While musing on this chapter in a restaurant, my attention was arrested by a young waiter named Ross who, despite his young age, carried a real energy and confidence about him, connecting with customers. He really
‘had the floor’, as we say. I struck up a conversation with him and he asked me what I was writing about before commenting, ‘At the age of 11, out of the blue, I created a cookbook for my school friends. I was an only child and as an only child I had a lot of time to myself, so my mind was my best friend. I didn’t know I would be in the restaurant business but maybe my subconscious was telling me something’.
The message here is simple and not different from what teachers and professors have taught us – if you really climb inside your mind and explore its contents, with curiosity and without judgment, you will find a treasure of creative intelligence that can unlock your path to success.
The more we work the mind, the stronger the muscle of creativity develops – organically.
Given I was in Scotland at the time of writing about this natural ingredient, Phil decided to take to me to the heart of Scottishness – to find out more about that favourite ‘water of life’ or the ‘liquid gold’ people across cultures and generations savour. Yes, I’m talking about whisky! Curiosity laden, I visited a distillery in the hills above Pitlochry in the southern Highlands of Scotland. Beautifully situated by the river Tay, Edradour Distillery is the smallest in Scotland. Old Jim was our guide.
Although this book looks at ten raw ingredients being blended to produce your unique leadership blend, whisky needs just two: water and barley.
That’s all it is and together they create one of the world’s golden liquids. I am sure Leonardo da Vinci, whether or not he drank whisky, would endorse this with his saying ‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.’
Whisky’s inception was a creative accident too. Originally used as an anaesthetic and antibiotic by pharmacists and monks and since wine was not easily available in Scotland or Ireland between 100–1300, barley beer was distilled into liquor by the monks and became...whisky!
At the distillery, we entered a cold and musty room, dark with a few hundred old beaten brown casks or whisky barrels. Everything was hand-made and reminded me of the machines used in the tanneries my father engaged with to process leather from raw hide to finished goods. The dirt, the smell and the rawness of the material being blended would all come together to produce a beautiful end product. The distillery reminded me of that innate craftsmanship, the expert touch and the watchful eye. There is something magical about handcrafting whisky without any automation, using craftsmans hip handed down through generations. A magical fortune, too, as Jim, our host, slipped in the value of that old, cold store room – in double-digit million pounds! Who would have thought so? But isn’t that often the way? Real potential or opportunity can be overlooked under the dark rocks and musty boulders strewn in life’s way. These hidden containers do not look inviting but all we need to do is lift the damp, gritty, mossy rocks – or in this case, open the cask – to be pleasantly rewarded in so many ways.
Remember the old man’s box of gold in the opening chapter?
Who are the people shaping and blending these ingredients into the final product? Well, I learnt, it is still a human process in which the master blender (much like a leadership coach) takes the youngest malt (akin to a rising high potential in a business), once he senses whether or not it is ready or mature enough and then works out which older malt he will need to add to sharpen the young malt further. It is an innately human art that
technology will never be able to replace. In this example, whisky has a unique parallel with the leadership blending process in this book.
The blender or coach’s skill is in finding the nuances that identify the unique blend that he is looking for to put in a unique cask to mature in 5–12 years’
time. As a leadership coach, that in principle is identical to how in businesses my firm and I seek to blend rising stars, managers and directors (e.g. by adding some focus here, reducing the dark side there, sharpening the instinct) in a ‘development cask’ for 18–36 months to mature as a ‘ready-to-be-tasted’ (read tested) leader. According to some, professional master blenders need to have an exceptionally good sense of smell (remember the sniff in the Instinct chapter) and exceptional blending skills (coaching skills) in order to correctly assess the readiness and qualities of each single malt and choose the malts that will eventually be used to sharpen the blend. Because every blend, like yours, is unique.
The final creation should bring out the unique taste and character of each single malt within the blend. How does one create that optimal blend? To blend a world-class scotch whisky, master blenders may sometimes have to taste over 100 different samples a day to find the perfect leader composition. Spot the parallel here! Whoever said finding the perfect leader was a quick and easy task is wrong. Sometimes businesses have to experience (taste) hundreds of potential candidates before finding the right leader; sometimes businesses select under-prepared or even the wrong leaders in haste, which costs fortunes in cost, quality and reputation.
A good blend put in the wrong cask, or a rough blend put in a very expensive cask, can leave a bad taste on the palate and a bad return on investment.
Blenders are extremely secretive about their blending methods. We, too, sometimes have to keep our cards close to our chest at CorporateDNA and while that may hint of elitism, it is more than humbly and adequately balanced by the value, depth and quality of our blending programmes.
To close on whisky, Thomas (‘Tommy’) Dewar (1864–1930), the famous Scottish distiller behind the internationally famous Dewar’s brand, once said, ‘The mind is like a parachute: it only functions when it’s open.’ I think I know what he meant when I did my skydive. I would extend that to say the mind is most creative when it is open to dreams, possibilities and opportunities – without any boundaries.
The mind is a hot house for creativity. Why am I giving you these examples?
Simply to show you magical creations get produced through simple raw
ingredients and if we are alert to this, it only takes a discerning eye to spot and seize the opportunity. ‘The art of blending whisky is like the work of a composer: not only do you need to completely understand the musical characteristics of every instrument, but you must also understand how to combine them to build an unforgettable, spellbinding symphony.’*
Like the master blender of whisky and the master coach in sports and business, our DNA needs mentors and coaches to accelerate many dormant neurons into action.
That entire process all starts with Imagination.