By Josh Linkner
Do you prefer the crispy mozzarella, tempura watercress, and black garlic mayonnaise cheeseburger or the pumpkin mustard, bacon, cranberries, and sage hot dog? For something sweet, would you rather try the black sesame milkshake, the pancake and bacon frozen custard, or stick with a cold brew float? What sounds like a scene from the Culinary Institute of Paris is actually playing out at the Shake Shack over on Varick Street in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. These strange dishes are not on the burger chain’s permanent menu. Instead, they emerge from the Shake Shack Innovation Kitchen located in the basement directly underneath the bustling restaurant. Opened in 2018, the underground kitchen is a culinary playground, equipped with a cornucopia of high-tech gear, unusual ingredients, and the ethos of creative experimentation. The Innovation Kitchen is the brainchild of Shake Shack’s culinary director, Mark Rosati. He explains, “One of the biggest things any company has to think about as it grows is how to stay nimble and able to push boundaries. We ask ourselves, if we started Shake Shack today, what would we do differently?” In fact, the company looks nothing like it did when it got its start. In 2001, high-end restaurateur Danny Meyer launched a hot dog stand in Madison Square Park, adjacent to one of his swanky upscale restaurants. It was fun for him to offer his signature culinary playfulness at a lower cost and faster speed compared to his far pricier dining options at the Gramercy Tavern, Union Square Cafe, or Maialino Mare. As the hot dog stand grew in popularity, Danny added burgers and crinkle-cut fries to the menu, eventually changing the name to Shake Shack in 2004. A long way from its humble roots, the burger chain has expanded to more than 250 locations around the world, enjoys more than $600 million of annual revenue, and boasts a market value of more than $3 billion. The company’s per-store sales are more than double that of an average McDonald’s location, and its growth rate is giving Ronald McDonald some serious heartburn. Despite their runaway success, the Shake Shack team works hard to maintain the creativity of a startup. At corporate headquarters, a prominent sign hangs on the wall reinforcing their entrepreneurial roots: “The bigger you get, the smaller you have to act.” To drive the principles of creative exploration, Shake Shack’s wild success comes directly from a core principle of everyday innovators: open a test kitchen. From regional restaurants to global conglomerates, food industry leaders rely on test kitchens to drive innovation. The industry’s equivalent of a scientific laboratory, they’re designed to provide a safe, well-equipped environment for inventive thinking. Recognizing it would be impossible to dream up a complex new dish during the Saturday evening dinner rush, test kitchens provide the time and resources required to invent a delicious future. From unrestricted ideation sessions to rigorous testing and measurement protocols, test kitchens drive growth while reducing risk. With a live restaurant only a flight of stairs away, the five-person crew at Shake Shack’s test kitchen has access to immediate feedback from real customers. This allows the team to cook up wild ideas, test them quickly, and then have customers play a crucial role in the invention process. “There are risks when you bring customers into the testing process,” Rosati explains, “but in the end, their feedback will always make the food better.” Inside the Innovation Kitchen, the chefs are cooking up a wide array of Big Little Breakthroughs. In addition to running experiments on new menu items, the team also spends time innovating on process improvements, training upgrades, and customer experience enhancements. How will customers respond to a digital self-serve ordering kiosk? What would happen if we used 4 percent more seasoning during the burger prep stage? How could we shave just five seconds off the cooking process? Ideate, experiment, refine. Rinse and repeat. Shake Shack’s remarkable success is directly tied to their experimentation mindset. Whether they’re exploring something really odd, like the time they created a hot dog poached in sparkling wine and topped it with caviar, crème fraîche, and crumbled potato chips, or they’re investigating a more efficient way to clean the countertops at the end of a shift, the company’s test kitchen approach has helped them become one of the most beloved restaurant chains in the world. Luckily, you don’t need to be in the food business to open a test kitchen. Lawyers conduct mock trials to test out their arguments in a safe environment before making their case to a live jury. Surgeons now hone their skills using augmented reality goggles as they practice experimental procedures on robotic patients. Car companies prefer to bang up test dummies rather than real customers, while life insurance sales professionals conduct simulated presentations so they can optimize their approach before stepping in front of paying customers. Your test kitchen may be a designated physical space like Shake Shack’s Innovation Kitchen, or it could be a metaphorical one that lives only in the hearts and minds of your team. The common thread is a safe, well-equipped environment where you can invent, test, and refine. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success!
