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Once all the ingredients are in the pot we keep them moving.  We stir the pot.  We allow time for the flavors to blend making a uniquely delightful collage of deliciousness. 

Moreover, if the dish is truly great, we learn from our process and replicate it often.  One of the treasured items in a home is a family recipe.  When you find that recipe for success, it becomes a deeply imbued quality that others with envy and long to recreate. 

Support the Process:

As your team members find their way to success, support them.  STIRring up Success is a lengthy and often difficult process.  Help them find satisfaction from never giving up.  A well placed encouragement offers lasting motivation that money will never satisfy. Like the salt that amplifies the flavors of your dish, pull out your team’s skills by reinforcing their quality work.

Don’t merely say “good work today.”  Explain to them how their work contributed to the overall goals of the team or the company.  Help them see their role in making a difference.  Appreciate with specifics.

Teach Them to Teach Others: 

The best way to learn is to do, and the teacher always learns more than the student.  We don’t just have succession plans because someone may die or leave our companies.  Great leaders understand that when you teach someone how to do your work, you then become the master. 

Great chefs do not merely possess great recipes.  They also possess the qualities to bring their dishes to life in mouths of their guests.  When you teach, you don’t just teach what to do; you teach what to do and why you should do it that way.

Discourage Getting Comfortable: 

A little success can be toxic when mixed with a dash of complacency.  As your team finds solutions and finally see their product make a splash on the plates of success, they can celebrate too early.  Making a good dish is a wonderful accomplishment, but a great dish in the kitchen pales in comparison to a great dish in front of a paying customer. 

Great teams do not stop.  They constantly improve.  A powerful adage reminds us that a “change is as good as a break.”  Don’t let your team get so comfortable they put a pause on their creativity. 

Be Consistently Repetitive:

The strongest feature of a well reinforced team is consistency.  Repeat what works.  Do it so often it becomes second nature.  A great chef has cooked so much they know what needs a dash of this or a dash of that.  Repetition helps us deeply instill positive qualities into our teams.  

As you reinforce the culture of your team well, it will become obvious that each person is centrally tied to the success of the whole group.  Once a stew is properly made any one ingredient possess the flavors of all the other ingredients. 

Keep STIRring and working towards a solid team atmosphere.

Broths are products of their qualities infused in the water.  The water literally changes into another substance.  And once the change has occurred it cannot be easily undone.  There would be a lengthy filtration process to remove their flavors from the original water.  

Identify Ineffective Habits: 

People are creatures of habits.  We like what we know.  As we Shape the Culture and Translate Learning into Action, we still need to Infuse our Ideals into our people. 

Infusion is a process that takes time and there is rarely a shortcut to success.  If we are not as successful as we wish, we must inventory the habits that create outcomes we do not desire.  Only then can we implement a change. 

Listen to Their Needs:  

Habits, whether good or bad are born from a need.  Why do your people do as they do?  What benefit is gained from an action that doesn’t produce the needed results?  What do they need from you, from the company, and from each other to be successful? 

People do what they do for a reason.  This reason, if you listen well, gives you insight into their needs.  

Expect Engagement:

Food is easier than people.  Most foods do not fight their role in our dinner.  People can be less than willing to follow the process.  This conflict is normal and great leaders understand they are paid well to engage their team members.  Set high standards.  Reward great work.  Celebrate positive outcomes.  Expect that everyone will be duly involved in creating the success we want.

Remember, your team is also getting paid good money to do the job assigned to them.  You need not apologize for being the leader, although sometimes you may have to apologize for what kind of leader you are. Model engagement, expect engagement, and support engagement.

Seek Results: 

Engagement is great.  You may even want to thank your vegetables for getting in the pot.  However, the real pleasure is not their role in your pot, but rather their role in your mouth.  Expect engagement and seek results. Effort that leads to results is more rewarding than effort that exists for the sake of effort.  

Infusing Change means that we lead our teams to move from moderate success to rewarding success.  We must never succumb to the ideal of working hard. 

Working hard can be synonymous with making great time on the highway only to realize you are going the wrong direction!  We work hard on the results we desire to achieve, and that result is worth the hard work.

Creating a successful business venture is much more of an elaborate adventure than cooking dinner.  Some of the ideas may be the same, but the functionality of the process can be radically different. 

