I own a respectable number of recipe books.
They sit neatly on the shelf, creating the impression that I approach cooking with discipline, preparation and enormous respect for precise measurements.
I do not.
I read the recipe, decide the author has been unnecessarily cautious with the garlic, replace two ingredients with whatever is in the fridge, ignore the cooking time and add some of my homemade bone broth.
I then describe the result as “inspired by” the original recipe.
Stella uses the phrase “interfered with.”
If it tastes wonderful, I credit experience and instinct. If it does not, there was clearly something wrong with the recipe.
Amber suggested the recipe book for the third piece in this series because following instructions is not the same as knowing what you are doing.
Stella hoped it might encourage me to follow one.
Again, both have a point.
A recipe tells you what worked for somebody else under a particular set of conditions. It gives you ingredients, quantities, temperatures and a sequence.
What it cannot know is that your oven runs hot, your onion is the size of a small football, somebody has used the last of the cream or your dinner guests are now arriving 45 minutes late because they misunderstood “come at seven” as a broad aspiration.
Organisations love recipe books.
We call them processes, frameworks, playbooks, scripts and operating procedures. Add a few coloured boxes, some arrows and an acronym, and they become practically sacred.
Used properly, they are enormously valuable. They create consistency, preserve knowledge and stop everyone from having to rediscover the same mistakes.
In stable and safety critical work, instructions are essential. Nobody wants an airline pilot announcing that they have decided to interpret the landing procedure creatively.
The trouble begins when we try to apply the same certainty to humans.
I have spent years helping leaders, coaches and salespeople develop their skills. At some point, somebody will ask:
“What exactly should I say?”
It is an understandable question. Exact words feel safe. They reduce uncertainty and give us something to hold on to when a conversation matters.
Unfortunately, the other person has not read the workbook.
They become defensive. They go quiet. They challenge your version of events, reveal something you did not know, or ask a question that is not covered on page 47.
That is the moment when following the recipe stops and leadership begins.
I have watched leaders concentrate so hard on asking the correct coaching question that they completely miss the answer. The person tells them they are overwhelmed, confused or quietly furious, and the leader looks down at the model and asks:
“What options do you think you have?”
Technically correct.
Emotionally, it has all the warmth of a parking fine.
The framework has been followed perfectly. The human being has somehow become an inconvenience.
Experienced cooks use recipes too, but they do not surrender their judgement to them. They watch the pan, smell what is happening, taste the sauce and adjust. If smoke starts coming from the oven, they do not keep reading step seven in the hope that the recipe will eventually acknowledge it.
Yet we regularly give people knowledge and announce that we have created capability. They attend a workshop, receive a workbook, complete an online module and pass the assessment. The learning dashboard turns green and everybody congratulates themselves.
Then reality gives them a human being.
Completing a module proves that someone completed a module. Occasionally, it only proves that the browser remained open while they made a cup of tea.
Capability comes from practising, getting things wrong, receiving feedback and learning how to respond when the situation does not resemble the example in the manual.
Artificial intelligence can now produce the recipe, suggest alternative ingredients and help us prepare for what might go wrong. That is enormously useful. It can help us see options we may have missed and stop us staring helplessly at a blank page.
But it cannot take responsibility for our judgement or carry the consequences if we apply its advice badly. “The AI told me to say it” is unlikely to become a celebrated leadership defence at an HR hearing.
Without shared methods, every task becomes dependent on individual memory, confidence and whatever somebody vaguely remembers from a workshop in Birmingham six years ago.
The question is whether the instructions are supporting our judgement or helping us avoid using it.
Next week, we move from the recipe book to the thermostat and ask why so many leaders confuse turning up the heat with improving performance.
Meanwhile, I have just made ramen using bone broth, three different recipes and several decisions that appeared sensible at the time.
Stella tasted it and admitted it was very good.
She then asked what I had put in it so I could make it again.
I have absolutely no idea.
Apparently, knowing what you are doing occasionally includes writing it down.
