The Ultimate Recipe for Team Success
By: Leah Hunt
Tags: Team Building, Leadership, Teamwork, Professional Development

The Ultimate Recipe for Team Success

Photo by Monika Grabkowska on Unsplash

I like cooking.

For lots of reasons.

I like it partially because I am good at it and partially because I love food. I am usually hungry and because I’m not independently wealthy so unable to ‘dine out’ for all meals, it is a necessary part of my life.

But the thing I like the MOST about cooking is the creativity.

When I first started cooking, I followed recipes to the letter. I didn’t make something unless I had all the ingredients in the right amount. I was always happy to try new recipes with different and previously un-used ingredients… but I always prepared.

As a result, I have discovered some pretty neat little markets and shops on my quests for Indian spices or fermented tofu or Nori or monkfish.

And once I got comfortable with the basics, my confidence grew.

Not every dish was a winner, but I was building a sense of taste and smell. I established that over-salting a soup was unforgiveable and an error that was easily avoided.

I learned that under-seasoning meat could be as much of a sin as over-seasoning delicate vegetables.

I knew that over-cooking beautiful and expensive cuts of meat was simply not worth the risk and Brussel sprouts are best roasted, not boiled.

As my confidence grew, so too did my creativity.

I used cookbooks and recipes for inspiration and ideas. They provided a rough outline and route towards a dish… but I felt no qualms about taking a detour.

Curries and stews got whatever leftover vegetables were in the fridge and needed using up.

No pumpkin? Fuck it — I’ll use a squash. Close enough.

Parmesan cheese a critical ingredient? Well, we prefer Romano so I’ll just go ahead and make the switch…

And guess what? With very few exceptions the creativity was fine. The substitutions did NOT affect the overall quality of the dish and, in some instances — especially where a preferred cheese is substituted — it made the dish better.

Baking is different.

Baking is science. When you are baking ingredients matter. Leave one out? Taste & texture can both be off.

Measurements matter. Accidentally substitute a tablespoon for a teaspoon? You’re fucked mate…

And while I am capable of baking and I have baked things, it is not a thing I love.

Baking is not for me. The list of reasons is long including that it costs a bloody fortune, requires a significant number of odd kitchen utensils and makes a pretty big mess.

But the number one reason I don’t bake is that it lacks what I love the most about cooking — the creativity.

All science, not enough art.

That said, baking has opened my eyes to the role that science — the right ingredients in exactly the right amounts — attention to detail and relentless practice can yield a different type of magic.

I have always felt like creating teams was a lot like cooking — heavy on the art, light on the science.

I have been on some great teams and some not so great teams. I have built some phenomenal out of this world teams and gotten it really, really, badly, wrong. I have watched teams of people who — while remarkable on paper — have failed miserably in practice.

And I have watched the opposite. I have watched the corporate or professional equivalent of the bad news bears do phenomenal things.

Together.

And I suppose I attributed a lot of that to luck or circumstance or the ‘art’ element of building a team.

But I know there is also some science at the core. And every amazing team I have built or been a part of has always had four common ingredients.

A Robot, A Hippo, A Hipster, and a Witch.

Team building, like in baking, ingredients matter.

And over the course of the next four weeks I’m going to tell you what they bring, what they look like, how to find them and — in some instances — how to be them

And maybe you’ll find out whether you are a Robot, A Hippo, A Hipster or a Witch.