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By Josh Linkner
Just before she won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, Lady Gaga dazzled the live audience with a pitch perfect performance of her hit “Shallow.” From her stage skills to her vocal ability, the talented performer made it all look so easy. When we see people performing at the top of their fields— from Broadway to business—they often make it look simple. But people who achieve Lady Gaga levels of success arrive at the top by way of rigorous training. They refuse the elevator, preferring to take the stairs. The romantic notion of a wildly talented genius who effortlessly reaches the epitome of achievement has about as much practical validity as the Easter Bunny. Rather, it’s the unglamorous, repetitive practice regimen that unlocks creative brilliance. Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, now known as Lady Gaga, was born on March 28, 1986, into an Italian American family in New York. Her ascent to stardom was less about raw talent and more closely aligned with her relentless work ethic. She began playing piano at age four and became driven to become a star before her tiny legs could reach the piano pedals. In a 2009 interview, she told a London reporter, “I’ve always been famous—you just didn’t know it yet!” She already viewed success as part of her being, which drove her to extreme levels of training and practice. While her elaborate outfits and theatrical performances may appear to be the child of whimsy, Lady Gaga is meticulous and deliberate about every aspect of her music and brand. Growing up, she spent hours honing her craft. Pushing aside the customary pleasures of childhood, she studied piano, singing, and dance with the intensity of a Zen monk. When she wasn’t practicing performance skills, she studied the legends of fashion design, theatrical staging, choreography, and visual artists. Her training inputs were a strange mix—from David Bowie to Bach, from Andy Warhol to Cher. She drew inspiration from an eclectic mix of artists, later weaving their ideas together into her own unique style. “To be completely candid, the creative process is approximately fifteen minutes of vomiting my creative ideas,” Lady Gaga said in a 2011 Gagavision interview. “It all happens in approximately fifteen minutes of this giant regurgitation of my thoughts and feelings, and then there are days, months, and years spent fine-tuning.” To put this in perspective, if creating a hit Gaga song takes five hundred hours in total, the ideation process is only .05 percent while the vast majority of her creative time is spent shaping and refining her work. And if you include the thousands of hours she invested in deliberate practice before the song was initially spewed onto the page, the contrast would be even more glaring. It’s the ritual of refinement that’s often the difference between mediocre and legendary work. It’s been said that the one thing all great authors have in common is lousy first drafts. The difference between a bad book, a decent book, and a breakaway bestseller is often directly linked to the amount of time invested in the refinement stage. When a writer quickly dumps her ideas onto a page and ships them to print, the end result isn’t usually her best work. In contrast, her masterpiece comes by doing the reps in the unglamorous and painstaking process of refinement. We all know that doing the reps is required to build physical muscle mass in the gym. Regrettably, none of us are born with “six-pack abs.” Yet most of us garble the translation when it comes to creativity, thinking that it is a fixed talent rather than a malleable skill. And skills of any kind only become deeply ingrained by way of repetition. At age sixteen, Stefani began working with famed vocal coach Don Lawrence, who had also worked with Billy Joel, Christina Aguilera, and Mick Jagger. Behind the glitz of her dramatic performances, Lady Gaga still does the reps and continues to work with Lawrence. For a single high-profile performance in 2017, she trained with her coach every single day for six months leading up to the show. Today, her training regimen continues with enviable discipline and consistency. To keep up with the physical demands of the job, she exercises five days a week doing yoga, Pilates, and strength training. She carves out time to write music and rehearse daily. Lady Gaga is the product of intense and consistent practice, an amalgamation of her countless hours doing the reps. Each Big Little Breakthrough she achieved fused together into the megastar we now love. In the words of Aristotle, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” Bestselling author Seth Godin might have put it best when he said, “Lots and lots of people are creative when they feel like it, but you are only going to become a professional if you do it when you’re not in the mood.” Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Josh Linkner
