How Smoking a Brisket might be your Best Leadership Skillset

I am a Executive Coach, Business Consultant, and Professional Trainer. My arena is the Boardroom, the Meeting room, and the Classroom. My tools?? PowerPoint, Markers and Flipchart Paper. But every weekend the suit goes off, and the apron goes on. I transform myself to the Pitmaster of Big Swede BBQ. And the tools are the tongs and the knives.

One early morning around 4 am, I was watching my pit - thin blue smoke rising towards the morning sky. The air was still, the morning dew covered the ground, and the silence was breeding thoughts and reflections. As a watch my brisket transform from a chunk of fatty meat to tender delicious goodness, I thought about all the steps you have to make in order to cook a perfect brisket. And how those steps are equally important when it comes to leading an organization.

To make a great brisket you have to:

1. Select a great cut of meat
2. Trim the brisket
3. Season and marinate the brisket
4. Slowly smoke the brisket
5. Wrap the brisket
6. Rest the brisket
7. Slice the brisket against the grain

The first step is to select a great brisket. It has to have a lot of marbling and a thick flat. It is crucial to pick a good cut of meat. The same goes with people, you have to surround yourself with the right people. The people with potential to transform, that are willing to change and that has the right mindset and attitude. Without a good foundation, any organization will struggle.

The second step is trimming the fat off. You do want a brisket with great marbling, but you want to remove the thick layers of unpleasant chunks of fat. These chunks will not render down during the cook and if you try, you will overcook the rest of the brisket. Running an organization works the same way. In the Digital era we have to constantly look for ways to trim fat, if it can be digitalized - digitalize it. Be on the lookout for bottlenecks and remove them. And finally, if you have people that simply don't want to change with the rest, let them free.

You now have a great product to work with. It is time for seasoning. Seasoning is training, education, and coaching. As with brisket - too much ruins the product. People need to be given the chance to absorb and reflect on their new skills. It is also important that the flavors work together. Training people on too many different things at the same time, will negatively affect the end result. Focus is key. And reflection strengthens the impact.

When you smoke the brisket, go low and slow. The same goes with organizations. Continuous improvement is better than multiple transformational paradigm shifts. Embracing a mindset where everybody looks for small improvements everyday, is the most effective driver for change. Big changes too frequently breeds fear and worry. Let people grow because the want to grow.

In competitive BBQ, we wrap the brisket. The idea is, by wrapping the meat, it cooks faster and all the flavors will be enhanced. In leadership, wrapping means reflection. To stop and think. To process learnings and let good ideas flow freely. To give yourself a quiet moment. To allow out-of-the-box thinking. To support disruptive thinking and novel thoughts. A great leader builds a culture of reflection and ideation.

The second to last step is to give the brisket some rest. In competitions, we can rest a brisket up to four hours where the meat just sits in a cooler and let all the juices come back into the meat and the depth of flavors to multiply. In our lives, we need rest too. We need breaks. We need to step away and come back recharged. Great leadership supports individual activities that helps our people rejuvenate and rest. Great thinking requires rested minds. Great effort requires rested bodies. Great result requires rested spirits.

The last step is to always cut the brisket against the grain. In leadership that equals finding people that would go against the grain. Avoid the Yay-sayer, and find people with opposing ideas. Seek out differences. Look for the unusual. Proactively ask for other peoples concerns and objections.

Making a great brisket is hard, and so is leadership. But if we follow the following 7 habits, we are more likely to succeed:

1. Find people with the right growth mindset and attitude
2. Transform digitally and trim the organization
3. Train and coach your people (but with a plan and direction)
4. Build a continuous improvement mindset
5. Create a culture of reflection and analysis
6. Give people time to rest and rejuvenate
7. Find and embrace people with opposing views

A pitmaster is often perceived as a mythical persona. A meat whisperer. With secret tricks and recipes. Recipes that they could tell you - but they would have to kill you afterwards. In reality, the secrets are almost non-existent. The real secret is to follow the seven steps above, and with experience being able to adjust these steps based upon the conditions, environment and meat quality. It is the same secret that makes great leaders. Apply these steps and you will become the Pitmaster of People Performance...And who wouldn't want to have that title on their Business Card?