Zak Boisvert recently emphasized specialization and referenced Master Chef Thomas Keller. Keller operates "The French Laundry," a Michelin 3-Star restaurant. He masters "precision cooking" with exact quantities, tools of refinement, and cook times. He's also a sports fan. For example, if he calls for a new "baseball," he's asking for a clean towel.
He learned the discipline starting as a dishwasher in his mother's restaurant. His six principles work well for business and coaching.
Organization. Keller learned interdependence in a restaurant, as the bar and service depend on availability of glassware, dishes and silverware.
Coaching organization includes multiple facets:
- Building a system that works through people, strategy, and operations
- Practice planning
- Use of technology (video, Internet, analytics)
Doing the "grunt work" counts at every level.
Efficiency. Keller knew that he needed a schedule to get the work done on time and done right. Dirty glasses and silverware mean unhappy guests or no service at all.
Efficiency demands time and resource management.
- High tempo operations are a must. Time never gets recaptured. No lines, laps, lectures
- Maximize use of limited resources combining offense, defense, conditioning.
- Define a balance among individual skill building, part (small-sided games), and whole
Critical Feedback. Keller wants to know not about the 84 happy guests that night, but what went wrong for the one unhappy guest.
Promote a "performance-focused, feedback-rich" environment for competitive advantage.
- Excellent players want to be coached. They thrive on Kaizen, continuous improvement.
- "Coaching is not criticism."
- Consider "sandwiching" corrections within praise. "You're working hard AND you can help better guarding "one and a half." Your toughness will pull you through."
Repetition. Making a memorable boiled egg or Hollandaise requires repetition. The chef's toque with a hundred folds represents skill at cooking eggs a hundred ways.
Repetition means not 500 shots but a perfect shot 500 times.
- "Repetitions make reputations."
- Coach Wooden preached EDIR5...explanation, demonstration, imitation, repetition times 5
- Repetition requires the will to to UNREQUIRED WORK.
Continuing Medical Education requires a hundred hours over a two-year cycle. I use the New England Journal of Medicine Knowledge Plus program. This is where I am over the past nine months. It combines repetition and ritual (habits).
Rituals. Keller starts each day with a pair of hard-boiled eggs, cooked precisely four minutes and finished with a dollop of olive oil and salt.
Define winning habits. "We make our habits and our habits make us."
- Win the morning with your ritual. Publishing this blog is one of mine, as is MasterClass, and mindfulness (Headspace).
- Zak Boisvert suggests we devote regular time to film study.
- In Atomic Habits James Clear lays out a plan to harden good habits and disqualify bad ones. He lays out his workout gear in advance and triggers it by closing his computer at a specific time.
Teamwork. Keller's restaurants thrive with sous-chefs, cooks, servers, and environmental service.
While the magic in the work, greatness follows teamwork.
- Coach Wooden said, "Happiness begins where selfishness ends."
- The best players are the best by making their teammates better.
- We become the teammate we choose to be. We make the magic happen.
Lagniappe: recently I got the best "dough rise" (proofing) making cinnamon rolls. What was different? "It's alive." Yeast is alive. This time I used the "tool of refinement" of a candy thermometer, adding the yeast to the water and warm milk only when it had cooled to 110 degrees. The dough tripled in size over ninety minutes.
The culture we foster, words we use, and principles we share are our tools of refinement along with conditioning, drills, and time.
Lagniappe 2:
