“Life on the Line” by Grant Achatz and Nick Kokonas

“Life on the Line” by Grant Achatz and Nick Kokonas

A Book Review by Gary S. Smolker

WHAT  DOES  IT  TAKE  TO  BE  A  LEADING  EDGE  COMPANY ?

OVERVIEW

“Life on the Line” is an intense book written by Chef Grant Achatz and his business partner Nick Kokonas.

It is the life stories of two men who had a dream and did everything possible to make it come true.

Because of their intense focus on being “true to themselves” they had the inner strength to make the right choices when faced with life on the line decisions.

BACKGROUND

Chef Grant Achatz fell in love with cooking at the age of 5 when his mother gave him the task of stirring cherry Jell-O into hot water as the powder dissolved “like magic.”

Grant Achatz’s entire life from that point forward has been spent chasing one goal, to be a great chef-owner of a restaurant.

He invested everything he had in pursuit of that goal.  He dismissed relationships for it.  He sacrificed many aspects of what other people consider a normal life for it.

Being a great chef and owner of his own restaurant is who he wanted to be and is who he became.

Being a great chef became his identity.  Grant and his great friend and business partner Nick Kokonas, thought they had reached the pinnacle of their lives when their restaurant ALINEA was named the best restaurant in America by “Gourmet” magazine.

Then, while positioned firmly in the world’s culinary spotlight, Grant was diagnosed with tongue cancer. Grant was told by doctors at world renowned medical facilities that his entire tongue, part of his jaw and part of his throat would have to be removed in order to save his life.

The easy response would have been for Grant to say “go-ahead.”  But, Grant figured if he allowed his tongue to be cut out he would no longer continue be a great chef, his identity would be ripped out of his being.

Grant decided he would rather die than have his tongue removed.

“Life on the Line”  is the story of what Grant did next.

“Life on the Line” reveals what a peak performer does, what it takes to create and lead a leading edge business, to succeed as a leading edge enterprise and to stay “leading edge.”

GRANT’S BACKGROUND EXPERIENCE TRAINING AND DRIVE TO SUCCEED

As a boy Grant had the dream of one day becoming a great chef and owning his own restaurant.

As a young boy he started his culinary career as a pot and dish washer then progressed to a vegetable peeler, and then to chief egg cracker in his Grandmother’s cafe. His Grandmother’s cafe consisted of eight bar stools, and was located in the little riverside town of Marine City, Michigan.

In February 1980, when he was seven, Grant’s parents borrowed $5,000 from his grandmother to open their own restaurant, a dinner, Achatz Depot.

His father worked 18 hours a day. Grant came in whenever he could during the week and all day on the weekends.

His parents’ dinner became a success. Over time they moved their dinner to larger facilities.  Eventually the Achatz Family Restaurant had its first $1 million gross revenue year.

Grant’s parents wanted Grant to learn every aspect of the business.

At age 12 Grant became an actual employee in the restaurant.  He was allowed to do some basic food prep.  When he was 13 he was moved up to making and buttering toast.  At age 14 he graduated to cooking on the line.

Grant worked after school until closing.

Grant learned that in order to be a successful line cook you needed to keep your cool and be highly organized.

In the summer of 1991 Grant was given his first opening shift.

The restaurant was now solely his responsibility: All the produce and meat deliveries that arrived early had to be put away, the kitchen had to be cleaned, and everything had to be put in place for the breakfast run.

As high school was coming to an end, Grant decided he wanted to cook fancy food and one day own his own restaurant — a great restaurant.

Grant decided he wanted to go to the Culinary Institute of America.  His friends wrote him off as a deluded dreamer.

His father tried to dissuade him.  His father told him, “…you see how hard your mom and I work.  It’s not easy and you don’t make a ton of money for the amount of time you spend on it.  And it’s hard to have a good family life, too.”

Grant replied, “That’s okay. I don’t want a family.”

Grant’s mother interjected, “We will support you in whatever you decide.  We’ve put aside some money for school, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

After graduation from high school, Grant continued to work in his parents’ restaurant and applied for admission to the Culinary Institute of America.

After an acceptance letter came, in February 1993, Grant packed his things and moved to Hyde Park, New York from the small village (St. Claire) in Michigan where he grew up.

Grant had never been exposed to fine dining.

While attending culinary school Grant started buying culinary magazines.

Suddenly his awareness of the scope of the gastronomic world was vastly expanded.  It was a huge world he wanted to explore.

Grant began to realize that just because he had worked in a diner since he was five didn’t mean that he knew the right way to do things.

While attending culinary school, Grant worked as an extern at a fine-dining restaurant in a massive hotel in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

As an extern he worked his way through assignments at the prep station, making soups, salad dressings for about a month, and then moved to the roast/grill station on the hot line.

Grant got along.  The head chef agreed to recommend Grant if Grant would come back to work for him for a year after graduation.

The head chef told Grant, “I want to prepare you personally if I am going to recommend you.”

On October 28, 1994 Grant graduated from culinary school.

Thereafter he moved to Grand Rapid to work in the hotel restaurant where he had been an extern.

While working in the hotel, Grant read a cookbook written by Chef Charlie Trotter from Chicago.

Grant became infatuated with Trotter’s philosophy.  Grant wanted to work for Chef Trotter.

Grant wrote a cover letter to Chef Trotter and sent in his resume.

Trotter called Grant.  Trotter asked Grant, “Why should I hire you?” 

Grant answered: “I am a highly motivated cook and will do whatever it takes to do things right.”

Trotter chuckled and replied, “I have an entire restaurant full of people like that.  What makes you different?”

Grant muttered something about being ready every day.

Trotter invited Grant to try out at the restaurant.

Grant was told the chef de cuisine would give Grant a box of ingredients and Grant had to produce four courses for four people – chef Trotter and the three sous chefs – in three hours.  Trotter asked if Grant had any questions.

Grant asked, “Is there anything special I need to bring.”

Chef Trotter replied, “Your A game.”

Grant passed the test, was hired and briefly worked for Charlie Trotter.

At the time, Charlie Trotter was considered the best chef in the United States.

Grant had an emotionally and physically demanding job with sixteen-hour high intensity non-stop shifts.

While working for Chef Trotter Grant heard lots of criticism given to others and received lots of criticism.

Grant did not like the personality of Trotter’s kitchen and eventually quit.

Grant went home to St. Claire, Michigan.

Grant told his father, “That was my shot and I blew it. I have no idea what to do now.”

Grant’s father replied, “Restaurants are like girl friends; you gotta find the right one.  You didn’t fail, you just haven’t found the right partner yet and were smart enough to realize it.  You’ll figure it out.”

Grant then took a culinary tour of Europe, to experience amazing famous restaurants worth traveling to find.

He didn’t find such restaurants in Europe.  Meals at famous restaurants were just okay at best, nothing revelatory or remarkable; the service was unremarkable and condescending.

Finally, he had a great meal at an out of the way simple restaurant  (that is not listed in any guide) while taking a bike tour in the Tuscan Hillsides.

He ate and drank for two hours at this simple restaurant.  He didn’t want to leave. When he finally left this restaurant, he left in a daze. He realized that he had just had the best meal of his life.

The meal in Tuscany was a wake-up call to what was most important in a kitchen — passion. Grant felt that fine dining must meet with a genuinely passionate chef.

Grant read an article about Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry in Napa Valley and knew he had to work there.

Then Grant wrote fourteen letters to Thomas Keller in twelve days, figuring that Chef Keller could not ignore Grant completely because Chef Keller would realize that the letters would keep on coming.

After two weeks, Grant got a call from Chef Keller himself inviting Grant to come to Napa Valley for a two-day tryout.  Grant passed his tryout.

In “Life on the Line” Grant tells the following story about an event that occurred while he was trying out to work for Chef Keller at The French Laundry:

One day, while Chef Keller was cooking and simultaneously talking to Grant, a front-of-the-house member ducked in the kitchen and said, “Chef, up on ten.” That meant that someone at table number ten had gotten up from the table for whatever reason, probably to use the restroom.

Chef Keller glanced at the tickets and, realizing that was the table where the foie gras he had just cooked was headed, calmly picked up the plate and handed it to Grant.  “You like foie?” he asked.

“Yes Chef.” replied Grant.

If a diner gets up from the table, the food at The French Laundry doesn’t go under a heat lamp somewhere. It gets thrown out and the process starts again when the diner returns to his seat.  This time however, Chef Keller gave Grant the plate.

Chef Keller’s passion, discipline, dedication, intensity, and “here we do things the right way” method made a big impression on Grant.

In Chef Keller’s kitchen the food was perfect or it was wrong; failure was not an option.

At The French Laundry the cooks lived by the standard set by Chef Keller and everything else was meaningless and superflous. To insinuate that another cook was compromising the quality of the food was the ultimate insult.

While Grant worked there, The French Laundry was the pinnacle of gastronomic excellence in America and in the world. It had a mythic aura.

One day the cover page of  The New York Times dining section featured a review, by Ruth Riechl, of a meal in The French Restaurant: “IN NAPA VALLEY, A RESTAURANT SCALES THE PEAK.  Today his (Chef Keller’s) restaurant in Yountville, still called The French Laundry, is the most exciting place to eat in the United States.”

Quoting from the “Life on the Line”:

The praise from Ruth and the Outstanding Chef Award from the James Beard Foundation that followed in May catapulted chef Keller and The French Laundry to legendary, destination-dining status.  The phone rang and did not stop. Reservations became impossible to get for lunch and dinner, a total of ten services per week. It became common to have a hundred patrons for dinner and eighty for lunch.

Eventually Grant left The French Laundry in order to work in a small winery in the Napa Valley that had its own vineyards — to gain experience in the wine industry and wine trade.

Grant left The French Laundry after he realized that he was never going to get experience in the vineyards as long as he worked 14 hour days at The French Laundry because outside of work he barely had time to lift weights, wash his clothes, and try to catch up on sleep.

After working for the small winery, Grant went back to work for Chef Keller.

Eventually, Grant realized it was time to leave The French Laundry in order to find his own kitchen to run.

