Category: Leadership

Is your organization ready for change?

Curt ConklinLeave a comment

Almost every CEO has a moment where he points down at something in his company and asks, “why is that task there so damned difficult?” The answer to that “why” is almost always that he and his predecessors allowed it to happen.

But knowing something isn’t right is not enough to change it. Many of us have been part of failed technology implementations, watched change agents enthusiastically enter and then unceremoniously depart, and experienced consulting firms make a ton of noise while operational managers roll their eyes and do things the same old way.

Why is change so hard? Well, it is important to understand how dysfunction permeates in the first place. When a company is small, people just do things and everyone is cool. As companies grow, inefficient ad hoc systems develop around tasks that may allow them to be completed, but without design, consistency, or concern for efficiency. As a result, getting a ball from point A to point B in one department can be harder or just different in another department.  So, employees rely on something inherently human – interpersonal relationships. We engage our coworkers by seeking and doing favors. We build and spend personal capital. Work flows easily between friends and finds friction with everyone else. This naturally leads to cliques and departmentalism. This is a natural dynamic for people in groups and can work in a company as long as the place is stable.

But, oi, does it become a problem when a company is in growth or evolution mode. When new employees come in and want to make an impact, when the competition is taking advantage of a just out-of-reach opportunity, when clients are asking to have that week-long process reduced to an hour, the clamor for change can be distracting.

I think we all understand that enterprise solutions require effort from many disparate parts of the company (duh, it’s in the name), and that these changes often incur costs in one area that pay benefits in another.  Fixing things will likely require implementation of technology and automation, layoffs or hiring, new training, a focus on strict procedures when once there were none or conversely new authority for lower-level employees who previously had none, reduction of margins or product offerings. And even the firing of some clients. These things hurt, can cause disruption, and can send the wheels right off the train – if the foundation for change is not in place.

So, when is a company ready for change? Well, after 20 years of transformation management, dozens of successful transformations, and a few fails, I have devised a quick test to determine if a company is ready.  Simply put, successful change requires two of three criteria for foundational change. What are they? Ready? Here we go!

ONE – A solid transformational manager

This person will agnostically look at the problem, determine the possible solutions, and then be able to pick the one that will bring the most value to the Company. Of course, I am simplifying the design process, but that’s not the point of today’s post. This person will also work across the departments to make sure that everyone who is being asked to change their behavior understands and appreciates the changes before they are required. Again, I am simplifying the project management process, but this individual or team must be good at communicating shared common goals, and be willing to work, sleeves rolled up, with everyone in the company as a peer. I know l lot about this role, because this is what I do for a living.

TWO – Onboard VPs

The VP level department team is not dysfunctional. They respect and support the other managers at their level, they understand that things aren’t as good as they could be, they wish for improvement, they expect to be held accountable, and they accept that company-wide changes only work when managed independent of the associated departments. They also understand that increasing efficiency has a time and discomfort cost that each department – their department – will pay up front in return for benefits down the road. Ideally, these folks will not be territorial, but a little departmental pride is fine and unavoidable. What is important is that each one understands that the changes their group is making will benefit the whole company. It’s not the size of the slice; it’s the size of the pie that matters. A bigger pie means that ultimately everyone has more pizza. I really love that metaphor.

THREE – Executive Leadership

A CEO that is aligned and really wants to see his/her company run more efficiently. Transformation is disruptive. That is going to put strain on the executive. He/she will have to deal with interdepartmental friction, face tough revenue and expense choices, write unwanted checks, and get involved with project management in ways that he/she hasn’t been at their level. This is an important point. The transformation team may involve people from IT, accounting, and operations, but the project ownership must be independent of each department, else departmental loyalties will skew the outcome and ultimately derail the success of the project. Transformational projects must belong above the departments – and generally that means they belong to the CEO and C-Suite.

As I said, you need two of the above three. If you have a great transformation manager and an executive that wants this done, the CEO can force the middle managers to play ball and replace them if necessary. If the CEO and the VPs all agree that it needs to be done, they can make up for a poor transformation manager by assisting with design and buy in. And if the CEO hates change (multigenerational family-owned businesses), but the department heads know that something has to change, they can act as a buffer between the executive and the necessary disruption.

