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The benefits for you

Apart from greater effectiveness, here are some related benefits for you in using our process:

1. Hunger is the best sauce  When you suggest a team building exercise, you don’t want any one on your team to hide behind "But I can’t do that!" Our process of cooking and eating does not require special skills or physical fitness.

2. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime  You don’t want any lessons learnt to be forgotten the day after the team building exercise. Our process has built-in reminders and reinforcers to encourage the optimum transfer of the principles to the work environment: From now on the every day activity of preparing and sharing a meal will serve as a reminder of what effective team-work can accomplish.

3. The proof of the pudding is in the eating  Our team work lessons are simple, practical and immediate: If your people fail to work well together, then everybody will have to stomach a poor meal and collectively (and individually) suffer the consequences of their actions.

4. If cooks quarrel, the roast burns  You want to encourage team work inside a team as well as team work across teams. To prepare a complete meal, the pasta team members must work well together. And as a team they must coordinate their activities with the salad team, the hors’deurves team, and so on. (Many team building exercises attempt to encourage team work by forcing teams to compete against each other.)

5. No matter how high a bird can fly, it still has to look for food on the ground  When your strategy (recipe) is ready for execution, then everybody should know what to do, pitch in and make it happen. In our kitchen, no one is too superior or too incapable to do something, whether it is washing vegetables, peeling onions or boiling water.

6. If you cannot stand the heat, get out of the kitchen  You don’t want poor performance blamed on the exercise itself. (For example, a non-golfer can blame poor team work on a lack of golfing or sports skills.) Our process is too practical for team members to hide any lack of commitment to the team or to the outcome.

7. Those who are at one regarding food are at one in life  Our process uses an everyday activity to reinforce basic business principles and team work: Everyone must understand what is to be done (for even the best cooking pot will not produce food); everyone must be committed to what must be done (for you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs); everyone must do what is required (for we know that there are people that fish and those who just disturb the water); and everyone must learn from what they are doing (for you cannot unscramble eggs). Furthermore, our process demonstrates that service by every member matters (high birth is a poor dish at table); that quality by every member matters (what does not poison fattens); that cost-effectiveness by every member matters (waste not, want not); that managing information by every member matters (even the best words bring no food).

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