Kim Ng Is Not Mediocre

Two years ago, Kim Ng became the first female General Manager of any sports league and the first Asian-American General Manager of Major League Baseball. I used that moment to write about my fandom of Ng, but also about the dangers of exceptionalism:

Progress has to start somewhere, and this is definitely something to celebrate. However, all too often, people point to barriers like these being broken and think that the work is done. The work is not done. If we live in a world where only exceptional folks like Ng get opportunities, then we will have failed.

A truly equitable world would be one where all professional sports leagues were full of mediocre GMs of all genders and races.

I ended my piece by saying:

I hope Ng succeeds, but in a weird way, I’ll be just as happy if she’s mediocre.

Well, Ng has once again proven that she is not mediocre. Three years after assuming her post, she has led the Miami Marlins to the playoffs for the first time in a full-length season since 2003. Good for you, Kim!

A World Where Mediocre People of All Races and Genders Have Opportunities

Today, the Miami Marlins named Kim Ng their new General Manager. She is the first female GM of any of the major professional sports leagues in the U.S. (baseball, basketball, football, and hockey), and she is the first Asian-American GM of Major League Baseball.

I’ve been a fan of hers since she joined my Dodgers as an assistant GM in 2001. It’s a historic moment for sure, and it’s also shameful that it took this long for her to get a GM job. Her credentials are impeccable. She’s been in baseball for 30 years, and she has three championship rings. By all accounts, she’s an incredible negotiator, talent evaluator, and manager, and she is highly respected by some of the biggest names in baseball. It seemed like a sure thing for her to get a GM job in the first decade of this century, and she got plenty of interviews. But it never happened, and in 2011, she took a job with Major League Baseball.

Progress has to start somewhere, and this is definitely something to celebrate. However, all too often, people point to barriers like these being broken and think that the work is done. The work is not done. If we live in a world where only exceptional folks like Ng get opportunities, then we will have failed.

A truly equitable world would be one where all professional sports leagues were full of mediocre GMs of all genders and races.

I didn’t fully understand this until I learned about Janice Madden’s groundbreaking study of Black coaches in the NFL. She found that, from 1990-2002, Black coaches far outperformed white coaches. Her research led to the Rooney Rule in 2003, which required that teams interview at least one minority candidate for coaching positions.

Here’s the kicker. Success isn’t just more Black coaches in the NFL. Success is more mediocre Black coaches in the NFL. As Madden explained:

If African-American coaches don’t fail, it means that those with equal talents to the failing white coaches are not even getting the chance to be a coach. Seeing African-American coaches fail means that they, like white coaches, no longer have to be superstars to get coaching jobs.

We should absolutely celebrate when we see superstars in any field who are women, Black, transgender, etc. Representation matters. But we should be even happier when we see fields full of mediocre women and other underrepresented folks, because that is a true indicator of equal opportunity.

I hope Ng succeeds, but in a weird way, I’ll be just as happy if she’s mediocre.

We Don’t All Have to Be Good at Everything, but We Should Value Those Other Things

Last month, Deborah Meehan shared the following reflections on leadership and leadership development:

For example, the assumption of many leadership development programs with a set of leadership competencies is that each participant needs to have all of these competencies. Why? When we lead with others why does each person need to have all of these competencies when they could be distributed within the group that is leading some action?

The weekend before I read Deborah’s post, I had listened to Tim Ferris’s interview with the magician, Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller fame). The whole interview is really good and worth listening to. But I was particularly struck by Penn’s revelation that he had a terrible visual memory, which you might imagine would be a problem for a magician. How was he able to compensate for this, Ferris asked? Penn’s response:

My compensation is Teller. Teller has a phenomenal visual memory. And if you watch Teller and I work, you can very clearly see that I’m doing a radio show. Every bit that I write, I bring to Teller as me doing voiceover from off stage while stuff happens on stage. And then he moves me onto the stage, moves me as part of the action.

Here’s the re-frame that I would offer for leadership development that I use with my own teams. It’s not important for everyone to be good at everything. But it’s important for everyone to value — truly, deeply value — the different competencies. And it’s hard to truly, deeply value those other competencies unless you’ve had a chance to experience what it’s like with them and what it’s like without them.

When I’m working with new collaboration practitioners in a meeting context, I always make them responsible for logistics and operations. Most collaboration practitioners who come to me are not good at these things, nor do they care to be good at them. They usually want to learn how to be good facilitators, and they think facilitation is all about presence or group dynamics or personal development.

However, when it comes to bringing a group alive, design is much more important than facilitation, and logistics are a critical part of design. When you’re in a poorly lit room with heavy, inadequate quantities of food, your meeting is going to suffer. When your participants have trouble checking into their hotels or are not clear on where the meeting is, your meeting is going to suffer. When you’ve planned a whole module around posters hanging up around the room, only to learn that you’re not allowed to hang things on the wall, your meeting is going to suffer.

Many collaboration practitioners look at this as an opportunity to improvise. Sure, improvisation is an important competency, but why put yourself in this position in the first place when it’s completely unnecessary? The reason most practitioners put themselves in this position is that they don’t like to handle the logistics and they think they can get by without it. And that’s often true. But this logic breaks down as the stakes get higher.

What I try to teach others is to value the things that are in your control so that, in the moment, you can be fully present to the things that you can’t. My end goal isn’t to make every collaboration practitioner good at logistics. My end goal is to have collaboration practitioners value it, so that if they’re not good at it, they recruit people who are, and they learn to work well with them.

