I like to think of myself as something of a gourmet and a better than average domestic cook. Indeed, on occasions I even live out the fantasy by putting on my chef’s jacket (I even bought a toque once) and cooking for groups of friends and our clients. I guess it was that interest in food and cookery that led my wife to buy me a ‘molecular gastronomy kit’ for Christmas 2011 – a box full of kit and chemicals that might just turn me into the next Heston Blumenthal. I’m ashamed that 14 months later I have not used any of that kit. Why?

Switch the scenario, your employer pays for you, or perhaps you even pay for yourself, to go on an expensive training course where you learn – or, more usually, someone tries to teach you, all sorts of new tools and techniques to improve your management or leadership practice. You come away with a head full of ideas and the course manual goes on the shelf never to be looked at again nor are very many of the ideas that you brought away with you put into practice. Why?

Perhaps it’s because I’m comfortable in my kitchen. I can nearly always rustle up something very tasty from whatever we have in the fridge and store cupboards and on occasions I will go out and buy some special ingredients to make a special meal. Yet all of that is within the envelope of what I know already and what my intuition tells me might be an interesting combination of ingredients. I rarely follow recipes, although I do read cookbooks out of interest and (also I think) a desire to stimulate my grey cells into something new or different. I guess I want whatever I cook to be mine, not a regurgitation of the beloved Delia’s undoubted skill in writing recipes. I know that I want each meal to be different – I could no more eat foie gras two nights running than listen to the Archers or watch Eastenders two days running. Doing things the same way as before just does not do it for me. Perhaps that’s a legacy of a life in organisational change, where I soon realised that every situation is different and required a different approaches to resolution. Or perhaps that is why I ended up in change because repetition is a boring.

Anyway, back to using that molecular gastronomy kit. I looked at it this morning and wondered why on earth I was not, so far, interested in using it. I don’t know the answer but here are a couple of propositions:

1. that I am not interested in learning anything new. I hope this isn’t the case, for as long as I can remember learning has been one of my core values and much of what I do seems to be about putting myself in positions where I might be able to learn something new.
2. fear of failure. I am really not very good failure. The prospect of not achieving my goals leads to one of two responses, either avoidance or persistence. I clearly remember the sinking feeling in my stomach on the rare occasions when my culinary concoctions have not worked out. Although I can only think of one or two occasions (from over 35 years of cooking just about every single day), when what I produced was actually inedible.

Switch the scenario again. When you return from that management or leadership training course, what gets in the way of trying out the new ideas? Do you really want to improve your performance or did you just go on the class for a bit of intellectual masturbation? Do you fear the consequences of trying out some of these new ideas? Or is it just that you can’t be bothered because you are stuck in a rut? Well as someone said to me some time ago “the difference between a rut and a grave is 6 feet”.

So, before the week is out that molecular gastronomy kit is going to be explored and used. I need to watch the video and read the manual because of this stuff is so different to what I already know that it seems unlikely I will be able to use intuition to guide me. I also need to do something else that I generally don’t need in working with intuition – plan. I know I will need to decide in advance what equipment, materials and ingredients I will need in order to prepare my chosen gastronomic treat.

I know it will be okay, because if it doesn’t quite turn out how I expect then I create the opportunity to learn by having another go. I suspect my wife might be in for some interesting treats over the next few weeks!