Grant discussed this with Chef Keller.

Chef Keller told Grant that Grant would have to find a find a restaurant owner willing to let Grant (who had no experience running a kitchen and no reputation) have carte blanche.

Grant writes: “One night, while scanning the fine-dining category on a job site, I stumbled across an ad for a tiny restaurant in Evanston, Illinois, called Trio.  I had never heard of the place.  According to the ad, Trio was a nationally acclaimed restaurant formerly run by Rick Tramanto and Gale Gand.  It went on to describe the food as eclectic-fusion, offering some of the most innovative and visually dazzling presentations in Chicago.  I copied all of the info down and wrote a cover letter to the owner, Henry Adaniya.” 

Grant was hired to be the head chef at Trio. The rest is culinary history.

Here is how Grant describes a conversation with Henry:

Four and a half weeks after my interview with Henry he e-mailed me to see if I was still available.  I didn’t even finish reading the e-mail before I picked up the phone and called him. ‘Hi, Henry. It’s Grant. I got your e-mail.’

‘Here’s the deal, I have gone through all of the applicants that I had scheduled and your food blew them all away. It wasn’t even close. The food has been haunting me.  I can’t get it out of my head. You are a talent and you are driven by a vision. So much so that I am willing to entertain the changes you want for Trio. That is, if you’re still looking for a job.”

Grant wanted to turn Trio, a tiny restaurant on a sleepy street forty minutes outside of Chicago, into a world-class establishment.  Grant was of the belief that if he built Trio up, customers would come.  He was optimistic that he could turn Trio into a globally known temple of gastronomy.

When he started at Trio, Grant explained how Trio would have to evolve and what his and Henry’s collective goals were for the incarnation of Trio.

Grant explained his philosophy to the people he would be working with as follows: “I want to create an experience that is based on emotions.  I want people to be excited, happy, curious, surprised, intrigued and even bewildered during the meal.” Grant wanted dining at the new Trio to be akin to enjoying participatory theatre.

Grant succeeded in turning Trio into a world-class restaurant.  A  review of food served at Trio, written by food critic Phil Vettel, published in the Chicago Tribune, reported: “With the installation of its third-ever chef, Trio has definitely re-embraced the wild side. Grant Achatz is the most dynamic, boundnary stretching chef to hit town in a long, long time.  If you’ve been putting off luxury-dining lately, let me suggest that now is the time to jump back in the game.” And that is what people did.

In “Life on the Line” Grant reports: “The energy in the restaurant was palpable.”

A “wealthy” dinner (Nick Kokonas) couldn’t stop coming back to eat there.

Eventually, Grant and Nick started a restaurant (ALINENA).   They planned the average check per person was going to be about a hundred and sixty-five dollars.

In “Life on the Line,” Nick reports that before meeting Grant, Nick had largely attained his goals professionally.  He was tired, burned-out, and increasingly unable to enjoy anything.  Meeting Grant changed all that.

Nick reports that after eating at Trio, every time he went out to eat somewhere else with his wife it felt lesser in every respect, so he and his wife kept going back to Trio, “… despite the cost and the sometimes awkward feeling of being a regular at a restaurant of this type.”

On October 1, 2003, Pulitzer Prize — winning writer – and chairman of the James Beard restaurant committee – David Shaw wrote a feature article on Grant and Trio for the L.A. Times, in which he described his experience at Trio:

“Welcome to Trio, the most avant-garde restaurant in America.”

“It was a truly amazing experience. What Achatz is doing in his 13-table restaurant is nothing less than redefining fine dining in this country.”

“Risky and delicious.”

“Every course at Trio seems as much intellectual exercise as culinary experience — as much theater as restaurant. Take our 19th course.  The waiter brought to our table a large, glass vase filled with long, green, leafy angelica branches.  The bottom 6 inches or so of each branch had been hollowed out — and filled with apple puree.”

LESSONS LEARNED

While working in great restaurants Grant observed that the chef at those restaurants never let the bar drop no matter what the situation in their pursuit of excellence:

The food in those restaurants was perfect or it was wrong. Failure was not an option.

The only way to do things was the right way. Every day in those chefs’ kitchens was about striving for perfection

RAISING START-UP CAPITAL FOR ALINEA

Nick brought in investors who realized, after eating at Trio, they would be part of something great.

Nick told potential investors there was no business plan. “It’s not really a restaurant.  Its going to be more like a performance-art-theatre, something no one in this country has really done before.”

Nick was told over and over again, “This is a rich man’s folly.”   “Look you’re  gonna be feeding people, right? In my book that is a restaurant.  And in the real world, investors get screwed when they invest in a restaurant.”

Investors came forth who invested in the spirit determination and vision of Grant albeit Grant only had a dream.

Over time, each of Nick’s and Grant’s investors contributed ideas, time, expertise and other kinds of assistance beyond financial support.

WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A PEAK PERFORMER

Before reading this book I knew nothing about being a chef.  I knew nothing about what it takes to run a top-of-the line restaurant.

