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What can we learn from Chef Gordon Ramsay?

by Deborah Hinton

It has food.  It has wine.  It has crazy characters.  It has drama.  So it had to happen.  Michael and I are now completely addicted to the original “Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares”.  We stopped watching television months ago.  Now we’re watching streaming video online.  And thanks to The Food Network we’re hooked on Chef Gordon Ramsay’s show.

Who knew how complicated running a restaurant could be?

And who knew that beside the food [Ramsay’s an advocate for fresh local ingredients and simple plates – a higher purpose for the customer], communication seems to be the most important ingredient for success.  And, perhaps surprisingly, I don’t mean marketing communication or PR.  I mean internal communication.

We’ve now watched about 8 episodes.  And with one exception – a brigade of experienced French chefs and service staff from Michelin starred restaurants who clearly knew what they were doing – the mantra of every show has been ‘Communicate!”

Ramsay’s challenge;  get communication going between:

  • Owners and employees
  • Front of house [service] and back of house [kitchen]
  • Within teams – front of house and back of house
  • Front of house and customers.

    • Once you get past his foul language, the man is masterful.  He starts by raising their awareness of, and gets them focused on, the customer experience.  A reality check.

    Then, he facilitates often profound change – he encourages, he cajoles, he demonstrates, he brings new and sometimes jarring perspective and insight, he’s rational, he’s emotional and slowly but surely most teams get it.

    No crafting of messages.  No pushing them out.  He just gets them speaking to each other.  He helps them get the right conversations/communications going in the right way and at the right time to ensure the best customer experience. Remarkably completely dysfunctional teams start working well together and end up delivering outstanding experience for their customer and each other.

    So, should we be spending more time as facilitator and less time as message pushers?  I’d love to hear what you think?

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    Deborah Hinton Tuesday, August 10th, 2010
    Permalink Change Management, Communication, Internal communication 1 Comment

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    1 Comment to What can we learn from Chef Gordon Ramsay?

  • Dan Gray says:
    August 17, 2010 at 3:16 am

    Hi Deb – great post. I love the show too, for the same reasons as you. There’s one other question I’d add to your list at the bottom, though, which is:

    Where does Ramsay’s credibility come from?

    It’s very pertinent, given the last CommScrum post – especially Indy’s comment and Liam Fitzpatrick’s story about the can of worms he found himself opening up when he suggested recently that the ability to write well was not an essential skill for communicators.

    Does Ramsay’s ability to affect organisational change have anything to do with writing? No, of course not. His credibility comes from his unrivalled knowledge of running successful restaurants – from having been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, and earned 12 Michelin Stars in the process.

    (Something that members of the self-righteous roll-call on Shel Holtz’s blog in response to Liam would be wise to bear in mind.)

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