So, if your company is thinking about fixing all that is wrong, ask yourself if you have a CEO willing to lead the project, a team of departmental heads willing to share the friction even when the benefits are not even, and a transformation manager that will design the right solutions and work to ensure that everyone being asked to change believes they own that change.

As I have pointed out a few times above, this is a wild simplification, but the framework holds. If you have all three criteria, you are in great shape. If you have two, you stand a good chance of success, but if you only have one, you are better off spending that money on pizza.

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I read in colors …

Curt Conklin2 Comments

I am a synesthete, and I read in colors. There are many different types of synesthetes, all processing language through different parts of the brain. I process words through the color portion of my brain, specifically called grapheme–color synesthesia. For me every consonant has a different and unique color. Vowels do not have color, and are on the black/white spectrum instead – with the exception of U and Y which are almond and yellow respectively.

So when I experience a word, or more interestingly a name, I visualize a Pantone palette – a series of uniform shapes each with its own color side-by-side. But because the visualization is momentary, the color is blended into a single spectral entity, very much like many letters forming a single word.

For example, my name, C U R T, corresponds to red, almond, purple, orange, and visualizes like a campfire. I met a woman this morning named Jenna, whose name visualizes like a flowery meadow on a dry summer day: goldenrod, light gray, granny smith green, granny smith green, white. The colors don’t really have names in my brain, but for the sake of this explanation, I am using the familiar names from the Crayola 64 box that most people understand.

My name is a campfire. Message me if you want to know what yours is.

Now both CURT and JENNA would appear differently in the mind of another color synesthete. I see a C as red and J as goldenrod, but someone else with the same condition would have developed different patterns and might see a C as purple and J as green – or any other combination. Furthermore, I have yet to find documentation that anyone else breaks the nouns off the color wheel like I do.

But why?

A search of my memory offers few clues. I remember that it was important to me as a child. It probably goes back as far as my first words or exposure to Sesame Street (weren’t the letters on Sesame Street always colored?). It wasn’t something that I talked about with my teachers or that I assumed I did differently than my peers. It was just the color of the letters. Duh.

I can only speculate. I was a very good drawer as a child and would prefer crayons and Legos over a ball or a squirt gun. Maybe a connection? Or perhaps, I suffered from some sort of dyslexia, and this was my learning mind’s method of compensation (I am inexplicably incapable of telling my right from my left). But whatever the reason, I am now aware that this is the way I learned, and it does make me unique.

As the years passed, and I became a strong reader, this was no longer needed and forgotten. It wasn’t until I was at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management in the early 2000s that I told someone about it for the first time. I remember we were socializing, probably over beers. I brought it up as something mildly interesting that I had lost from my childhood.

The next time we were together, one of the women from that conversation, pulled me aside and said, “dude, that’s a thing!” I was stunned that it was documented and even had a name. I had never had a conversation with anyone about it. But as soon as it returned to my consciousness, all those colors started to light up again. Today, they are as bright and consistent as they were when I was in grammar school. It’s also a great party trick!

But still why?

My takeaway is that for all the ways we can imagine our fellow humans are similar, there are even more ways that we are different including some that we have yet to imagine. I keep this in mind as I ask my teammates to learn new things. Each has the potential to get there even if they all take their own unique path.

If you would like to know what your name looks like to me, send me a message with your first name and I will get back to you.

When Water Cooler Chat goes Wrong

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Complaining is not the same as being productive

One message I have always been careful to deliver to my employees is that complaining about work is not the same as being productive at work. One might find, with a group of like-minded colleagues, a willing audience to discuss things that could be improved. We have all worked someplace where we have encountered bureaucratic headaches, difficult team-members, unfulfilling career paths, and perceived lack of executive vision. Talking about these things can feel encouraging and allow one to walk away feeling like something has gotten done. But it is important to remember that in truth, nothing has been done. The discussion may feel good, but it is not the same as implementing a solution, increasing revenue, or decreasing costs. 

Worse yet, when employees feel that this behavior is productive, they tend to do it more and encourage it in others. This increases the amount of complaining, decreases the amount of work accomplished, and results in a downward spiral of productivity and ultimately morale.

