Why Technology leaders need Masterchef Kitchens to Build Menus of Possible Futures.
We would never* expect a chef to try a new recipe in the middle of a dinner service, they need MasterChef Kitchens to experiment, so why are our expectations different for our top engineering talent?* Unless you’re Heston, then you might #respect
Now that you’re here and likely hungry, let me share some questions I’ve collected that as a ‘Born in the Cloud CTO’ I am asking both future focused Executive Technology Leaders and Scaling Tech Founders that are under huge pressure to build quickly with new technology (Enter GenAI). I’ll also introduce you to a little concept I am calling the Master Chef Kitchen. Warning, these questions often end in the blank faces, long pauses and head a tilt-ie type reactions.
There is no right answer but there has to be one.
Q. ‘Where does risk taking live in your technology teams?’ Tumbleweeds
Q. ‘Where do you send your top engineering talent when they come to you with a brilliant idea?’ More blank faces
Q. ‘Does each person have an experimentation budget assigned, and have you given permission to spend time tinkering?’ No Time
Q. ‘Are your team’s rewarded (in front of their peers) AND measured (in their performance reviews) for big thinking and risk taking? Kinda
Back to the cooks in the kitchen. Stakes are high, pressure is on, the recipe are well known but who’s thinking about next month’s menu? It sure can’t happen while we cooking our famous hand made Gnocchi. I mean it could, but as an Italian I know first hand never to mess with Nonna’s Gnocchi
Your best technology talent needs and wants a place to experiment. I call this structured serendipity, a clear place to go to test the ‘art of the Possible’. Some of the most Innovative and high functioning engineering teams I’ve worked with are those that have a very clear place to test their ideas , meaning not just technology platforms (although thats important) but where physiology safety is high, failure is low and the permission to play is granted. Let’s be clear, this is not a dev environment and this kitchen invites chefs from both technology & business teams. Think masterchef kitchen but swapping Apples for API’S and Margarine for ML.
In your MasterChef Kitchen, your best chefs have a safe space to try new things because this kitchen has latest kitchenware, rare and emerging ingredients and exotic seasonings for your best minds to practice what you hired them for, to stretch their thinking, and craft the ‘art of the possible’.
This is what I would be fill my teams Masterchef pantry with.
- Access to Machine Learning APIs — Think ones we ‘prepared’ earlier like calling ML ‘Cook books’ already created for quick testing like a sentiment analysis API quickly run over your call centre scripts to see when your customers are ‘dropping of’ and quickly suggest an alternative script or perhaps a Vision API to run a bunch of your images through to see if we can extract text or common patterns in the objects in our data.
- Generative AI playground starting with Image and Language Models to test automating the creation of customer facing content at scale using machines and just a few input words, colours or sounds. I would probably also include some tuned ML servers for those daring ML talent who want to quickly test custom models and then spin them down before finance finds out..
- Web 3. A place to test a distributed ledger in a fully managed node-hosting service.
- A Conversational Chatbot. Because 1/3 of your customers now expect to interact with your brand on whatsapp and facebook messenger.
- Augmented Reality to test new tactile client experiences. A virtual try on?
- A SasS DataBase & BI Tool to see how quickly we can make connections between data and build interactive reporting that business can own. Amen!
- A Low Code no code to platform for business leaders & engineers to quickly test their ideas before committing to writing a business case. Step 1 in your seed idea testing.
If the pantry is the tools then the kitchen is cloud. However & where ever you choose to test, the aim is to make it as low risk as possible and there be and an actual answer when you ask you top talent where they can experiment..
- Budget: Building on the analogy, each team member (note this is not just for engineering but both business and tech) should have a budget for their mystery box. It’s no fun to have pantry full an no one able to use it, or having to ask for a new shopping budget from the head chef every week.
- Time to Cook: Agree on the budget and time people have to play. Google has often called it 20% time but really whats more important is the permission and a place to experiment. Lets be honest, we also have a universal window of whats acceptable to wait for your food so defining how long tests have to experiment and show the Soufflé is a must.
- Taste Testers: Lets not forget the judges, a clear group of testers or ‘Dogfooders’ in side your organisation that sign up and opt in to be at the for front of celebrating your experimentation wins and providing feedback.
Again, we would never expect a Chef to try a new recipe in the middle of a dinner service why would this be any different for our product engineering teams.
Where does risk taking live in side your organisation? How are you preparing your teams for the NEXT Gen AI movement what ever that might be. Where is your Master Chef Kitchen?
Happy experimenting.
