What eating street food teaches me about Change Management

With the looming lockdown in Luxembourg, I felt like having some comfort food on Saturday. There’s a lovely place here selling kumpir, the Turkish baked potato with various fillings and toppings street food, and I was a girl on a mission. You know that saying that goes: “In love with street food isn’t a statement, it’s an emotion”? I found love in a hopeless plate…

The weather was nice. Cold, but dry. As I was eating my late lunch outside, I started thinking about any takeaways for Change Management, and a few ideas popped up in my mind. Bon appetit!

It takes practice to get to a level of “decently messy”. One of my earliest childhood memories is walking with my grandmother on weekends back in my hometown, and stop to get donuts. My favorites were the apricot jam-filled berliners. I remember how I managed to get jam and sugar pretty much all over my face, some on my t-shirt, and a bit on my grandmother’s favorite skirt. According to some very old, black-and-white photos in one of the family albums, that was not my first attempt at enjoying those donuts… Thank Goodness I got to live a Facebook-free childhood! My first hot dog wasn’t a particularly “clean” experience either. The first kebab… not merely enough wet wipes in the world… My first Change Management project was definitely not the smoothest ride. Second one still a bit bumpy. As you learn by doing, and trying, and some failing, then by doing again, things get a bit easier each time. You learn how to manage the strange dynamics of the “apricot jam”, and you end up enjoying it to the fullest. If you are really lucky, you get to teach others, too. And you will have wet wipes ready for when they need them.

Always pay attention to the “one stop shops of insight”. Street food spots are great places for observing and getting to know people. Do they go for the places with longest waiting lines, or are they in a rush? How do they wait in line? Do they talk with the people around them? Do they first check out the food offer, or wait to make their decision when it’s their turn to order? Do they ask for information about the different options? Do they make the effort to say “Hello” and “Thanks” in the local language, if they are tourists? Do they go for the same thing, or order different meals, and then happily share? Sharing is caring, people, sharing is caring!!! Do they sit down or eat on the go? Big meal to keep them going for as long as possible, or small, curiosity-driven bites, to get them to the next street food stall? Are they “experienced street food eaters” or not? All these questions have their own Change Management-relevant equivalents in the business world. Develop a habit to pay attention to how people behave around the coffee machines, or in the elevators. Spend some time in and around the reception areas, see how they greet each other. Do they say “Hello” and “Bye” to the reception staff and the security guard? You can also learn a lot by paying attention to how people make small talk at the beginning and end of their business meetings. Or how they ask for coffee, tea or water for or from other people. How much work do they volunteer for to “take on their plate”? How and when do they ask questions? How many? Hemingway was an awesome Change Management teacher: “When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe. You should be able to go into a room, and when you come out, know everything that you saw there, and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling, you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling… And always think of other people”.

Frustration is a matter of when, not if. You know how awesome cheese and some impossibly to pronounce, yet divinely tasty sauce always get stuck and wasted on the napkin or wrapping paper? Always say “yes” to more cheese and sauce. You’ll need it. Sometimes accidents happen, and you drop some of the food. Other times it gets even more frustrating. I was spending a very lazy Sunday in Helsinki, enjoying a bowl of salmon soup on a bench in the South Harbor Market Square. Whenever you happen to be in Helsinki, go have a salmon soup – send me a “Thank you/ Kiitos” note after! The day was sunny, warm, the market was full of people. I was working my way towards that perfect last spoon – a small piece of salmon, potato, some corn, a bit of rye bread. When a seagull passed by, and decided to “drop its food critic opinion”. OOOH, did I unleash my inner Samuel L. Jackson on that bird!!! Years later I found this nice quote from Kurt Vonnegut: “Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning to do afterward”. There is no single Change Management piece of work where some things don’t get dropped. Not one! But how you handle frustration – whether your own or others, often times both – is key to moving forward. It will happen. It is purely a matter of when and related to what, not if it happens. Let writer Anthony J. D’Angelo be of help when that happens: “Realize that if you have time to whine and complain about something, then you have the time to do something about it”.

Street food has been teaching me to enjoy the moment. To stay curious and adventurous, and always go for extra cheese. To learn to say “Hello” and “Thank you” in as many languages as possible. Street food always reminds me of Hemingway: “Try to learn to breathe deeply, really taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough”.