"A Crock Full of Green Sweet Pickles and Leadership Principles"

"A Crock Full of Green Sweet Pickles and Leadership Principles"
Darrel L. Hammon

I recently resurrected my mother’s famous green sweet pickle recipe and made some! Along the way, I realized that making these pickles is a lot like some principles of leadership. So I had to ask, “What does making a crock full of pickles have to do with leadership?”

It’s about change—I remembered how good those pickles were when I was a kid. When my mother passed away, the making of the pickles died with her. I decided I wanted pickles, so I had to change the “woe-is-me-my-mother-is-dead-and-no-one-can-make-her-green-sweet-pickles-ever-again” attitude. I just pivoted and decided to resurrect the making of her famous pickles. Change and pivoting happen all the time, and we must be prepared for it when it happens or when we strive to make it happen.

It’s about reading a recipe of time past and revising it to meet the needs of today—My mother loved to write in cursive as do I, but her cursive at the time she was writing was a bit hard to read. I spent some time trying to decipher what she meant. Yes, I had to go out for a “consult” with my sister to make sure I knew what her actual directions were. It’s not a terrible thing to reach out to others, particularly experts to help us along the way. The overall outcome was better than I thought it was going to be. I was prepared for disaster, and, thankfully, it didn’t happen.

 It’s about reading between the lines—My mother’s recipe has specific things that she used to do to make the pickles. But because she knew exactly what to do, she left out a few important steps that I had to improvise and review. Plus, I had to reach out to my sister for another “consult” to make sure I was on the right track. Many times, we know what needs to be done, but we also have to read between the lines to make sure we create a holistic process or view of what we ultimately want to happen.

It’s about patience—Washing, soaking, cutting, washing, soaking, and even more soaking for almost 30 days. More often than not, we have to have patience as we wait for something to mature or allow our creativity to take shape within our organization. Success doesn’t happen immediately. It takes time and lots of patience.

It’s about scraping off the mold—At one point in the pickle-making process, I had to scrape off a little mold that had begun to grow on top of the wooden lid into the water. While the mold looked yucky and terrifyingly gross, the mold didn’t affect the ultimate outcome. Rather, it made me trust the process my mother began almost 60 years ago and understand that scraping mold was just part of the process. Processes that don’t work sometimes surface and need to be scraped off, changed, revised, and even tossed for our successful movement forward to continue.

It’s about appreciating the past and working toward the future—I appreciated that my mother had introduced me to her famous pickles years ago. While her pickles went away when she died, that didn’t stop me from looking to the future and how I was going to make those same pickles again with maybe a bit of difference. I knew she could do it, and she taught me that I could do things, too. I guess the strategic planning formula of P + F = PR (Past + the Future = the Present) works to create success.

It’s about adding a bit of food coloring—My mother always added green food coloring to her famous green sweet pickles. I decided to do the same, only I didn’t add as much. Amazingly, they tasted the same, but they looked great in the bottles. Often, we have to insert a bit of coloring into the mix to make it look good and maybe a bit prettier, but this doesn’t change the overall outcome.

It’s about taking something from its natural state and creating something incredible—Many people don’t like cucumbers (a.k.a. “cukes”). I grew cukes, nurtured and harvested them, cut them up, let them soak for weeks in a brine mixture, and then made these delicious green sweet pickles with a tinge of tanginess. It was wonderful to watch the transformation of common cukes into something uncommon and delicious in its own way. Our organizations can grow the same way as we nurture them along and turn them into something that is possibly even better.

Next time you want to make pickles or anything, think about how it relates to your leadership and how you are transitioning, creating, and pivoting along the way.