California State University Dominguez Hills Management Discussion

I’m working on a management question and need guidance to help me understand better.

Prompt- DUE THURSDAY 4/22 – 1 page – APA format- 3 references

View Real Time Cases’ Managing Chaos in Jose Andres Kitchen. While chaos can mean disorder, is this the intent of Jose Andres? Use at least one new sciences systems theory (i.e., chaos theory, complexity theory, or self-organizing systems theory) to analyze the management theories and practices guiding Chef Jose Andres’ management decisions and actions.

Managing Chaos in a José Andrés’ Kitchen

From ThinkFoodGroup

Leadership, Organizational Behavior

Case Focus

Managing a chaotic creative process and struggling with the operational balance of art vs. science.

Case Introduction

Joe Raffa is an Executive Chef at ThinkFoodGroup, the restaurant group inspired by the creative leadership of Chef José Andrés and his Spanish culinary excellence. The development team is composed of very creative individuals who are not always the most organized. Joe wants to know how would you control the chaos of last minute ideas and changes? He shares a vignette from the Las Vegas grand opening of their China Poblano restaurant to illustrate the chaos; José likes to walk into the restaurant with his pink and blue highlighters, slashing menu items that do not work and demanding new ideas be implemented immediately – in this case, just 2 hours before the grand opening. How can the development team sustain this creative tension while still innovating their culinary products and maintaining the operational effectiveness to drive the bottom line?

Plan for complexity transcript-

So, I am Michael Doneff. I’m the Chief Marketing Officer at ThinkFoodGroup. I oversee everything at ThinkFoodGroup that is marketing, branding, public relations, digital, offline, I also get into basically every touch point that is not the food and the service. We’re intent on being a non-corporate, very open-minded, nimble organization, but to do that and to be successful you also have to have some sort of process. I mean, Jose’s motto is “Embrace Complexity.” My version of that is, “Plan for Complexity.” You know, I think there's a way, there’s 90% of the craziness and spontaneity that goes on here that we can plan for. Because there’s certain types of spontaneity that happen. So that’s our job to sort of manage around it. Not to stifle it, or limit it, but just really plan for it and embrace it. And create structures and processes that are often invisible to creative people like Jose, but they are what keep him going. And keep the business as a plan for him to create more of this stuff. So I think he’s appreciating it now, because in the past few years I’ve joined, Kimberly joined, and we’ve created this level platform that he’s then, he can just dance on top of it. And he doesn’t have to worry about, “Is this being done? Is this being done?” Operationally we are sound, service-wise, you know, the food when he does a tasting, or comes up with a recipe, he knows that is going to be carried through to fruition. When he comes up with a design or a logo, he knows I’ll take it from there. And I think he enjoys that, almost freedom, to be able to - that he can just come up with ideas and - and we got the rest. 

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