I’ve been a fan of the reality cooking show “Top Chef” for a long time. I just happened to hear the head judge, Tom Colicchio, being interviewed on a podcast, and he was fascinating.
One question he was asked was, “What separates a good home cook from a chef?” As I expected, Colicchio had great thoughts about this, and part of his answer really got to the heart of what many of my clients have been challenged by lately.
Colicchio explained that the word “chef” doesn’t mean “cook,” it means “boss.” The chef of a restaurant is in charge of everything from creating the menu to hiring the cooks to deciding where to source produce and who’s going to launder the tablecloths. The chef creates the system by which all the work gets done so that when you sit down and order your meal, every single element moves seamlessly to get it out to you. A home cook can be tremendous at making meals for a few people, but he will be out of his depth trying to run a professional kitchen.
A few of my clients have been cooks in the kitchen for a while, metaphorically speaking, and now they’re moving up to become chefs. It sounds good: get the promotion, get away from the hot stove, get the top job. But if you’re not making the food, it can be hard to know exactly what your role is. Where do I start? What’s the priority? Yesterday I was churning out pasta primavera, today I need to go over the P&L. How do I make this transition?
Ideally, of course, you’re not thrust into the top job with no preparation. But even if you’ve been building up to it, it can feel disconcerting to go from being a “doer” to being the person coordinating all the doing. It can even feel like you’re less valuable than you were, since you can’t measure your output as clearly as you could when you were a line cook.
If this feels familiar, if you’re transitioning from delivering work to coordinating work, and you’re not sure where you fit, think about the head chef. When all systems are humming along, she can visit the dining room, she can test out a new dish, or she can even take a turn cooking on the line for a little while if she feels like it. When she looks around, she knows she did all of this—with help, of course. She can delight many customers, provide work for many employees, and forge productive relationships in her community.
The line cook can point to the number of meals she turns out in a day to measure her impact, and that’s important. We can’t have the meals without line cooks.
The head chef has a longer road and many more variables to measure her impact. But we can’t have the restaurant without her systems, vision, coordination, and talent.
