Five great nuggets of advice to kickstart your career.

Last week I joined a number of Oxford Brookes University alumni to share our career experiences with an audience of management graduate students. All of my co-panellists spoke eloquently about their transition from study to employment and the myriad of opportunities they encountered along the way. 

In doing so, each had a little nugget or two of advice to offer the students setting out on their career paths of the future. Here are five worth considering:

1) Find the job you would do for free and build a career around it.

I wrote a broader post about how to figure this out

here

. Starting out I just wanted to be a chef, but that lead to patisserie, then to restaurants,

 then to cooking demonstrations and TV,

 then consultancy, then management, then marketing, then social media and here we are. Back to you. Although the scenery may have changed, my vehicle was always hospitality and it was fueled by my desire to create great guest experiences

. And guess what? I do it at home for free when we throw a dinner party.

2) Travel, learn a language and immerse yourself in other cultures.

Immerse yourself in other cultures

Try and do this while you are young and independent, because later in your career you will be swayed by other commitments which will talk you out of it. And why is this experience so important? At some stage you will be required to lead a team and understanding how we communicate will be fundamental in getting the best from your team. As Peter Drucker

 once said "

Culture eats strategy for breakfast

". You can put all the plans you like in place, but if the culture of your team, company or customers are not aligned with that plan, then you are setting yourself up for failure. Talking of which..

3) Embrace failure, learn from it and move on quickly.

We all have setbacks in our lives, but it is how we react and deal with them that sets us apart. If you can demonstrate your ability to bounce back from failure, you will show up on the radar of senior management or investors. Many, if not all of the greatest business leaders have been through some form of life changing setback which made them stronger and more measured as a result. Did you know Richard Branson has dyslexia? There's a

fascinating article about some famous adversities here

.

4) Be yourself, but bring your 'A' game.

Nobody is as well reahearsed at being unique as you are. If you're still trying to figure out certain aspects of who you want to be, don't worry. Most people are. Try and work with people you respect, learn about people you admire and don't be afraid to emulate their mannerisms, behaviours and thinking. However at some point you have to arrive at the person YOU ARE. When that day comes, you will have gained a huge advantage on many of your colleagues and competitors. (Bonus tip: also don't forget you can learn from the people you dislike about the kind of person you DON'T want to be. An equally important distinction.) As for your 'A' game - that simply means

work hard, play hard

. Make sure however that you know the distinction, because confusing the two is where most of the energy will be sucked out of your career on that ladder to success.

5) Don't underestimate loyalty, respect and determination.

These should be qualities you display and qualities you seek out in the people you work with. Sometimes you are faced with making a decision where you might appear to be letting someone down (leaving a job, re-locating, turning down a promotion etc). But if the overriding verdict was out of loyalty or respect for someone else, or as part of your determination to grow as a person or leader, then the other party will respect the outcome. A simple question to evaluate this thought process is to ask yourself:

Is this the best I can do?

Business leaders know they can teach tasks, duties and processes, but they can't 'teach' integrity. That comes built in as part of your character. Bring that as part of your 'A' Game and the road will rise to meet your journey.

These are just five. If you have any other qualities, characteristics or nuggets of advice to offer someone starting out in their career, please take a minute to write a small comment below. Who knows how inspirational that might be to someone.

Please feel free to leave a comment. And if you enjoyed reading this you may like other related posts listed below. To receive future posts don't forget to subscribe via email (just enter your email above), or by RSS, or why not follow me on twitter

@mykitchensync

.

Employees can be entrepreneurs too.

Entrepreneurship runs in my blood. My Father is a lifelong entrepreneur and both of my Grandfathers were too. In my teens and early twenties I dreamed of owning my own restaurant and couldn't wait for when I would become the boss. Eventually my chance arrived and I handed in my notice to go and open my own eponymous restaurant. 

I vividly remember that final service at Mosimann's Dining Club when I flippantly said to Anton as he passed me in the corridor; "

Hey Chef, today is my last day as an employee!

" 

Later he quoted that back to me in a speech during my leaving party

 when h

e said it was a very bold and brave statement and wished me all the best. His words have

 stayed with me to this day since I hadn't really thought about how profound my statement was. It seemed I had set myself a challenge that I could NEVER go back to being an employee again. Now

that

became a scary idea at the time. But also a very exciting one...