Ever get stuck on a problem, only to realize you’re solving for the wrong thing? That’s exactly what happened when the rocket scientists at NASA were trying to make astronauts’ pens to work in the zero-gravity environment of space. According to Scientific American, “During the height of the space race in the 1960s, NASA scientists realized that pens could not function in zero gravity. They therefore spent years and millions of taxpayer dollars developing a ballpoint pen that could put ink to paper without needing gravitational force to pull on the fluid.” The Soviets, on the other hand, delivered us a nuclear warhead of embarrassment…they simply gave their astronauts pencils. NASA was focused on the wrong problem – making a pen work in space. The real issue at hand wasn’t a pen at all; it was providing astronauts a tool for writing. When reframing the challenge, the soviets solved a multi-million dollar problem for the cost of a #2 pencil. Innovation scholars refer to this as “jobs-to-be-done” theory. The classic example: when hanging a picture above your living room couch, the thing you need isn’t a 1/4″ drill bit but rather a 1/4″ hole. Too often, we get caught up in the nuances and complexities of a specific solution rather than deeply connecting to the job-to-be-done. Once we zero in on the right problem, we can more easily apply inventive thinking to achieve the desired outcome. If the brainiac rocket scientists at NASA can fall into this trap, so can we. As we approach our own challenges – big and small – let’s direct our attention to the job-to-be-done and proceed unencumbered with conventional wisdom. Instead of blowing 38 months on a pen that defies gravity, let’s push our creative boundaries to discover simple, efficient, and inventive solutions instead. Now that’s something to write home about. With your #2 pencil, of course. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Josh Linkner
There’s an old saying among professional boxers: “Champions don’t become champions in the ring; they are merely recognized there.” The implication, of course, is that the hard work of winning happens during an intense training regimen. The blood, sweat, and tears on the gym floor; the relentless planning for every possible scenario; the sacrifice and careful preparation. This is the stuff that ultimately enables victory. Professional athletes achieve at the highest levels by spending 90% of their time training and 10% of their time performing. In most areas of life, however, we do the exact opposite. In fact, most business leaders, parents, and professionals spend closer to zero percent of their time in thoughtful study of their craft or training for improvement. Instead, we labor through the days in full-exertion mode and then wonder why we fail to reach our full potential. Imagine a star tennis player who never trained and only stepped foot on the court during major tournaments. Or a pro football player who never bothered with conditioning, learning the plays, or running drills with his teammates. Predictably, these athletes would unravel in a spectacular fashion. Which is exactly what we do when we fail to commit the time and energy to our own personal development. While you probably don’t have the luxury of devoting 90% of your days to training, carving out just 5-10% of your time for focused improvement will quickly improve your performance. If you are in sales, spend a few hours each week in role-playing sessions and carefully practicing your pitch. If you write code, spend time studying others’ work, attending hackathons, and forcing yourself to solve complex problems. Simply put, a training regimen will jettison your career to the next level. Just like the pro athletes who develop a written training program with specific maneuvers and goals, you should be taking the same, proactive approach for your own career. Reading books, attending lectures (or watching them online), running “drills,” solving practice problems, doing simulations with colleagues, and even trying to decode your competitors’ approach are all helpful exercises to include in your training plan. If you have the discipline to improve yourself without the prodding of others, you will quickly fly past those who lack the ambition to push themselves to becoming world-class. As the Spartan Warrior Creed professes, “Sweat more in training, bleed less in war.” Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Josh Linkner
Imagine that a loved one is on the operating table in a life-or-death situation. You and your family gather in the waiting room waiting with bated breath for the doctor to communicate the results of this life-saving procedure. When the surgeon finally arrives, you don’t want to hear about how hard she and her team labored. You don’t want to hear that she “gave it her all” and worked extra long, even cancelling her scheduled tee time. At this moment, trying hard doesn’t matter. You simply need results. When people under-deliver, they tend to justify their poor performance by effort exerted. “But we tried really hard,” the hapless manager professes. “Do you know how much work went into this?” the C minus student protests. Yes, it is true that effort is generally a precursor to results, but they are