Establishing a vision for knowledge management: Be like Gordon Ramsay.

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Back to Chef Ramsay

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Chef Gordon Ramsay’s formula for turning around failing restaurants:

Establish a vision. Do less. Do it well. Fix the decor. Work as a team.

Watch a few episodes of Kitchen Nightmares and you’ll see that this formula is devastatingly effective. It is also remarkably simple.

Step one in Chef Ramsay’s turnaround plan is to establish a vision for the failing restaurant. Most of the restaurants Chef Ramsay turns around are drifting without a clear identity, trying to be everything to everyone. In recent episodes he’s helped restaurants to position themselves as “healthy and fresh,” “family-style Italian,” and “from farm to table.” 

Chef Ramsay uses the vision for the restaurant as an armature for decision making.

Want to use frozen food? That doesn’t fit the vision of “from farm to table.”

How about using grapefruits from Mexico or apples from China? Nope. Out. Find a local fruit.

Can’t figure out how you are possibly going to decide which cheeses to serve in the dessert course? Draw a 100-mile radius around the restaurant and find a local farm making cheese within those boundaries.

This surely isn’t the first time someone has presented you with the benefits of using a clear vision to articulate your priorities and align a team. Yet virtually none of the restaurants Gordon Ramsay turns around have a clear vision. Why?  Planting your flag in the ground means shutting down other options and risking criticism from others. It requires discipline and clarity in communications.

In other words, defining a clear vision is difficult. Yet simple.

A vision for knowledge management

One of the challenges architects and engineers face is that they don’t know how to start organizing information and sharing knowledge. The sheer volume of both is so daunting that the opportunities for improvement seem simultaneously unlimited and exhausting. Many times they give up before they even get started.

There is more information to be organized in architecture and engineering firms than can possibly be organized. There is more knowledge created every day in architecture and engineering firms than can possibly be captured or shared. 

Enter the importance of clearly articulating a vision for knowledge management.

What is typically missing is a clear vision for what matters. What information do we absolutely need to manage? What knowledge is critical to our success to create, capture, and share? When all information and knowledge is treated equally, analysis paralysis and inaction is sure to follow.

Be like Gordon

Here’s my advice for those who are struggling with organizing information and sharing knowledge – be more like Gordon Ramsay.

Articulate your vision for knowledge management. Repeat it consistently. Use your vision to make decisions about what information gets managed and what knowledge you target for capturing and sharing.

It is difficult work. But the answer is simple.

Next post we’ll pick back up with step two: Do less.