Yes, because the leaders I interviewed describe creativity as a muscle rather than a gift. It is built by sending people out to gather inputs, giving them a structure for testing ideas and a low pressure venue for trying them. A kitchen of ordinary talent with that structure will out create a brilliant one without it.
The most common belief about creativity in hospitality is that a kitchen or a hotel either has creative people or it does not. The chefs and hoteliers I interviewed rejected that belief almost unanimously, and the ones producing the most original work were the most insistent about it. They described creativity as something built through repetition, and they could tell me exactly how they built it.
Sean Gray, then chef de cuisine of Momofuku Ko in New York, used the image that stuck with me most.
“Creativity is like a muscle, it needs exercise or it atrophies, and working with a group of creative people helps me build that muscle constantly.” Sean Gray, then chef de cuisine of Momofuku Ko, New York
Two things sit inside that sentence. The first is exercise: the muscle grows when it is used on a schedule and weakens when it is not. The second is the group. Creative output in the kitchens I studied was almost never the chef’s solo achievement. It was the team’s collective achievement, organized by the chef around a structure that let everyone contribute. Matthew Orlando, then chef and owner of Amass in Copenhagen, ran his kitchen on a simple rule that the team would try anything twice, which meant every cook had a chance to put an idea into play. Jonnie Boer of De Librije in Zwolle gathered his whole team a few times a year to work through the ideas in his notebook together.
The teaching happens in three places. The first is inputs. Chefs send themselves and their cooks to markets, to other restaurants, to museums and to regions they do not know. Hoteliers do the same with the city around the property. Alexander van Gastel, then general manager of Pulitzer Amsterdam, had a concierge take every new employee on a storytelling tour through the neighborhoods of Amsterdam, ending at the Canal House Museum. New staff were being taught what to notice and how to tell it.
“This is part of our effort to train and empower all members of our team to become storytellers.” Alexander van Gastel, then general manager of Pulitzer Amsterdam
The second is structure: a notebook, a tasting log, a scheduled session where ideas are reviewed. Without an artifact to return to, a half formed idea dies within the week. The third is a venue where failure is cheap. Gray’s team had an adjoining bar where dishes not ready for the tasting menu could be tried with lower stakes. Boer’s team session absorbed the disasters before any guest saw them. The cook who learns that a failed experiment is feedback rather than a mark against them will keep bringing experiments.
The foundation underneath all of it is knowledge. Alex Atala of D.O.M. in São Paulo told me that any chef wanting to create a new recipe needs a strong understanding of classic cuisine first. José Andrés said the same thing from inside a multi decade career: creativity can only truly blossom when the chef is very knowledgeable about what came before. Teaching creativity therefore starts with teaching the repertoire. The apprenticeship is the curriculum, and the creative work grows out of the fluency it produces.
The implication for a leader who believes their team lacks creative talent is uncomfortable and useful. In my observation, the operations that complain about their talent are nearly always the ones that have not built the pipeline that would let the existing talent contribute. The talent is the input. The structure is the multiplier.
Chapter 6, The Creative Act, describes the inputs, the pipeline and the team practice in detail, and explains why constraint, properly read, is one of the most reliable creative inputs a kitchen or a hotel has.