absolutely not one and the same. As leaders in our businesses and communities, we must hold each other to the highest standards of achievement — not just exertion. A city council that tries hard won’t get the job done. The business executive that burnt the midnight oil but missed the forecast might as well have gone to bed early. “What gets measured gets improved,” the old saying goes. What are you measuring in your own performance? How are you holding yourself and those around you accountable? Let’s commit to staying focused on the scoreboard while plotting out a successful game plan. When looking at the challenges our communities face, we must have laser beam focus on delivering tangible results. ‘Working hard’ to repair streetlights, ensure public safety, or deliver critical city services just doesn’t carry the day. It takes leaders from all walks of life to rally behind a unified effort to deliver real change instead of hype or excuses. It’s easy to hide in the shadows of best efforts when results remain elusive. It’s time for us all to shift our energy from trying to doing. From rhetoric to action. From planning it out to getting it done. A valiant effort just won’t cut it. Let’s all commit to delivering real, tangible results. Our companies, communities, and families will all win as a result. In the infamous words of Yoda, “Do or do not. There is no try.” Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Josh Linkner
The allure of the corner office has captured the imagination of nearly everyone in the working world. A promotion to the next level – or the level after that – would be a gigantic win, both personally and professionally. You’d be able to create a bigger impact, serve and lead more, and leave your fingerprints on the organization. The extra money and perks could really help out on the family front too, allowing you to better provide for your loved ones. We all want that brass ring, but don’t always know specifically how to snag it. To help accelerate your journey, here are five time-tested moves that will put you on the fast track to success: 1) Master the 5X Rule – Calculate the amount you’ll get paid when you get that big promotion. Next, calculate in real dollars the value you add to (or save) your company each year. If those numbers are close, you’ve got some work to do. On the other hand, if you can clearly show you’re delivering five times the value of what you’re getting paid, you’ll be promoted quickly (and never fired). 2) Add Hot Sauce to Everything – If you’re delivering a project or task, never just deliver what was requested. Instead, take it upon yourself to add a little extra zip. A fresh idea, some extra value that no one asked for. That extra little spice on everything you do will get you noticed, appreciated, and promoted. 3) Make Self-improvement a Job Requirement – Don’t wait for a boss or HR director to set your learning curriculum. Instead, make a commitment to drive your own personal growth and skill development. It’s your job to elevate your capacity and understanding. Push yourself to learn more and get better and you’ll soon be fully prepared to take on the bigger role you seek. 4) Be User friendly – Make it easy, pleasant, and energizing for others to interact with you. Clear communication, friction-free exchanges. Unlike the pain-in-the-neck guy down the hall, strive to be as positive and accommodating as possible. This stuff gets noticed. Every interaction is your chance to reinforce your brand and leave a mark. To a degree, you’re always interviewing so don’t squander that opportunity. 5) Inject Artistry – Think of your work product as an artist thinks of her paintings, taking personal pride in both the quality and design of every email, live interaction, service, report, or product you ship. Before hitting “send”, ask yourself if you’d be excited to showcase what you’re delivering as a shining example of your best work. If you are reluctant to autograph the work, as a musician would sign his new album, take another stab at improving your art. Follow these five simple steps, and you’ll rise through the ranks like a bottle rocket. Miss them, and you could be looking for your next gig. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Josh Linkner
Pilots are required to invest hundreds of hours in simulated flight scenarios before taking command of a live aircraft. Race car simulators help drivers prepare for the unexpected, so that they’ll be fully ready for unforeseen circumstances. Astronauts first experience weightlessness in a simulation chamber so they can become accustomed to a gravity-free environment. Simulations are used by top performing surgeons, symphony conductors, and professional athletes. Attorneys hone their skills in mock trials while boxers spend hours sparring in the ring before the big fight. Closely mimicking a high-stakes experience before it actually happens invariably leads to better performance. Now think for a moment about the work that matters most to you. The importance of interviewing a new job candidate, holding that mission-critical team meeting, or giving an