Cooking when you can't smell - there are many paths to a competency
By Steven Forth
There are many paths from skills to competencies
One of the best cooks I know has no sense of smell. She can distinguish the five basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami (the rich taste imparted by things like anchovies or dried bonito flakes or MSG) but is unable to smell. This syndrome is known as anosmia. It is uncommon, but if you have ever lost your sense of smell while you have a cold you can imagine what it is like. Smell is critical to our sense of taste. Have you seen an experienced chef wafting the smells from a dish towards them as they cook? An inability to smell seems like an insurmountable barrier to cooking good food. When I am cooking, I taste constantly and adjust the flavors as I go along. I am not sure how I would cook (or at least cook well) if I could not taste.
But this woman does. She has prepared some of the best meals I have had over the years: complex grain dishes with slivers of chicken and nuts, pastas full of textures and flavors, clean simple vegetables prepared to bring out their native tastes. How does she do it?
The key lies in her background. The person in question is the artist Barbara Cohen. You can see her work and learn more about her background on her website. For many years she was a textile artist and, more recently, she has focussed on art jewelry, where she has pushed the boundaries of materials and form. She is also an active curator, pulling together jewelry artists from across the country and around the world into themed exhibitions. She brings together skills from all of this work to create interesting meals.
What is art jewelry? "Art jewelry is one of the names given to jewelry created by studio craftspeople. As the name suggests, art jewelry emphasizes creative expression and design, and is characterized by the use of a variety of materials, often commonplace or of low economic value. In this sense, it forms a counterbalance to the use of "precious materials" (such as gold, silver and gemstones) in conventional or fine jewelry, where the value of the object is tied to the value of the materials from which it is made." From Wikipedia.
Texture plays a big role in her food. There are always many different textures within and between dishes and this brings out a whole new set of experiences and enjoyment. The different textures also change the experience of taste. This is worth experimenting with, take one of your favourite vegetables and see how grating, dicing, slicing change the experience. As a textile designer, this woman has been a student of texture and how to create different textures. She has been able to transfer these ideas to food.
Her meals are always beautifully presented, not in a way that calls attention to the design, but in a way that makes you want to eat. Her work with art jewelry and how art comes alive when worn on the body helps her design her meals as a complete experience, but an experience where the focus is on the food and the conversation the food inspires.
The third key to her success as a cook is her ability to inspire people to work together. In many cases she has other people contribute to the meals, bringing ingredients and helping with the preparation. Eating good food is a social experience, something best done with other people, and preparing it can be too. She is very talented at identifying people's complementary skills (the skills that are often used together by different people) and finding new ways for people to collaborate.
There are a lot of lessons here for skill management. Perhaps the most important is that there are many paths to performance. Competency models, career paths, and team schema that insist on just one pattern or path are sub optimal. They shut down the variability on which innovation depends, and exclude people with different skill patterns. There is almost always more than one path and a good model will open new paths, not cut them off.
Skills are transferable in surprising ways. One would not have guessed that a person would find ways to apply skills used in textile design, art jewelry and curation to preparing wonderful meals and the conversations that go with them. Skill transfer is going to be one of the most important themes over the next decade as the economy, the workforce and how we design our jobs changes. Skill transfer is critical to innovation, resilience and adaptation.
Most companies will need to build many new capabilities over the next decade. Hiring new teams is generally not the answer. It is expensive, high risk, and demotivating for the current staff. Promoting internal mobility will be the key to innovation and resilience for many companies. Internal mobility requires skill transfer, and an openness to providing many different paths to expertise. To do this one needs deep insight into people' skills, not just the skills they are using in their current roles, but their other dormant (skills they have but are not using at work - one of my dormant skills is Japanese to English translation) and potential skills (potential skills can often be inferred from current skills, they are the skills the person has or could likely develop).
Skill and competency management software, and competency models, should be designed to support skill transfer and be open to multiple paths to expertise.