 It is a manager’s job to prevent this from happening. The first thing one can do is promote an open-door policy. That is to say that the door is always open to criticism, ideas for improvement, and career concerns. Transparency is always a positive thing, and very often ideas are spot on and come with justifications that can help raise them up the flagpole. Secondly, it is important to remind employees that complaining about things to other employees before they have been elevated to those who can act upon them is not only unproductive, but it is unacceptable. This may sound harsh, but it is not. Every company has the responsibility to control its own culture. Organizations have the same right to forbid employer-focused complaining as they do to prevent sexually harassing speech.

But that authority does not have to lead to an authoritarian relationship. When employees know that the things that bug them, the things they want to improve, and their ideas for a better workplace are landing on the welcome ears of an interested manager, the need to complain at the water cooler will be naturally mitigated. 

Getting the Most Out of Your Sales Team (4 of 4)

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Putting what we can control into practice

In this series, we have been talking about getting the most out of your sales team by establishing common goals, directing all things that have an impact in the same direction, and holding everyone accountable. In this segment, I am going to list how these tools can be used on a daily and weekly basis to affect behavior in the desired direction. These are just examples, and you should riff on them in your own way. The important thing is to remain consistent in communication and action. If there is a shared goal out there, do everything in your power to make it known and to get your team to reach it. Oh, and you haven’t established your shared goal, then you aren’t doing your job.

All guns pointed in the same direction will get the job done.
  • Clearly define and publish the company objective – the shared common goal.
  • Management needs to talk about the shared objective at every opportunity.
  • Set expectations that individual effort on this goal is expected every week
  • In weekly sales meeting, openly ask each salesperson if they have made progress and expect a “yes”
  • Be prepared to set activity quotas around the goal
  • Recognize that sometimes salespersons are going to make up stuff to fulfill the request – and that’s OK. Everyone recognizes BS when they hear it, and that awkwardness that follows is an incentive to try harder next week. But no one will know if the question isn’t asked. So, ask the questions and suffer the awkward.
  • Establish honest dialog with everyone regarding the quality of their efforts – call BS when appropriate.
  • Kindly draw attention to failings and work with the individual to avoid them in the future
  • Congratulate BDMs who find great new prospects early
  • Ask the successful BDMs to share how they are succeeding and use that to train
  • Make sure all obstacles to this goal are being removed – remove friction from the sales process. If the salesman’s credo is ABC, the sales manager’s is ABRF (always be removing friction).
  • Make sure responsibility comes with authority. Empower your salespeople to negotiate on their own. Ensure they know the product and pricing parameters. It is often good for a process to say, “I have gone as low as I can, but I want to make this work so let me see if I can get my manager on board.” But it is bad for the process when the client feels the salesperson doesn’t have the authority to negotiate to a close. It’s a subtle difference.
  • Purchase the tools they need to allow them to hit their objectives. If you have a lot of SKUs, purchase and configure a pricing tool from your CRM provider (back to ABRF). If your team need leads, research lead sources, and buy the list most likely to bear fruit.
  • Let them control their method, but always be available to assist
  • Hold them accountable
  • Help your sales team expand their network. There are always more prospective clients to meet. Let them use your person network, or encourage them to join new clubs, groups, or join a charity board.

And everything else you can think of! When shared objectives are clear, identifying ROI on an investment that furthers that goal is an easy task. Spend what you need, support your team, hold them accountable, and keep all the guns pointed in the same direction. If the shared goal is achievable, this is the best, fastest, and most positive way to reach it.

Knowing is not enough, we must apply.
Willing is not enough, we must do.

Bruce Lee

I hope you have enjoyed this post. Make sure you read the ones that accompany it, and please use the comments to tell me what you think or to share your experiences.

Getting the Most Out of Your Sales Team (3 of 4)

Curt Conklin1 Comment

Understand what is not in your control

In this series, we have been talking about getting the most out of your sales team by directing all things that have an impact in the same direction. But it is also important to know what is not in our control and not waste energy or sleep over it. Broadly speaking, things outside of our control, belong internally to a person and are developed and influenced outside of the organization. Here are my top five.

When things are outside of your control, accept it and work around them.
  • Feelings: Everyone is responsible for their own feelings. Some people are more susceptible than others to outside stimulus, but there is no standard. You as a manager should not worry whether a team member is happy, sad, angry or remorseful. Your job is to deliver information honestly and treat them fairly. Furthermore, sometimes people are not happy in general. That doesn’t mean they can’t be a great at sales. A top producer can be going through a divorce and still be excellent at opening doors and closing. As managers, we want everyone on our team to find their happiness, but that is out of our control and not something to worry about.
  • Productivity: Some folks are super productive, and some aren’t. You will always have a spectrum on your team. Productivity tools may improve everyone’s performance, but they will not eliminate the gap between the most and least productive. As they say, a rising tide raises all boats.
  • Motivation: As with productivity, some people are motivated, and some aren’t. Sometimes motivated people go through periods when they are not motivated. You never know what is going on in a team members head. What you do know however is that if you are honest with them, set their goals fairly, and give them eth tools they need, they will get there or suffer the consequences.
  • Philosophy: As I mentioned above, you can’t get into your team members’ heads, and you certainly can’t change what’s there. So don’t even try. You can lead by example, you can make sure they have what they need, but the way they think about sales is up to them.
  • The ability to mind read: Manager’s simply cannot hold people accountable for things that are not articulated clearly. If you aren’t getting what you want, ask yourself if your requests have been delivered in precise, honest language.

An important note: The one-time sales managers do have control over these things is during the hiring process. In an interview we can search for those who think the way we want and pass on those who think differently. So, make sure you identify the traits you value and craft interview questions that will shed light on personality traits important to you and your organization. This is a good time to review your company’s Core Values.

I hope you have enjoyed this post. Make sure you read the ones that accompany it, and please use the comments to tell me what you think or to share your experiences. In tomorrow’s post, the final in this series, I will share examples of putting all these tools into practice.

Getting the Most Out of Your Sales Team (2 of 4)

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Core values are the most powerful tools in your belt

In this series, we are talking about getting the most out of your sales team by establishing common goals, pointing all things that have an impact in the same direction, and holding everyone accountable. But when we talk about everything pointing in the same direction, a few of the things in our control have special significance. These are your most powerful tools.

Shared goals. They can take many forms including account growth, retention, speed of closing, and new business development. I liken these to the Eiffel tower, a destination in the distance that we can always lift our head up and see to ensure we are heading in the right direction. But they are also powerful motivating tools. We all know that sales guys are competitive and will strive to maximize their performance. However, what makes a professional athlete happier, achieving his personal best or winning the championship. Andre Dawson won the MVP in 1989 while playing for the last place Cubs, but he would trade that award for a World Series Ring in a heartbeat. Fortunately, being part of a team chasing a shared objective allows individuals to follow their personal interest and participate in the excitement of team victories.

Honesty as a Core Value. When you are not honest with your staff, they know immediately, and they create a narrative as to why you are lying. These explanations often veer towards the extreme and lead to speculation about impending lay-offs, interpersonal affairs or loathing, or illegal activities. Always answer honestly, and if there is something that is proprietary to the executive team, just say that isn’t something we are talking about right now if asked.

Consistency. Advancing from a manager to a leader is hard and one of the things it requires is consistency of message. All the things I talked about yesterday (concepts) and will talk about on Friday (examples) need to be done every day – and many times every day. If there is a shared common goal (and there always should be), it should lead and end every discussion you have with your team. You will hold your people accountable if you want to succeed, but you will also do it all the time – privately and in front of the team. Everyone must know that what you expect of them is the same thing they can expect of their peers.

I am a big fan of Core Values having experienced how powerful they are when brought to a team that was working without them and over time I may add to this list.

I hope you have enjoyed this post. Make sure you read the ones that accompany it, and please use the comments to tell me what you think or to share your experiences. In tomorrow’s post, I will talk about the pitfalls managers encounter when they try to control things over which they haven’t any power.

Getting the Most Out of Your Sales Team (1 of 4)

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Pointing all your guns in the same direction

Getting the most out of a sales team can be a struggle. Even the best salespeople struggle to open doors even when qualified leads are presented. And management teams know that successfully incenting behavioral changes can be an elusive goal. Still some teams seem to get it right, and those that do almost always follow the same two simple principles.

When I talk about guns, i am doing so metaphorically. Still, this image is cool.
  • They ensure that BDMs have all the tools required to be successful
  • They hold each salesperson responsible for the achievement of assigned goals

We all understand the concept of accountability, even if sometimes we have a hard time delivering on it. But what on earth is “tools required”? It’s more than a CRM, or an targeted comp structure but those things are on the list. The actual list of tools required is EVERYTHING we, as managers, have at our disposal to influence behavior in a desired direction. And when all are lined up, behavior is guided salespersons are better prepared, and holding people accountable becomes much easier.

