The Majumdar Principle

Do you pine after the “ideal” work environment, or can you deliver results regardless of what is thrown at you? Read on to learn what a cooking show can teach us about the workplace.

My family likes to gather around the television at night to watch Cutthroat Kitchen. If you haven't watched the show, they bring four talented chefs into a fully stocked kitchen to compete in a series of three challenges. Each chef is given $25,000 in cash to spend on a series of auctions. The auctions are for items and experiences a chef can purchase to inflict difficulty on the other chefs. One chef is eliminated after each round. The last chef standing, wins, and goes home with the money she/he has left.

What makes the show interesting are the multiple curve balls thrown at the chefs during each challenge.

At the beginning of a challenge, the host, Alton Brown, will ask the chefs to cook a well-known dish—something like a lettuce wrap. He gives them 60 seconds to grab what they need in a well-stocked pantry. Then, the chefs go through a series of auctions. When the time is up, a judge emerges from upstairs to taste each dish and decide who will be going home for that round.

Our favorite judge is Simon Majumdar. He is fond of telling the chefs that although he knows how the game is played and that they must go through a series of challenges, he is concerned about only one thing: what is on the plate. He's not going to give a chef a pass on a poorly executed dish because they had to cook it with a curling iron. Nor does he care that a chef was unable to use salt when preparing their plate of french fries. He's concerned only about what he sees on the plate, how it tastes, and how well the dish is executed.

Our family now calls this “The Majumdar Principle.”

So, how does this relate to our work lives?

It's interesting and instructive to listen to the chefs that are eliminated from the competition. As the camera shows a given chef walking toward the camera, down a long hallway, after being asked to leave, we hear their voice with their first impressions. It's not uncommon to hear them express regrets like, "I wish I had spent a little more money to win the <XYZ> auction because that's what took me out of the competition."

Some are clearly mad and make comments like, "Well, if I didn't have to pull my ingredients out of a vending machine, then I clearly would have won! If they could see me cook without challenges, they'd know that I was the best chef in there."

Let's pause right there. Is there ever a point where we "cook without challenges?"

Do chefs, on a random Tuesday night, get to take all of the time they need to prepare each dish? Do they get to sequence the guests so only one set of orders comes in at a time? Are they always fully staffed with prep cooks and the serving staff never calling in sick? Is the pantry always full of every single ingredient they would need to prepare each dish on the menu?

You get the point. The obvious answer is no. Being a chef isn't about can you prepare a delicious meal under ideal conditions. Being a chef is about can you get a delicious meal in front of the guests, quickly, in the midst of whatever whirlwind is happening back in the kitchen.

And can't we all say the same thing?

Many of us could pull an important presentation together if we had a month to prepare, all of the data we needed at our fingertips, a full-time graphic designer at our disposal, and nothing else to work on. But can you pull one together by 4:00 PM, when you're given the assignment at 11:00 AM, you don't have all the needed inputs, you need to do the slides yourself, you have no time to rehearse, and you still need to fit in your 1:30 staff meeting?

We need to stop dwelling in the fantasy that someday we will be able to perform with no obstacles. That isn't the job. Being a professional is being able to perform in spite of (or sometimes because of) the obstacles. It's being able to walk into the boardroom to confidently deliver the best presentation you could pull together in a few hours. It's not giving into the temptation to explain all the reasons why you're really the best chef, but no one can tell that because of the obstacles you've had to endure.

It's remembering that dealing with ongoing obstacles is its own skill set that we are expected to have on top of the technical skills we bring to the team.

The next time you find yourself mumbling under your breath as you walk briskly to the conference room or to the client meeting, remember the Majumdar Principle: all they care about is what's on the plate.