While reading this book I learned about the discipline, the dedication, the intensity, the tenacity and drive required to be a great chef running a great restaurant.

Below are some of the rules for running a great restaurant discussed in “Life on the Line”:

1. Bring your “A” game.
2. The only way to do it is the right way.
3. Here we do things right.
4. The food is perfect or it is wrong. Failure is not an option.
5. Always think the “big picture.”
6. Be a talent driven by a vision.
7. By working hard you appreciate it when you finally get there, when you make it all happen.
8. Be willing to outwork everyone else.
9. Learn how to learn and the rest will take care of itself.
10. Business plan is irrelevant compared to the vision you have in your head.
11. Make everyone realize they are part of something great.
12. You cannot let your guard down.
13. It is impossible to try to innovate.  You can’t decide to turn creativity on or off.  All you can do is present yourself with interesting problems and try to find solutions. Then you refine those solutions again and again.
14. You have to push to overcome the tendency to grind to a halt.
15. Know the most important aspect of what you do comes from within.
16. Make “MIH”(make it happen) be your mantra.

Things did not come easy for Grant.  Below are descriptions of Grant’s mental and emotional state of being, his daily life and his relationship with his wife Angela:

• “Everything that I see, hear and feel, I relate to food.”
• “I was a terrible spouse, I had no emotional time for Angela, and in many ways my feelings vacillated between appreciation and something else.”
• “I had no schedule other than to wake up, go to work, come home, go to sleep. The restaurant was always in my head and there were no days off, no moments off.”
• “I had invested no time or thought in my personal relationships.  My waking time and dreams were of restaurants and food and my career.”
• When Grant’s partner Nick asked Grant where they should locate their new restaurant, Grant replied that he didn’t know any of the neighborhoods or streets because he had spent his entire life in the kitchen.
• Grant told the staff in his new restaurant: “This is not a restaurant, or a paycheck, or just your job. This is our statement, our measure of what we can be. This is my dream.  I am lucky enough to have a shot at it. And it will require all of us working together in a singular fashion to pull it off.”

When Grant found out he had cancer, Grant didn’t want to live without his identity. Grant couldn’t stand to have his identity as a chef taken away by having his tongue cut out.

FIGHTING CANCER

Grant met a doctor who advised Grant to have chemotherapy and radiation instead of having his tongue cut out.  Grant followed that advice.

During chemotherapy and/or radiation treatment, skin peeled from Grant’s mouth and throat.

He lost his sense of taste.

The chemotherapy left him bald, pimpled, scaled, and sore.

The radiation burned his tongue and face from inside out.

The  lining of his esophagus shed like a rattlesnake and he was forced to peel it out of his throat while choking and vomiting.

He couldn’t taste a thing.

Food was cardboard and salt was just sand in his mouth, dissolving slowly with no purpose.

Eating was a horrific and painful ordeal.

While receiving treatment Grant stayed engaged.  Grant’s reaction to the awful ordeal he was going through was, “there is no sense in wasting the day.” Grant didn’t stop cooking.

Grant learned to cook with his other senses smelling wonderful smells that he couldn’t taste, seeing food he used to love that he couldn’t eat.

He wanted to run away.  Instead he kept on cooking.

He started treatment at 172 pounds.  At the end of his treatment he weighed 127.

At some point Grant stopped worrying about the future and actually began to believe that he might have one.

Grant cultivated optimism by adjusting his vision to see where he had control rather than passively suffering the shocks of life.

BEING DECLARED CANCER FREE

Five months after beginning treatment Grant was declared cancer free.

A few months later Grant received the James Beard Foundation Outstanding Chef in America for 2008 Award at an award ceremony in New York.

Grant didn’t know he was going to receive that award when he arrived at the Award Ceremonies.

He looked terrible.  He had a scraggly goatee because he was unable to shave without peeling his skin. The tuxedo he was wearing draped over his shoulders like it would on a hanger.

He could barely talk. His tongue was half the size it used to be. The muscles that control it had been atrophied by radiation. His lips didn’t go where he always wanted them to, and his speech sounded slurred and distorted.

The discipline, the dedication, the intensity, the tenacity and the drive Grant saw in the fine restaurants where he worked during his career and which Grant had pulled in thinking it would make him a good cook and ultimately a great chef  became a part of who he was and  ultimately helped him get through his battle with cancer.

Grant reports that after winning the award, “I returned to Alinea the next day, stepped into the kitchen, and worked with a vigor I have never felt before.”

CONCLUSION

“Life on the Line”  is a statement of who Grant is.  It reveals his values.

It is book about choice, identity, survival, determination, creativity, profound friendship and how cooking not only influenced Grant’s professional career but also saved his life.

“Life on the Line” demonstrates that everything about life is an opportunity.

Everybody pursues these opportunities of life differently.

Once Grant developed a coherent identity for himself he made choices in ways that reinforced it.

Grant’s decisions defined him, define who he is.

He did whatever he could to avoid losing the things that were most important to him.

If you suspect “Life on the Line” is fiction, look up the restaurant “ALINEA” online.

Choice allows us to actively participate in our own making, to be architects of our future.

That being said, choice is a way of writing our lives.