impactful performance review of your team member. Or maybe you’ve got a big upcoming pitch – to an investor, new client, or key partner. Your products and services may be high stakes as well, whether you organize mountain climbing excursions, produce luxury hand-finished furniture, or run a retail shop in a busy shopping mall. How you perform determines how well you’ll serve your customers, family, and community. With such important outcomes on the line, have you first bothered to do a dry run? In the business world, we’re just supposed to know what we’re doing: 50+ hours a week of performance with virtually no time for training and preparation. The idea of an NFL player running zero practice drills before the Super Bowl or a Broadway performer never bothering to rehearse for opening night sounds crazy. Yet isn’t that exactly what we do in our professional lives? If we truly care about performing at the highest level, we must follow the lead of the greats in other professions by embracing a series of simulations before game day. In business, this can often be accomplished through role-playing. For example, if you have a big sales presentation coming up, don’t do the pitch for the first time in front of your prospective client. Instead, gather two colleagues and present to one while the other takes notes and records key points of feedback. Next, rotate and have one of your colleagues pitch you while the other plays the observer role. A few rotations a day, and you’ll start to build powerful muscle memory, which will allow you to optimize performance when it really matters. This small investment in simulation can become a game-changer when it comes to results. I have no interest in flying on a plane with a pilot who’s never bothered to practice in a simulated setting. And you should have the same discomfort when performing critical business tasks without the requisite pre-game training. If you run the drills in advance, your odds of success skyrocket. Use simulations to stimulate optimal performance. To perfect your craft. To drive better outcomes. And when you do, your victory will be anything but simulated. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Josh Linkner
In the context of seemingly endless volatility, the pandemic has led many of us to pause in order to reassess what it really takes to win in this new era of business. What leadership attributes are needed right now to create a sustainable competitive advantage? In the past, it was enough to be a thoughtful and deliberate manager, executing a plan with precision and accuracy. Today, however, leaders have to embrace a new set of roles and responsibilities to remain relevant and effective. Building on your previous training, let’s explore the five new faces of leadership: 1. Sherpa – The leader of a mountain-climbing expedition’s sole purpose is to help others reach the summit. Sherpa leadership isn’t about individual achievement – you are in your role to serve others – your team, your customers, and your community. If your team knows you are there to help them succeed, they’ll give back far more than any rah-rah speech or management technique of the week. 2. Provocateur – Tip-toeing around deeply entrenched viewpoints is less productive than trying to fry eggs on a hot sidewalk. A key role of great leaders is to challenge everything and be a poking-stick of change. A healthy disdain for the status quo is the hallmark of leaders who shape history. Don’t let fear glue you to conventional wisdom. 3. Futurist – Aiming our efforts at last year’s market data will yield a surefire miss. Effective leaders must clearly articulate a compelling vision of what lies ahead, and ensure their organizations are ready to seize it when that window opens. Imagine all the possibilities, and never allow the past to restrict your imagination. 4. Storyteller – Getting your message to stand out and be heard above the noise can be tougher than running a four-minute mile. Make sure you’re crafting your story – to both internal and external audiences – in such a compelling way that it cannot be ignored. You must communicate your purpose and a clear plan of how you’ll get there if you expect your team to leap forward with urgency and alignment. 5. Speed Demon – The world of getting things 100% right before hitting the market is long over. Today, we must execute and problem solve with ferocious speed, making regular adjustments in real-time. Complete business cycles can now last weeks instead of years. Accordingly, we must build a culture that embraces speed in all aspects of business – from innovation to customer delivery to hiring to technological advances. On the highway, speed kills. In business, speed wins. We all know that the surest path to obsolescence is hugging the status quo. It’s time to relinquish the mindsets and techniques of the past in favor of approaches better suited to the challenges of the day. Good leaders may stay the course, but great leaders reinvent. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Josh Linkner
