolfgang Puck's Business Philosophy (MasterClass, Chapter 14)
Risk. He enjoys taking intelligent risk. "Get great ingredients and don't F* it up."
Creativity. Execution isn't enough in most businesses.
Experience. Leverage your experience. In his 34th year at Spago LA, they had their most successful year ever.
Evolution. You have to change and always work to improve.
Inspire. Food inspires him. In the restaurant, he has to inspire everyone from the staff to the customers. Give people an adventure.
Learn. He's learning how to cook new dishes, new food cultures to this day. He discussed modifying Chinese pancakes with the addition of scallions.
Be willing to succeed or fail (His brewery/restaurant failed.) At QVC his cookware failed, but he was a huge success at HSN.
Find balance. Your work cannot be your whole life. He hopes on his tombstone it reads, "he was a great father."