Through choice we assert what we do matters.

Alinea opened on May 4, 2005.

Happy reading.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Gary S. Smolker

All rights reserved.

“The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance” edited by K. Anders Ericson, Neil Charness, Paul J. Feltovich and Robert R. Hoffman

“The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance”

A Book Review by Gary S. Smolker

EXPERTISE AND SITUATIONAL AWARENESS

Wayne Gretzky was the world’s greatest hockey player, yet his shot was only average.  What skill did he have?

Mica R. Endsley, the author of my favorite chapter  in this handbook, answers this question by directing us to a magazine story about  all-time leading hockey scorer Wayne Gretzky who set or tied 49 different National Hockey League records, including most goals, most points, and most assists.

 Gretsky doesn’t look like a hockey player….His shot is only average – or, nowadays, below average…Gretzy’s gift, his genius even, is for seeing…To most fans, and sometimes even to the players on the ice, hockey frequently looks like chaos: sticks flailing, bodies falling, the puck ricocheting just out of reach. Gretzky can discern the game’s underlying pattern and flow, and anticipate what’s going to happen faster and in more detail than anyone else in the building. Several times during a game you’ll see him making what seems to be aimless circles on the other side of the rink from the traffic, and then, as if answering a signal, he’ll dart ahead to a spot where, an instant later, the puck turns up.

In the words of Endsley: The critical attribute which placed Gretzky above his contemporaries was mental – his ability to understand what was happening in the game and to anticipate where the puck would be.  This superior situational awareness allowed him to be “ahead of the game” and outmatch bigger, faster, and better players.

Effective decision-making depends upon high levels of situational awareness and thus so does effective performance. People with high situational awareness act upon the material environment or upon other men in accordance with a plan.

Unlike Gretzky, a novice in any field of endeavor is a person who is either completely new to the systems and situations in a particular domain or a person who will never “get it”, a person who will be considerably overloaded in seeking to gather information, understand what it means, and formulate correct responses.

Without knowledge of the underlying relationships among system components, people who are not experts do not realize what information to seek out following receipt of other information. Non-experts suffer from poor information management strategies, including poorly directed information seeking-behaviors and scan patterns that will allow them to detect the most important information from amongst the large number of possibilities.

A person who does not have an expert’s ability to process the information perceived and to understand its significance to goals may fail to appreciate the importance or meaning of even the information that they do acquire.

The prototypical novice (and any person who is not an expert in a demanding field) is quickly overloaded, inefficient, and error prone. Decision making and performance are highly compromised as a result.

The inadequate abilities and knowledge and know how and frustrating experiences of the prototypical novice occur in all fields of endeavor including business, relationships (including marriage and love) and in living a fulfilling life.

THE NECESSITY AND LIMITATIONS OF HARD WORK

In introductory chapters in this handbook, contributors set the stage for what will follow in succeeding chapters by reporting that becoming expert in anything requires years of work which someone will undertake only if they have some initial success, enjoy the work, and have early instruction by exceptional teachers and committed support by their families.

One reported biographical study of exceptional contributors to society, such as Einstein and Picasso, stresses how these contributors were able to be single-minded because they were supported by family,  friends, and colleagues, often at considerable expense.

At a less earthshaking level of expertise, it is also reported that the 2004 winner of the Wimbledon woman’s tennis tournament, Maria Sharapova, received a scholarship to a tennis academy at age eight.

Extensive experience does not, however, invariably lead to expert achievement.  Improvements are eventually limited by one’s basic endowments, such as abilities, mental capacities, and innate talents as well as whether is being continuously trained by an expert whose coaching helps you get to the next higher level of performance.

Becoming an expert, or doing anything with single-mindedness comes at a cost in relationships, especially in marital relationships.

For example: Often times a woman demands that her man be able to support her and a family. The man works long hard hours. The woman gets a nice house, a nice car, a boat, clothes, children and vacations — but she doesn’t get the attentions she “needs” from the man she married.  Inevitably, they grow apart, they get divorced.  This is not discussed in the handbook.

The handbook does not discuss the “secret” to love that lasts or principles for making marriage work.

It does not contain a practical guide for making relationships work.

None of the authors are a relationship expert.

Nowhere in the handbook is it discussed that every living creature is happy when (s)he fullfills his or her destiny, when (s)he is being that which in truth (s)he is.

Nowhere in this handbook is there a discussion of the existence of complex patterns of linkage and splitting between the nature of a man’s work and that of his private life.

None of the authors describe the human dimension of gratification one gets from being on the cutting edge of their field, or the balance of pleasure and pain in married life.

In “The Way Men Think”, published by Yale University Press, Liam Hudson and Bernadine Jacot discuss a study they made of eminent men in British universities, in which they found that the humanities, biology, and physical science each had their own patterns of marriage, fertility and divorce.

The following is a quote from “The Way Men Think”:

“Many eminent men in the humanities had remained single, as many as four out of every ten distinguished classical scholars recording themselves as childless. In contrast, nearly all the eminent biological and physical scientists had  followed a more conventional pattern, and were married with children.