How many cooks have made a junior mistake of misreading the ingredient list and adding a tablespoon when a teaspoon was required?  A pint is much different than a liter.  We must not only get the right ingredients, we must also get the right amount in the right order.

In any organization where multiple people are involved there is a high risk for directions to get lost in translation.  When we mix in different cultures, different backgrounds, and different expectations the intended request and produced outcome can make for a humorous or forehead slapping result. 

We must ensure that we are Translating our Expectations in a language our people understand.  This means we must understand our people.

Understand Your Team: 

Your team is integral to success. They bring the skills, the talents, the flavor needed for the perfect dish.  We hope they walk in ready to succeed.  Their passion is the source of either success or failure. 

Do you understand their desires?  Do you understand what drives them?  Knowing your team well means that you can speak to the heart of what motivates them.  This helps you get them ready to work your plan and find success in your mission.

Face Your Failures:

As you learn to cook, you make mistakes. These mistakes help you understand different types of food and cooking processes.  People will make different type of mistakes.  As the leader, it is critical that you navigate your team through the failures of high pressure environments.  Train your team to learn from failures.  This translates into honest communication. 

There will come times when they get stuck.  Great leaders create a culture where employees speak up when they are stuck.  We learn together and prepare ourselves for a better future.  The best dishes are not a recipe well followed, but the product of a cook who has the experience to know what to add and when.  That experience is born from failures.

Define the Objectives:

Understanding your team and learning from your mistakes are great qualities of good leaders.  However, they only get you so far.  A cook that is “one with the food” and patiently learning from bad recipes may be still quite hungry.  We must understand that objectives are set to reach our outcomes. 

Objectives are not just big picture ideals.  They have smaller components that lead us to the larger outcome.  A good stew is the sum of its parts.  The potatoes work because they were cleaned, cut, and placed in the broth.  Having potatoes in a bowl does not a stew make.  Each person must be consistently fulfilling their objectives as a function of the whole. 

Help your team break it down.  Help your team execute the plan.  Help your team intentionally succeed.

STIRring up success is a slow and deliberate process. 

Imagine making your favorite stew. Some cooks enjoy setting out all the ingredients, measuring them, and setting up the stove top and cookware before they ever put anything in the pot. 

Whether you use a recipe book or recall a recipe from your family heritage, an image of the final product arouses the senses in your mind.  Your taste buds will savor the flavor, your nose will imagine the scents, and your minds’ eye will imagine the aesthetically pleasing dish soon to be enjoyed.

Driving an intentionally successful team is a similar process.  We imagine the outcome and define what we believe will be an enjoyable result.  We line up the right people to provide the best resources and talents much like the ingredients in our dish.  Shaping the culture of our team is knowing who will make the connection between where we want to go and how we will get there.  Each person must play their part.  A savory filet mignon is a delightful culinary experience, but it has no place in an apple pie.  

As the leader of your team there are necessary tasks you must do to Shape the Culture of your successful enterprise.

Define the Outcome:

When shaping the culture of your organization the most taxing quest is getting everyone on board with what that culture is supposed to look like.  We call this setting goals.  What are we cooking this year?  Too often companies make the mistake of assuming everyone understands the end results.  Take the time to define the goals clearly with your team. 

Outline the Recipe to Success:

As the leader, you are uniquely responsible for shaping the outcome of your team.  You may want to boil your potatoes, but if you start cooking them before you baste and roast your beef your potatoes will be overdone and too mushy.  We are not just producing a product, we are producing certain products in certain ways on certain deadlines.  Specifically, the leader is integrally involved in directing his or her team and ensuring everyone is cooking the same meal.

Expect Creativity:

Shaping the culture is centrally important as it sets the stage for the rest of the steps towards success.  To be clear, shaping the culture is not the same as micro-managing.  Shaping is aligning your team to the outcome. When a team member comes to you with a method that seems glaringly different than an approach you would consider, expect them to show you how their method will match the goals and achieve the desired result.  Encourage their creativity; some of the greatest inventions were born from out-of-the-box thinking.  

Expect Alignment:

While being creative is important, it can allow for distractions and waste if not honed correctly. Communicate with your team well enough to know that their work is focused on fulfilling the outcome you as the leader have set.  In a business, you are not paying for their creativity, you are paying for their creative solutions to your objectives. 

A positive and well defined culture allows for a successful process.  It does not guarantee it.  Shaping the Culture is just the first step.  Next, we must ensure that our team is fully on the same page of our recipe.