Recipes for Success and Variety

I made some delicious triple chocolate brownies this weekend. They were perfect. Slightly gooey. A touch crisp around the edges. Melt-in-your mouth goodness. I must confess, they were from a simple mix. All I had to do was add water, vegetable oil, and a couple of eggs. But they were perfection.

While I was mixing the batter, I had a flashback to a less-successful kitchen endeavor. When I was 14 years old, my sister was in college studying to be a home economics teacher. One of her assignments was to record herself teaching a small group how to cook something. She recruited me, my 15-year-old brother, and two of our friends to be her class.

We were typical teenagers, making wise cracks and interrupting her with silliness. To this day, we laugh about how many times my sister had to turn off the cassette recorder (yes, this dates us all) to threaten us with our lives if we did not cooperate.

We were making Tollhouse Cookie bars. I’m sure my sister gave fine instructions, but then she set us loose in unfamiliar territory – they kitchen. I’d been there to get my food before, but not to cook it. My friend and I made only one fatal mistake in following the recipe. When we had to add two cups of flour, I found a clear glass jar filled with a white powder. There was no label on the jar, but hey, it looked like flour. We added two cups and went on with the recipe.

When we pulled our pan out of the oven, the cookie bars were about one-quarter inch high. They should have been closer to two inches. My sister couldn’t believe we were such failures. “What did you do?” she asked. I showed her all the ingredients we put in. She looked at the jar of white powder, stuck her finger in it, and put a bit on her tongue. “That’s not flour,” she said. “It’s powdered milk!”

Oops. My sister was sure we did this on purpose to make her look bad. The reality was that we were dopey 14-year-olds who didn’t know how to follow the recipe well or find the right ingredients.

Since that failure, I’ve become more adept in the kitchen. I learned from that point to follow recipes carefully. At least the first time. Once I’m comfortable with a recipe, I sometimes make variations to see if I like it better. A little cinnamon here. A little cayenne pepper there. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But I know if I don’t follow the base recipe, I’m likely to end up with something I don’t want.

I’ve found the same is true in business. When there is a tried-and-true recipe for success, follow it. Learn from the expertise of others. Once you’re familiar with the recipe, try some variations to see how it works. You’ll fail sometimes, but you’ll often succeed, too.

I was recently facilitating a course I’ve taught hundreds of times over the past 14 years. In the last year, I’ve started teaching the course virtually, which I’d never done before. One of my favorite in-person exercises didn’t seem to be working for me in the virtual environment. So, I tried something a little different. The exercise calls for everyone in the class to put responses to three questions in the chat window. Instead, I asked everyone who was born January through April to answer the first question, those born May to August the second question, and those born September through December the third question. We do the exercise three different times, so I rotated which group answered which question each round. The effect was more focused answers from each group and less time sifting and sorting responses. It worked.

I’ve tried things that didn’t work before too. Usually, it’s not a catastrophe, it just doesn’t “taste” quite as good. In those cases, I go back to the original recipe, knowing that the new effort doesn’t work as well as the original idea. I’ve also tried recipe variations that work well for other people but don’t work for me. That’s fine too. Tastes vary. You may not like the spices I add to a recipe. That’s okay. Find your own variations.

When facing the unfamiliar, look for a proven recipe for success and follow it carefully. Then, when you’re more comfortable, switch the recipe up a bit and see if you can improve upon the original.

You might provide your customers with some tasty treats as a result.

Mark Carpenter is a consultant, facilitator, coach, and co-author of the best-selling book "Master Storytelling: How to Turn Your Experiences Into Stories that Teach, Lead, and Inspire." www.master-storytelling.com