“We also found that the rates of divorce varied strikingly from group to group, being six times as high, for instance among eminent physicists as among eminent chemists. The most marked differences though, occured among the biologists. Those who had risen to eminence through the roles they had played in the fusion of old-fashioned biology with mathematics and physical science — who had helped establish the modern discipline of genetics, for example — were some twenty-five times more likely to divorce than the biologists of the next decade who had implemented these pioneers’ discoveries.  It seems, in other words, that upheavals in the intellectual and personal spheres echo one another, serious matrimonial disturbance being most common for men in whom intellectual boundaries have been breached.”

THE MAKING OF A DREAM TEAM AND ECOMONIC MIRACLES

“The  Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance” does not have a chapter on business start-ups, business success and/or entrepreneurial energy.  “Start-Up Nation” by Dan Sensor and Saul Singer, published by 12, is all about that.  It is a story of Israel’s economic miracle.

In “Start-Up Nation”  Dan Senor and Saul Singer give an explanation for how it is that Israel produces more start-up companies than large peaceful and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the United Kingdom.  According to Senor and Singer: “… in addition to boasting the highest density of start-ups in the world (a total of 3,850 start-ups, one for every 1,844 Israelies), more Israeli companies are listed on the NASDAQ exchange that all companies from the entire European continent. In 2008, per capita venture capital investments in Israel were 2.5 times greater than in the United States, more than 30 times greater than in Europe, 80 times greater than in China, and 350 times tgreater han in India. Comparing absolute numbers, Israel — a country of just 7.1 million people — attracted close to $2 billion in venture capital, as much as flowed to the United Kingdom’s 61 million citizens or the the 145 million people living in Germany and France combined….After the United States, Israel has more companies listed on the NASDAQ than any country in the world, including India, China, Korea, Singapore and Ireland…Israel is the world leader in the percentage of the economy that is spent on research and development.”

Senor and Singer point out, “One explanation is that adversity, like necessity, breeds inventiveness.”  However, that is not Senor’s and/or Singer’s answer. Senor’s and Singer’s explanation of the economic miracle is broader and deeper…”it is a story not just of talent, but of tenacity, of insatiable questioning of authority, of determined informality, combined with a unique antitude toward failure, teamwork, mission, risk, and cross-disciplinary creativity.”

“Start-Up Nation” teaches that the key to entrepreneurial business success is a combination of collective sense of purpose, fire, amibition, determination to achieve  willingness to take risks, willingness to fail and looking at failure as a learning opportunity.  That is where Israeli entrepreneurial energy comes from.

“Start-Up Nation” is a wonderful book.  Here are a few quotes from “Start-Up Nation”:

• “The notion that one should accumulate credentials before launching a venture simply does not exist.”
• “…when you are in charge of something, you are responsible for everything that happens…and everything that does not happen.”
• “The phase ‘It was not my fault’ does not exist in the military culture.”
• “Explaining away a bad decision is unacceptable. ‘Defending stuff that you’ve done is just not popular. If you screwed up, your job is to show the lessons you’ve learned. Nobody learns from someone who is being defensive.”
• “The key for leadership is the soldiers’ confidence in their commander. If you don’t trust him, if you’re not confident in him, you can’t follow him.”
• “A bit of mayhem is not only healthy but critical.”
• “Bitzu’ism is at the heart of the pioneering ethos and Israel’s entrepreneurial drive. ‘To call someone a bitzu’ist is to pay him or her a high compliment…”
• Ben-Gurion was the classic bitzu’ist … A bitzu’ist is omeone who just gets things done.”

“Start-Up Nation” is unbelievably well written.

At the beginning of each chapter is a quote.  The quote at the beginning of the first chapter follows:

Four guys are standing on a street corner…an American, a Russian, a Chinese man, and an Israeli… A reporter comes up the group and says to them: “Excuse me…What’s your opinion on the meat shortage?” The American says: What’s a shortage? The Russian says: What’s meat? The Chinese man says: What’s an opinion? The Israeli says: What’s ‘Excuse me’?”

Senor and Singer point out, “Somewhere along the way — either at home, in school, or in the army — Israelis learn that assertiveness is the norm, reticence is something that risks you being left behind.”

The “tone” of pride in discussions and quotes in “Start-Up Nation” is nothing like the tone of  discussion in “The Cambridge Hanbook of Expertise and Expert Performance.”

I was introduced to the “term” team psychological safety in the chapter in “The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance” entitled “The Making of A Dream Team: When Expert Teams Do Best.”

The author of that chapter of the handbook discusses the fact that people in a relationship are not going to be a high performance team unless they feel “safe” to be themselves, feel safe to experiment, look upon failure as a learning opportunity and learn from their mistakes.

The author makes the point that a team’s engagement in learning behavior is strongly tied to a team’s level of psychological safety.

Studies show that a team in which the members feel safe to be themselves and where they are empowered to take risks and learn from mistakes and failures is a team where the members will progress to a higher level of performance.

I prefer to call “team psychological safety” “cultural tolerance for constructive failures or “intelligent failures.”