Of course what I learned over the years is that you actually never stop being an employee. Even as he made that speech, Anton Mosimann himself was an employee since any Director of a Limited Company technically becomes an employee of 'The Company'. I also found that as much as I liked to think of myself as 'the boss', I still had to answer to business partners, and bank managers, and auditors and stakeholders and ultimately, our customers. Yes I could make my own decisions, but effectively I never stopped working for someone else. Did I ever stop being an employee? No, not really. I just thought I had for a short while.

That realisation made the decision to join a large company as an employee an easier one from that philosophical point of view, since I had now exorcised the demons of curiosity and found out for myself what it was like to be my own boss. It came with amazing highs, but also had incredible lows and the challenge since then has been to find that happy medium. As it happens, I think I may have found it.

When I joined my current employer, my biggest concern was in making sure I did not make any rash or bold decisions - decisions I would normally have made as an entrepreneur - until I knew the outcomes were going to be 'safe'. Learning all of the policies and procedures on my induction was a daunting experience. Furthermore, I was encouraged to 'manage the feelings' of one or two colleagues that I was to work with. This didn't bode well. As much as I tried to avoid 'rocking the boat', I began to lose confidence in my own decision-making instinct and constantly deferred to my line manager. I had gone from one extreme (of risk-taking) to the other (of safety) and got myself stuck in management quicksand. Something had to change if I was to become effective again. 

Eventually, a senior manager asked me a very simple question that gave me my Eureka moment; "

Thomas, if you ran this location contract as if you owned it, what would you do?

". I balked at the question and gave two or three quickfire solutions to some of the issues we were facing. "

So why don't you do that?

" was the reply. This really helped me figure out how to think about any future issues or challenges I was to face. I needed to get back in touch with my entrepreneurship as it was my secret weapon to becoming a better manager and leader.

Idea on the Horizon

Since then, I have tried to inject that momentum of energy and thought process into everything I do at work. By encouraging my team and colleagues to take more ownership of the challenges we face - just as I would as a business owner - they have become better managers themselves. I find myself constantly looking at how company systems can be tweaked and modified, initiatives kick-started (or improved), or how colleagues can be supported either directly from myself or from within the company culture. I know this approach might grate a few people the wrong way, but I have to believe that's their problem. 

Like friendship, I believe that entrepreneurship grows and strengthens the more you offer and share it. 

It is the foundation upon which the company I work for was founded. It is also the foundation upon which my own character was moulded. Doesn't it make sense that each should benefit the other for the greater common good?

Please feel free to leave a comment. And if you enjoyed reading this you may like other related posts listed below. To receive future posts don't forget to subscribe via email (just enter your email above), by RSS or why not follow me on twitter @mykitchensync.

Milestones in our Lives

Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler described songs as "milestones in our lives". I think he is on to something. If I want to cast my mind back to a happier, or perhaps more melancholy time, I will put on a certain album that reminds me of that moment in my life.

I think it's also true of dishes we cook. Especially if you are a chef. As you move from one influence to another, from one job to another or one country to another, there are certain dishes that become bookmarks in our culinary life. The question is, what sort of menu would they make up today?

Kilroy's Lemon Tart

Anton Mosimann's Bread and Butter Pudding will be a dish that had the most indelible mark on my career and as a result I have a real love/hate relationship with it. On one hand, it opened my eyes to a new way of cooking traditional classics and through it's popularity, I got to travel around the world making it for some very special occasions. On the other hand I made so much of it that today I would have to be super-hungry to eat even a spoonful.

Kilroy's Lemon Tart became my signature dessert over a two year stint in Bermuda where I made about 5000 portions by hand on a Formica table that I hope I never have to see again. And setting up in Nepal allowed me to develop Seared Chicken Breast stuffed with Nak's Cheese (- yes the spelling is correct: if you’re thinking the milk came from a yak, it's worth bearing in mind that a yak is male) and remains the signature dish in our restaurant to this day.

Dessert 'Wizard of Oz'

Thinking back to some of the life-changing milestones in my life's map of discovery, I fondly remember suchdishes as Sauerkraut in St. Moritz or Thukpa in Tengboche or Sel Roti in Sikkim. Which make me think that perhaps the greatest thing about cooking is that the act of doing so - with it's aromas, textures and flavours - will take you right back to that place or moment in time you want to experience again. Like listening to a song.

More importantly, this allows you to ‘emotionally connect’ with your guest in a very fundamental way, either by sharing with them YOUR experiences through a carefully crafted menu or by allowing them to create new milestones for themselves by putting them in a great atmosphere, where the service and food will be immortalised in their future memories and reminiscences.