Enrico Crippa is the chef of Piazza Duomo in Alba, Italy. When I spoke with him for The Luxury of Attention, the restaurant held three Michelin stars and ran one of the most disciplined kitchens in Europe.
Crippa gives the book its chef’s account of leading by example. Chapter 3 argues that leadership in both crafts is visible or it is not leadership, and Crippa says the same thing from the pass. He has always believed, he told me, that leadership is a form of teaching and of being engaged, and he puts the consequence to himself as a question.
“How can I ask my team to sacrifice if I don’t get my own hands dirty?” Enrico Crippa, chef, Piazza Duomo, Alba
The hotelier’s version of the same observation, earlier in the chapter, is made from the lobby. Crippa’s is made from the pass. They are one observation, and the chapter treats them as such.
His second contribution is quieter and easy to overlook.
“The key lies in not seeking perfection nor success, but rather trying to do better today than we did yesterday, and trying to do better tomorrow than we did today.” Enrico Crippa, chef, Piazza Duomo, Alba
The sentence is gentle until you notice what it builds into the daily practice of the kitchen: the assumption that yesterday’s work could have been better, including the chef’s own. A leader who holds that posture every day, without it turning into anxiety, gives the team a model for holding it in their own work. The standard is set at the pass, in front of the line, by the chef’s visible willingness to be a fraction better than the day before. The line absorbs it because it is performed rather than written down.
He also described what the standard feels like from inside. Every day the restaurant is reviewed several times, he told me. Each table is a single judge, and with just 11 tables serving lunch and dinner, Piazza Duomo is judged 22 times each day. His job is to act as if every one of those verdicts is being rendered on the next plate to leave the pass, because every one of them is.
In the book, Enrico Crippa appears in Chapter 3, Leading by Example, on getting his own hands dirty and on the daily improvement he asks of himself before he asks it of anyone else.