Senor and Singler point out, in “Start-Up Nation”, that a 2006 Harvard University study shows that entrepreneurs who have failed in their previous enterprise have an almost one-in-five chance of success in their next start-up, which is a higher success rate than that for first-time entrepreneurs and not far below that of entrepreneurs who have had a prior success.

In “The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance” there is a robust discussion in the chapter entitled “The Making A Dream Team: When Expert Teams Do Best” of the following additional factors which lead to top performance: (a) high performance teams have a clear and common purpose,  (b)  hold shared mental models of how their goals will be achieved, and (c) team members anticipate each other and communicate without communicating overtly because they understand their common goals, each other’s roles and how they fit together.

Most importantly: (d) they trust in the intentions of their fellow team members, (e)  they believe their teammate(s) care(s) about them, (f) they strongly believe in their team’s collective ability to succeed, (g) they communicate with each other often enough that fellow team members have the information they need to be able to contribute, (h) and work is distributed and assigned in a thoughtful manner, balancing task characteristics with individual expertise as well as overall workload.

The discussion in this chapter of the handbook is about when expert teams do best.  Maybe the handbook does not discuss marriages or “business” because most people don’t know how to invest their time and effort to become experts in being married and/or being an expert in “business” and/or there is nobody recognized by the editors of the handbook for being expert on the topic of how to make a successful marriage or how to become a success in business.

In that ships don’t sail into port without a pilot it would have been nice if  this handbook contained a chapter on principles for making a marriage work and another chapter on principles for making a business work.

However, the principles discussed in the the chapter entitled “The Making of A Dream Team: When Expret Teams Do Best”  parallel  the following principles I have read about or seen practiced in successful marriages.

Happily married couples know each other intimately — each other’s likes, dislikes, personality quirks, hopes and dreams.

They express their fondness for each other in little ways, day in and day out.

They stay in touch with each other in their daily lives.

The key to a happy marriage is finding someone with whom you mesh.

Hang ups don’t have to ruin a marriage.

Problems are inevitably part of a relationship.  What matters is how they are dealt with.

If you can accomodate each other’s needs and handle them with caring, affection and respect, your marriage can thrive.

The better you are able to understand, honor and respect each other and your marriage the more likely your marriage will be a happy one.

In the strongest marriages, Husband and Wife share a deep sense of meaning.  They don’t just “get along.” They also support each other’s hopes and aspirations and build a sense of purpose into their lives together.

In happy marriages, partners incorporate each other’s goals into their concept of what their marriage is about.

People are not made of numbers. They are made of hopes, dreams, passions, talents and tenacity.

Dreams, hopes, aspirations and wishes are part of a person’s identity and give meaning and purpose to a person’s life.

Helping each other realize their dreams is one of the goals of marriage.

The more shared meaning a married couple can find, the deeper, richer and more rewarding their relationship will be.

When either spouse doesn’t fully appreciate the importance of supporting his or her partner’s dreams, gridlock is almost inevitable.

Eighty percent of divorced men and women say their marriage broke up because they did not feel loved and appreciated; they gradually grew apart and lost a sense of closeness.

In that nothing characterizes us as much as our field of attention, I urge you to read  the story in “Start-Up Nation” of Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s visit to Shevach-Mofet high school in Israel.  This was their only stop in Israel, aside from the prime minister’s office.

What had brought the world’s most famous tech duo to this Israeli high school of all places?

The answer came as soon as Sergey Brin spoke. ‘Ladies and gentle, girs and boys’, he said in Russian, his choice of language prompting spontaneous applause. ‘I emigrated from Russia when I was six,’ Brin continued.  ‘I went to the United States. Similar to you I have standard Russian-Jewish parents. My dad was a math professor.  They have a certain attitude about studies.  And I think I can relate that here, because I’m told your school recently got seven out of the top ten places in a math competition throughout Israel.”

This time the students clapped for their own achievement. “But what I have to say,” Brin continued, cutting through the applause, “is what my father would say — ‘ What about the other three?'”

Most of the students at the Shevach-Mofet school were, like Brin, second generation Russian Jews. Shevach-Mofet is located in an industrial area of Tel Aviv, the poorer part of town.

Sergy Brin knew these students had absorbed the same ethos from their parents that he had absorbed from his parents. He knew this ethos was a source of the competitive drive for excellence that pervades Shevach-Mofet.

Sensor and Singer explain that the Israelis’ drive for success is both personal and national. “Israelis have a term for this davka, an untranslateable Hebrew word that means ‘despite’ with a ‘rub their nose in it’ twist. As if to say, ‘The more they attack us, the more we will succeed.”

Getting back to my observations and comments about having a successful marriage: Tell me where your attention lies and I will tell you who you are.

Since attention is the supreme instrument of personality; it is the apparatus which regulates our mental life, it follows that falling in love is a fixation of attention.

Therefore, pay attention to your spouse every day if you want to have a successful marriage.

INFORMED INTUITION: EXPERTISE AND SITUATIONAL AWARENESS

The authors of the “situational awareness chapter”, in the handbook, point out that without basic perception of important information, the odds of forming an incorrect picture of the situation increase dramatically.