By the end of the second week of January, 29% of us will abandon our New Year’s resolutions. By the end of the year, only 9% of resolutions will remain resolute. Sobering. So many of us resolve to change, only to have those commitments meet an untimely death. A single, small temptation can lead us astray, causing us to conclude that our resolutions have crumbled. Better luck next year, we tell ourselves, as we regress to our old ways. A key problem with resolutions is their all-or-nothing nature. These immovable rules suggest that any deviance from perfection is an act of total destruction. Since few of us are perfect, we slip once and then terminate our commitment to change. To combat this trap and enjoy meaningful progress, I suggest you set a New Year’s theme instead. Your theme isn’t a rigid, binary, unrealistic promise but rather a direction that can be sustained over the next 12 months. Two years ago, my theme was Health. There were moments that I ate peanut M&Ms, to be sure, but I also managed to read several books on the subject, listen to dozens of podcasts, drop 20 pounds, and reduce my lipid profile by 40%. If it were a weight loss resolution, I’d likely given up after the first bite of a hot pepperoni pizza (my weakness). Since it was a theme, however, I realized that each decision on each day was a guilt-free, independent opportunity to align with my broader objective. This year, my theme is artistry. My focus will be to inject creativity into every problem I confront and every opportunity I pursue. When I send emails, I’ll try to make them more artistic. I’ll try to inject inventive thinking in weekly team meetings. To support the theme, I plan to expose myself to great works of art in many categories ranging from spoken word poetry to business invention. I’ll also be mindful of this theme when walking into a room, giving a speech, or having dinner with my family. How might an artist post a blog, negotiate a deal, or take out the trash? My theme will be ever-present, guiding my behavior rather than holding me to an unrealistic metric. Your theme could be a personal one such as compassion, kindness, better listening, or helping others. Or your theme may be a pragmatic business skill such as finance, PowerPoint mastery, or enhanced communication. Your theme may center on a passion or hobby such as music, art, or fly-fishing. Simply put, a single theme for the year has a far better probability of delivering the progress you seek compared to those vapid resolutions that most of us quickly dismiss. Once your theme is established, brainstorm rituals, reinforcements, and rewards to keep your theme front and center. Share it widely, as your public pronouncement creates its own accountability mechanism. Allow your theme to seep into daily life, and mastery will soon follow. Here’s to your tremendous success in the New Year, and to hoping your annual theme serves as a powerful guidepost along the journey. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Josh Linkner
While these two temperature-related instruments may be easy to confuse, they’re actually surprisingly different. Thermometers can report the current temperature with remarkable precision. Your shiny new digital thermometer will ensure you know that your family room is exactly 69.3 degrees. Or if your five year old daughter seems warm, it will only take a couple seconds to know how high her fever is with that handheld device you snagged from the drugstore for just $12. In contrast, a thermostat is used to adjust the temperature, not merely report it. The thermostat is an active tool to effectuate change, while the thermometer merely reports the facts with no ability to modify them. Controlled with intention and a vision for the future, we use a thermostat to raise or lower the temperature as we choose. My good friend and business partner Seth Mattison pointed out the difference to me recently with a call to arms for us all. Leadership isn’t about reporting what already is, but rather it’s imagining what can be and taking an active role in manifesting your vision. It’s about proactively driving change rather than reacting to external circumstances. You can be a thermostat in how you show up to meetings, raising the energy of the room with your enthusiasm. You can be a thermostat by setting a new change initiative in motion and seeing to it that the project reaches its mark. You can be a thermostat by creating and sharing content with the world to change hearts and minds. Too many of us shuffle through life as the lowly thermometer, falsely believing that we can’t change much and that we’re simply victims of circumstance. Instead, let’s take agency for ourselves and those around us. Let’s step into our ability to create impact in all aspects of our businesses and lives. As thermostats, we each get to be the architect, designer, and builder. We get to envision a better future, and then set those intentions into action. Thermometers are decent gauges of the current state, but we can be so much more when we take command of the dial. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! |
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