Celebrating What You Accomplish While Looking Forward to Improving

Earlier this month, I wrote a blog post over on Faster Than 20 entitled, “Made of Love.” All I wanted to do was to tell a brief story of a remarkable moment I experienced at a meeting I was shadowing and how that moment made me feel. It turned out to be more complicated than that. I wrote a long, confessional draft that made me feel raw and vulnerable, I asked people I trusted for feedback, then I sat on that feedback for a while, before finally deciding to revise and publish the post.

I’m really glad I did. I got a ton of thoughtful, moving responses from friends and colleagues, which has me thinking and wanting to share a lot more.

For the most part, I’m thrilled about everything I cut and rewrote. However, there’s one tiny story that I wanted to share here, because it’s a bit of a North Star for me.

There’s an episode of the PBS cooking documentary, Mind of a Chef, that follows Magnus Nilsson — considered one of the best chefs in the world — through the process of conceiving and creating a dish with a young protege. (You can watch the episode on Netflix if you’re a subscriber. Oh, how I wish for more open access, so I could easily share video clips. Another blog post for another time.) It’s mesmerizing to watch, partially because of the beautiful setting (a frozen lake in the Swedish countryside), partially because of the creativity and skill of execution.

Two things jumped out at me in particular. First was the delight that Nilsson expressed throughout the process, including when he tasted the final product. He clearly was not satisfied by it, and he methodically walked through how he wanted to make it better. But he still seemed really happy about what he had done. Second was the the relationship between Nilsson and his protege. The latter seemed nervous (perhaps more because he was on camera than because of his mentor), but he also seemed… safe? Excited? It’s hard to describe exactly, but it felt productive and loving.

That’s the balance I personally want to strike for when I create something. I actually think I’m a lot more joyful about iterations than others see, but I definitely could let myself appreciate and celebrate more. More importantly, I can let others see this appreciation and joy. I definitely hold back because I don’t want me or others to get complacent, but I think I can strike a better balance.

Panettone from Roy

Yesterday, I tried my first panettone ever. It was delicious! It wasn’t mind-numbingly delicious, and I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to buy one again, but I enjoyed it, and I’d definitely eat it again.

I had never eaten panettone before, probably because of its reputation as a dry and terrible mass-produced holiday tradition. I was drawn to this particularly panettone thanks to a David Chang podcast, where he interviewed Roy Shvartzpel, its creator. Chang’s podcasts are an acquired taste. They are borderline insufferable, a weird see-sawing act of self-aggrandizement and self-flagellation. I’ve recommended episodes to a few friends, and they all complained that it was too bro-y. Still, I’ve enjoyed several of his interviews for their insights into those who are obsessed about craft and, to some extent, the Korean-American psyche.

This interview almost struck the wrong side of this weird balance. I was intrigued by Chang’s bold pronouncements about this panettone and also hyperaware of his proclivity to exaggerate. I was intrigued by Shvartzpel’s origin story as a hoop obsessive, but put off by his comparing his game to Steph Curry’s. I almost turned off the podcast several times, but when they finally got around to talking about Shvartzpel’s story as a cook, I was entranced. His story about how the Italian panettone master, Iginio Massari, took him in made me weepy. And I’m a sucker for honest stories about the grind, especially when they’re about small businesses.

His story made me interested enough to look into buying one of his cakes. They cost between $30-60, outrageous in comparison to the $5 monstrosities you can find at your grocery store, but within the realm of reason when you compare them to buying a high-quality cake at a good bakery. Still, I wasn’t compelled enough to buy one.

That changed earlier this week. I’m in Southern California visiting family and was shopping for groceries when I saw boxes of his panettone on sale. It’s the holidays, I was with family, and it was right there, so I ended up springing for a box, praying that I would not be filled with regret later.

Last night, after a delicious dinner, we finally opened the box and had a taste. As I said, it was delicious. I could see how it might be easy to overlook the craft required to get it to taste as good as it did. However, it was nowhere close to The New York Times’ assessment, which I found hilarious:

His domed wonders are unworldly in their featherweight texture: the tender crumb dissolves on your tongue, almost like cotton candy, were cotton candy spun from butter. They seem paradoxically rich and ethereal at the same time.

I’ve only had one experience that I can remember where a baked good lived up to its hype. When Arsicault Bakery opened in my neighborhood in 2016, I wasn’t super interested. I’m neither a croissant nor really any baked good fanatic. When Bon Appetit named it America’s best new bakery later that year, I was even less interested. I’m hype-averse, and I’m even more line-averse.

About a year later, I finally tried one, and I couldn’t believe how incredible they were. I’m usually a chocolate or ham-and-cheese croissant guy, but when I go to Arsicault, I always order the plain, because I don’t want any of those other adornments to interfere with the light, flaky, buttery goodness of these masterful creations. For the most part, folks I’ve shared them with agree with my assessment, although, I hear the occasional, “They’re just croissants,” or, “They’re not as good as they are in France.”

There have been studies showing that the more expensive we think a bottle of wine is, the better we think it tastes. The brilliant J. Kenji Lopez-Alt showed that we all think farm-fresh eggs taste better, even though we can’t actually taste the difference. I guess what it comes down to is that we like what we like, regardless of the reasons why. I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing.