There's a grandmother's pot roast recipe story told in the US. A young bride was cooking pot roast. She cut the ends off the roast and boiled those pieces in another pot. When the groom asked why, she answered,
"I don't know. Mom always did it this way."
Some time later the couple was invited to her parents' house for dinner. What was the menu? Yes — pot roast.
So the groom asked the bride's mother, "Why do you cut the ends off the roast and cook them in another pot?"
The mother-in-law answered, "Hmm, I never thought about it. I just did it the way my mother did. Call your mother and ask her."
Luckily grandmother was still healthy, so they called her.
"Grandma, why did you cut the ends off the roast and cook them in another pot?"
Grandmother replied,
"We were very poor. The oven hadn't been invented yet, and all we could afford was a small pot. So I cut the ends off the roast and cooked those pieces separately." (p. 578)
When we work, we often do things 'the way we've always done them before'. Unless some special trigger makes us 'doubt' it, we usually just keep going.
But this is dangerous. Even if your predecessor was Jack Welch or Steve Jobs, if you're just following the old way, you need to throw a 'question' at it as soon as possible.
The grandmother's pot roast recipe story above is interesting. A cooking method grandmother used in a poor era because she couldn't afford a big pot. Her daughter and granddaughter follow it without question, thinking "Mom did it that way." A story about a cooking method you can laugh off, but things like this still happen often in Korean companies and government organizations.
"Why am I doing it this way now?" — a question we should often ask.
The future for people and organizations that blindly follow the past without doubting or innovating can only be harsh.
What is your 'grandmother's pot roast recipe'?
* Continued in the next mail
'無大疑者無大覺' (mu-dae-ui-ja mu-dae-gak).
One without great doubt cannot attain great enlightenment. These are words from Hong Dae-yong, a Silhak scholar and scientific thinker who lived during the reigns of King Yeongjo and King Jeongjo in late Joseon.
'Don't take the 'existing' for granted; throw 'questions' regularly. Only then can we attain great enlightenment, and only then can we survive and evolve through change and innovation.
" Not long ago I posted notes on mini EMBA: Strategic Marketing (Market-oriented Management).
What the professor said about innovation back then suddenly comes to mind.
He illustrated it with Kia or Hyundai dealerships as examples.
Lately you can find car dealerships almost anywhere. This is one of the service methods for giving so-called 'accessibility' — letting customers visit and buy a little faster.
But how useful is this accessibility to customers really?
A car usually costs from 20 million to 80 million won — a sizable spend. Yet when you look around each dealership, the situation is bewildering.
For example, if you want to buy the red version of the same model, going to the dealership still forces you to check a catalog instead of an actual car (and a very small photo at that).
You're not buying a padded jacket on an internet shopping mall — you're buying a car that costs tens of times more, yet they only show you a catalog...