Situational awareness involves more than simple perception of information – it also demands that people understand the meaning and significance of what they have perceived.

The ability to forecast future situation events and dynamics marks individuals who have the highest level of understanding of the situation.

THE TEN YEAR RULE

In one chapter of the handbook, the author, Robert W. Weisberg concludes that expertise is necessary for creative thinking.

In this chapter, Weisberg demonstrates that it took Mozart ten years of study to become expert.

“Consider Mozart’s earliest piano concertos, the first four written at the ripe old age of 11, and the next three written when he was 16. Those works contain no original music by Mozart; they are simply arrangements of music of other composers. Mozart’s father may have used others’ music as the basis for the practice by the young man in writing for groups of instruments. Furthermore, if some of the published works by the young  Mozart are based on the works of others, then Mozart’s private tutelage from his father must have also centered on study of  works of others. So Mozart learned his craft over many years, under the watchful eye of a professional teacher. This training is not different from that received today in schools of music by aspiring composers.

“Thus, whereas it is no doubt true that most composers will not match Mozart’s ultimate achievements, his early achievements are matched by many composers as they advance through music school. Recent analysis of other seminal classical composers — Bach, Beethoven, and Hayden — supports the findings from Mozart.”

By the way, the July 2011 issue of “Harvard Men’s Health Watch” contains a report on a study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine which investigated how listening to music affects cognitive function in general. In this study it was found that students who had spent 10 minutes listening to a Mozart piano concerto had their IQ scores boosted 8 to 9 IQ points.

The ten year rule is not an absolute. “For example, famous chess player Bobby Fisher required nine years of intense chess study before becoming recognized as a grand master in chess at age 16.”

In the  chapter in the handbook  entitled “Experience and Deliberate Practice”, K. Anders Ericsson points out that the number 10 is not magical and also discusses physical fitness.

Ericsson points out that increases in physical fitness do not simply result from wishful thinking. Instead people have to engage in intense aerobic exercise that pushes them well beyond the level of comfortable physical activity.

Ericsson describes what happens to the dormant genes in the DNA and the extraordinary physiological processes that are activated when the human body is put under exceptional strain.  According to Ericsson, these adaptations will eventually allow the individual to execute the given level of activity without greatly straining the physiological systems.  To gain further beneficial increases athletes need to increase or change their weekly training activities to introduce new and perhaps different types of strain on key physical systems.

LESSONS I LEARNED FROM READING THIS HANDBOOK, READING OTHER BOOKS, FROM HAVING AN ENCYCLOPEDIC CURIOSITY AND FROM EXPERIENCE

Not to be preoccupied with life, is to let your life float rudderless, like a buoy without anchor chains, coming and going as it is pushed by social currents.

For the discovery of new things, intellectual keenest is not enough.

One must have an eagerness for this or for that type of possible things.

In short, one finds only what one seeks.

Athletic training involves pushing associated physiological systems outside the comfort zone to stimulate physiological growth and adaptation.

Deliberate practice is the basis of expertise, which in turn is responsible for superior performance.

Our idea of life is the inspiring and directing force of all our actions.

Purpose produces sociological consequences.

To seek is to assume the thing sought and indeed to have it by prevision.

To seek is to assume/anticipate a reality that is still nonexistent.

Man’s desire to live is inseparable from his desire to live well.

Man conceives of life not simply as being, but as well-being. Not being, but well-being, is the fundamental necessity of man, the necessity of necessities.

The essence of life consists precisely in longing for more life.  Living is to live even more, a desire to increase one’s own palpitations.

Only in proportion as we are desirous of living more do we really live.

An aspiration, a project of life is your true being.

You aspire to be this or that.

Your choices define who you are.

Living is something no one can do for you — life is not transferable — it is not an abstract concept, it is your most individual being.

Human life is not only a struggle with nature; it is also the struggle of man with his soul.

When I visited the graveyard at Normandy Beach, where allied forces landed on D-Day during World War II, the most inspiring marker I read at the Normandy American Cemetery read as follows:

You can manufacture weapons and your can purchase ammunition, but you can’t buy valor and you can’t pull heroes off an assembly line.

Being successful means filling your life with calls you want to return.

CONCLUSION

“The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance” provides exceptionally interessting coverage on many specific subjects, but fails to offer anything on major life subjects such as business, marriage and love.

There are 42 chapters in this 788 page handbook.

I found topics discussed in the following chapters exceptionally interesting:

• “The Making of A Dream Team: When Expert Teams Do Best”
• “Expertise and Situational Awareness”
• “Studies of Expertiese from Psychological Perspectives”
• “Decision Making Expertise”
• “Expert Performance in Sport” A Cognitive Perspective”
• “Artistic Performance: Acting, Ballet, and Contemporary Dance”
• “Expertise in Chess”
• “The Influence of Experience and Deliberate Practice on the Development of Superior Performance”
• “Aging and Expertise”
• “Social and Sociological Factors in Development of Expertise”
• “Modes of Expertise in Creative Thinking: Evidence from Case Studies”

Happy reading.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Gary S. Smolker