What Cooking Taught Me About Management and Leadership

Management isn't about perfecting every single ingredient; it's about making the whole dish work. The post uses a simple bolognese story to illustrate that a manager who obsessively tunes individual tasks can end up with a dish that tastes off. The real job is to look at how the parts combine and adjust the recipe for the best overall flavor.

Quoting Ackoff, the author points out that dividing a complex system into isolated pieces and managing each in isolation often degrades the system's performance. In software, no single team ships a product alone; the final product emerges from coordinated interactions. Trying to boost sales while neglecting customer service, for example, creates unhappy customers despite higher numbers.

For technical leaders the takeaway is clear: most engineers now outperform their managers at the execution level, so managers must shift from supervision to leadership. Set outcomes, not step-by-step instructions, and spend energy improving how teams collaborate. When the interaction improves, the product quality and delivery speed follow naturally.