What is in our control?

The list of everything can be long, but here is the top dozen:

  • Shared Common Goals – the single most powerful tool at a manager’s disposal. More on this later.
  • Compensation – a program which favors the behavior we desire and penalizes all others.
  • Incentives – perks which support the behavior we desire in a nonmonetary way.
  • Reprimands – pointing out (privately for god’s sake) when an employee does not live up to expectations.
  • Culture – one that is psychologically safe and encourages sharing and ideation. It is the size of the pie that matters, not the size of the slice! When the pie grows, everyone’s slice can grow also.
  • Training – Ensuring the team has all the skills needed to hit their goals.
  • Process – process removes confusion from sales and allows greater focus on the relationship.
  • Tools – CRMs, Pricing tools, technology, fashion consultants – whatever they need to maximize their efficiency and eliminate friction.
  • Performance measurement – count everything and show it over time and relative to success.
  • Core values – This is 50% of why people stay or leave. The trinity of Trust, Honesty, and Accountability is a good start. More on this tomorrow.
  • Reinforcement – When someone does a great job, let it be known!
  • Expectations – Salespeople will pursue exactly the goals they are given. When management is clear and desired numbers are written, incentives align.

If the world wants the product you sell, and all guns are pointing in the same direction, the team will hit its target.

I hope you have enjoyed this post. Make sure you read the ones that accompany it, and please use the comments to tell me what you think or to share your experiences. In tomorrow’s post, I will talk about a couple of the items on this list that have significant power.

This Conservative Agrees Gun Laws Need Change

Curt Conklin3 Comments

I have described myself as a right leaning centrist and even used to call this blog a commonsense conservative. During the Trump era, conservatives moved to the right in a way that made me uncomfortable with that title, and I changed the name to what you see here, the card-carrying centrist. It was not intended to signal a change of positions – until today.

Gun culture as a hobby should be supported with members certified as capable of managing the associated responsibilities.

In all my years writing and thinking about politics and policy, I have stayed away from second amendment issues. I was not raised in a gun culture home and went shooting a few times and really hated it. Guns never found an exciting spot in my imagination. That being said, my position as a commonsense conservative often put me in discussion with second amendment proponents and in general, I supported their positions. Unlike a lot of other controversial issues, gun rights are clearly mentioned in the constitution, and that carried a lot of weight for me. I also noted that the places with the toughest gun laws, like Chicago, also had the highest instances of gun violence leading me to conclude that gun control laws hurt the good guys and did nothing to stop the bad guys.

Well, let me tell you dear readers, my opinion has changed. Following three mass shooting in the last two weeks, we need to take some serious action to reduce the easy availability of guns – particularly to young and mentally troubled people. There are a number of steps that make sense and I recommend all of them as listed below.

First, background checks need to be intense. It should be harder to own a gun than it is to drive a car. In addition to mental health and criminal records, a gun license application should require interviews or letters of recommendation confirming that the applicant is capable of responsible gun ownership. As a friend said about the Uvalde shooting Tuesday, “Somebody in that dude’s family knew that him having a gun was a bad idea.” We have to try to unearth those sources before handing out weapons.

Second, there needs to be a waiting period between the time that someone seeks to buy a gun and they receive a gun. It should be fairly long, like a month, it should be publicly disclosed, and the public should be invited to weigh in on the application. This would not mean that only popular people could own guns. Concerns would be vetted by qualified civil servants, only valid ones would be considered, lies would be removed, and perpetrators of harassment would be prosecuted.

I will suggest that these first two changes would be more successful than the existing red flag laws which have been demonstrated to be unreliable.

Third. No one under 21 can get a gun. You can’t legally drink a beer until you are 21. We all know that law exists because teenagers’ fearlessness, hormones, and inexperience lead them to do stupid things. Same here.  

Fourth. No more assault weapons in homes – automatic or otherwise. I am not saying you can’t own them. I respect the rights of collectors. However, they must be stored in a licensed and regulated gun club, kept under lock and key, and accessed only within the property of that establishment. Honestly, I think it would be cool to own a howitzer, but it would be even cooler if it came with someplace to shoot it.

Fifth. No more gun shows – or at least as they exist today. If you want to go to a convention center, look at guns, place some orders, and experience some controlled shooting, newly designed gun shows would be the perfect place for that. But if you order a gun there, you have to have a license, wait for 30 days, have your application published online, and – if it is an assault weapon – have it shipped to the gun club where you are a member. Vendors who violate the regulations go to jail.

Finally, all these things would dramatically increase the cost of gun licensure and that’s OK. Government taxes people all the time. People in many states pay $1,000 per year in taxes and fees just to drive to work. There is no reason a starting gun license can’t cost $1,000 per year.

None of these things would prevent gun lovers from the joy they find in their hobby. But they would help to ensure that guns are not used against society. I remember a discussion I had with an anti-gun mom a few years ago. She argued that government should “just do something, anything – even if it is ineffective nonsense – just to show that the issue isn’t being ignored.” I disagreed with that argument, and I still do. Laws must be effective and few. Smaller government and fewer laws are good in general. But gun control is an area where we need more and toothier laws quickly. I don’t want to again experience the pit in my stomach that has been there the last few weeks.

When organizational hierarchy matters

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I have always believed in a flat organization. I have managed big teams in high pressure situations when a positive outcome is not guaranteed. Information is capital and it is my experience that individuals will respond well when everyone starts with same amount of it. When everyone knows the challenges as well as the stakes, they head off in the same direction, and they work as a team. And it doesn’t stop there. When flat hierarchy and open dialog are core values, when they become habit, cohesion can be maintained indefinitely.

Yet hierarchy-refusal can be taken too far, as I once learned. I was so once committed to a flat structure, that, I decided no one on my team would have any title. For reasons outlined above, this seemed like the right thing to do until one of them pointed out, that for all my horizontal preaching, the organization wasn’t flat. There was one person on the team that had a hierarchical title – me. When I looked at my business card, I realized how disingenuous I had been. But I also realized how much I liked my title. It had been given to me by my boss and it meant something.

It’s weird, hierarchy is important outside the office. It is a yardstick that tells the world how far one has come. Titles open doors, impress the ladies (or men), lead to greater sales, and can ensure a better salary at the next job. But teams work best when hierarchy is eliminated inside the office. People can make different amounts of money, have different skills, and have different words on their business cards, but when in the office, when part of that team, everyone is held to the same standard, everyone is expected to work hard, and everyone is expected to do everything they can to ensures the success of their teammates.

The Day I Was Chef

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On about a decade ago, I received a day in Charlie Trotter’s kitchen as a gift from some friends. They had purchased it for me at a charity auction. I like to cook for my friends and do so often. I also worked in restaurants through my teens and college so I have nearly a decade’s experience at the prep and line level. As far as home cooks go, I consider myself a pretty good one, but by no yardstick a chef.

Charlie Trotter’s, if you do not know, was – maybe still is – one of the most important restaurants in culinary history. Following Alice Water’s legendary focus on highest quality dill for salmon and chocolate for cakes, Charlie Trotter blew it up by putting the chocolate on the salmon. Chicagoans were lucky that he built his practice in Chicago. His was the spear tip that drove culinary innovation. His protégés sparked countless award-winning restaurants and turned Chicago into one of the finest restaurant cities in the world.

More purple, damnit!

By the time of this story, these kitchen certificates were standard fare and had been given to charities for years. They were more special to the recipient and less expensive for the restaurant than a gift certificate. Hundreds had gone before me, and the program was well established. I was greeted at the door by the sommelier and escorted into the secondary dining room where lunch was awaiting me. He explained the day which included some time in the kitchen, the pre-shift meeting with the manager and servers, some front-of-the-house time, and some other experiential but out-of-the-way activities. He also asked about my expectations. I told him I wanted to experience the true Charlie Trotter’s working environment. “How are your knife skills?” he asked. “Pretty good, I think, but you can be the judge.” With that I was sent down to change into my awaiting restaurant-supplied whites.

The kitchen was abustle when I entered. Bright lights, colorful ingredients, and a dozen rapidly moving chefs gave the room a magical intensity. I was set-up on a prep table and handed 2 dozen sous-vide artichoke hearts. I was instructed to quarter them and carve each part into the shape of a flamingo – the choke making a colorful beak. I’m sorry what? The chef picked one up, pulled a raptor knife from his pocket, and with one deft slice, turned the vegetable into a bird.

I wasn’t deft but I figured it out. I guess I did a passable job, because when I was finished, they let me stay. Next came in an overflowing tray of morels. You could have bought a used car with what these mushrooms were worth. I cleaned and cored them for maybe an hour. “Next?’ I inquired?  Out came 4 flats of strawberries – each to be cored, cut in half, and then sliced onto 32 equally thick pieces, which would then be added to the maceration solution. On this task I spent the next two hours.

Another give-back that Charlie Trotter created was a program that hired inner-city high-school kids to work in the kitchen. They cleaned, prepped food, and assisted the chefs. I am sure that many of them went on to successful careers in the culinary industry. I wish I remembered the name of the fellow in this roll the day I was there, because he is important to this story but for that I apologize. We had been working side by side for a while, chopping away, when he referred to me as “Chef Curt.” I chuckled humbly and informed him that I was just renting the spot for the day and a chef by no means. For the first time that day, he stopped moving, looked straight into my eyes and asked me, “are you working in Chef Charlie Trotter’s kitchen today or not?” I agreed I was, and he informed me, “then today you are Chef.” This soon turned out to be truer than I could have imagined.

I had been working at the team’s disposal for so long – and perhaps so quietly – that the front-of-the-house staff forgot I was there. I missed the pre-opening meeting and the shift meal with the wait staff. In fact, by the time I proudly lifted my head from that glorious vat of liquifying strawberries, the kitchen was buzzing in a whole different way. I ventured to the front of the room and found a safe place to observe. Dinner had started and the staff had moved to their action positions around the line. Well-dressed waiters were coming in, grabbing plates, wiping the edges, and heading out. Charlie had not yet arrived, but the chef in front, likely the sous chef, controlled the room like a conductor directing an orchestra. There was commotion, but also a sense of forced, busy quiet.

As entrees started going out, the appetizer dishes started to pile up. I noticed with interest that there was not person assigned as dishwasher.  This organization was so flat that every chef was expected to do everything of which he was capable. I also noted that the institutional dishwasher was a brand I recognized from my own high-school restaurant days. It was many decades newer but worked basically the same. I set to work rinsing the plates, placing them in the racks, opening the door, running the machine, and removing them to airdry. The process took about 60 seconds per load. I had no idea where they went, so I just stacked the dishes on the counter and prepared the next load. After about 10 minutes of this, I heard a sharp request. “Chef Curt! Did anyone tell you to wash those dishes?” “No sir” I replied, “but I know the machine and figured I would help.” “Chef Curt,” he now ordered, “I need you behind the line at the sauté station!”

“More caviar! No we can’t charge them for more, we just do it! That’s what we do, the right thing. Anything less would not be enough!” 

World Famous Chef Homaro Cantu quoting Charlie Trotter

You want some context? Imagine, you are sitting at Wrigley Field in some hard-won front row seats. Anthony Rizzo has been yanked, and David Ross approaches you and tells you that you are needed at first base – right now! My job was sautéing salmon – four to six pans at a time, moving between them, ensuring that none stick, and flipping when ready. Once to temperature (no thermometer, you tell with a touch), they were plated and garnished. I was getting along surprisingly competently when Chef Trotter arrived and asked what I was doing there. I learned later that in all the years of the charity certificate, I was the only recipient who had ever received this honor. I was sprinkling brightly colored flowers across a plate while I introduced myself, and he responded with, “well, welcome, now, damnit, more purple!” I absolutely beamed.

This is one of my favorite stories and not without lesson. The whole day turned with an earnest and insightful request from a teenager that I reconsider how I view myself. I had hoped for a terrific spectator vantage leading to improved understanding of people I admired. But when my heart and mind opened, the experience carried me beyond my expectations. I came to observe the show, but in the end I was part of it.

Following my 10 minutes behind the line, I was handed a glass of fantastic Brunello and sent downstairs to change out of my whites. My wife and another couple were meeting me there for dinner, and I had brought a change of clothes. In my excitement, I accidentally (I swear) put my restaurant supplied whites into my backpack with my own dirty clothes. I meant to return them, but the restaurant closed several months later. Those whites have hung proudly next to my suits, for the past 9 years as a reminder of the time I got yelled at by Charlie Trotter for not putting enough purple flowers on top of a piece of salmon and was able to live-out a real-life fantasy because a kid told me to be more than I thought I was.