Dr. George Nicklin was a world-renowned and innovative psychoanalyst who once told me: ”When you see a train, there is only one conductor who runs that train and the rest are just along for the ride.”
He was referring to leadership in any field, whether that’s the field of psychoanalysis, nuclear physics, art or religion. Freud broke new ground in psychology, Einstein gave us the Theory of Relativity, Picasso invented Cubism, and Jesus spoke words that sparked a revolution.
And each of these mystic geniuses were booed rather than cheered as they developed their ideas. Freud was jeered, Einstein was laughed at, Picasso was called crazy and we all know what happened to Jesus.
Leaders and mystics are necessary for any field to grow, but they always have a contentious relationship with the establishment.
When something new is created, the establishment is threatened and will resist the new idea. New paradigms cause an identity crisis and this is why cultural change in a corporation is so difficult to achieve.
The wisdom to see what is wrong and then to have the courage and fortitude to do something about it is a rare combination and why genius is rare. Without these geniuses, progress stops and that marks the beginning of a slow death in whatever field.
That is why so often you see major corporations slow down and go out of business. They become rigidified and refuse to listen to the genius who is trying to introduce new ideas.
I was witness to this kind of thing while in graduate school. I was working as a program evaluator for the BOCES Arts and Humanities division in Suffolk County.
The program was run by one of the nation’s great educators, Clint Marantz. Clint also created and directed the Performing Arts Foundation in Huntington. The Performing Arts Foundation, or PAF, was a regional theater group that kept getting bigger and began to attract internationally known actors.
As the fame of PAF grew, the foundation established a Board of Directors. And one of its first decisions was to fire Clint Marantz and get a big name director instead. Within three years PAF was killed.
That is a good example of the relationship between a mystic leader and the established order. If the board was smart, it would have kept Clint and we would still be hearing about PAF of Huntington and would have had access to international actors without going into Broadway.
I have been lucky enough to meet an occasional genius in my life. I met and got to know Spalding Gray, whose books and movie career is well-known but he also created a new type of theater called “An Evening with Spalding Gray.” Jackie Kennedy described Spalding as one of the true geniuses in American performing art.
Just last week I was lucky enough to meet another mystic genius in the guise of a culinary critic and international podcast leader. Meet Ryan King whose podcast “Food on the Edge” is heard worldwide.
Ryan is a pioneer in the field of kitchen culture and is rightfully concerned about the toxic environment in most major restaurant kitchens. He told me that the turnover rate of chefs is alarming and that most are depressed, alcoholic or both.
Ryan King is attempting to change kitchen culture from something that is chaotic and stressed-filled to a culture that is more humane and mentally healthy. For me to type the words humane and mentally healthy in the same sentence as restaurant kitchen seems like I am breaking a moral code.
We all know that chefs are crazy, but isn’t that the way they’re supposed to act? I’ve been a member of country clubs since I was a young teenager and I can honestly say that by far the craziest staff member in every one of these clubs was the chef. Yet they were all wonderful chefs, but they all seemed very stressed.
Ryan refers to the legacy of the chef as part of the “pirate culture,” but he is quick to add that the most famous pirate was Captain Hook, the guy with a hook for a hand.
The world is calling for culture change now with people becoming more aware that many institutional cultures are broken and toxic. We have seen movements like “Occupy Wall Street,” “The Me Too Movement” and “Black Lives Matter” that are trying to rectify power imbalances.
A group at Stanford University’s Department of Psychology is doing research on this and suggesting ways to make changes in a variety of institutions as varied as schools, the media, prisons and law, but I failed to see them mention restaurant kitchen culture. That may be because no one has given voice to this concern.
And this is sad indeed since going to enjoy a dinner at a restaurant is one of the last forms of social interaction left for humans, given the domination of television and streaming devices that make TV the only game in town.
I hope that Ryan King continues to voice the concerns of the harried, harassed and overwhelmed chefs. I would sure hate to be left to cook my own meals every night. I would very soon grow tired of an endless string of hamburgers, chicken wings or pasta. God bless Ryan King. May the force be with you.
