When Communications Go Bad – No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

With Supper Clubs there are times when people get their feelings hurt. As with most things in life, the more people that are involved, the more chances for mis-communication. We had an excellent example a few years ago. One of the chronic problems with Supper Clubs is there are cancellations. When people cancel, there can be a chain reaction of difficulties: finding substitutes, changing dates, combining dinner parties, etc.

We had a supper club melt-down caused by cancelations and mis-communication. Our neighborhood Supper Club is quite large with 5 dinner parties going on a given night with 4 couples at each party. So with 40 people involved it can get complicated. Denise is a key leader in our club and does a masterful job of scheduling through difficulties. The rule in our club is that if you cancel it is up to you to find a substitute. We have a list of 30 or more subs so there is usually a good pool of alternates. If you have difficulty finding a sub it initially falls back to the host of the dinner party. When we are hosting and we have cancelations I look at it as a recruiting opportunity. The host can call in reinforcements from anywhere. I have been known to pull people in from work, the gym, golf course, or anywhere. My wife has accused me a pulling strangers off the interstate.

The night of the meltdown was caused by multiple cancelations. Denise as the de facto leader made a decision to consolidate dinner parties, as was the normal practice. An email was sent out explaining that one party was being eliminated. The hostess whose party was eliminated was new to the club and was very offended. Poor Denise thought she was doing the “Newby” a favor by solving the scheduling issue and saving the hostess from all the work involved with hosting. Newby felt that she being arbitrarily picked on. Email nasty-grams were sent and quite simply it got ugly. To be honest it was a case where email was the standard operating procedure, but simply does not work.

Communication rules to live by:

1. Never use email or text if any bad emotion is involved. If you are irritated don’t push send.
2. Face to face communication is best.
3. Direct phone contact is second best.
4. If you have two touches of telephone tag use text message to get a person to person meeting or call scheduled.
5. Voicemail is next best but dangerous.
6. Be really careful what you put in writing. Email and text can be great but you miss out on the chance to read your audience and adapt your message. Plus, they don’t go away and keep hordes of lawyer gainfully employed. The really bad thing about emails and texts is that people will write things that they would never say face to face.
7. Blogging is dangerous. Please note that I have broken just about every one of my “Rules” in writing this blog. Oh well…

At the end of the day it is hard to avoid miscommunication and feelings getting hurt. Common sense and sensitivity go a long way. Sometimes bad stuff just happens.

The Genesis of the Book Goes Back to Lucien Vendome

The book is about Supper Clubs. My wife Susan and I have been in them for years. Just about everyone loves to socialize over a meal and Supper Clubs are a great way to make that happen. But, there are some challenges to Supper Clubs. The goal of the book is solve those challenges and make the idea of Supper Clubs fun. I am targeting millennials because they are coming of age where socializing over a meal is a priority. Supper clubs are a perfect enabler for them (and any other demographic). The book tells you how to organize, entertain etc. And yes there is quite a bit of tacky humor written into it.

The genesis of the book goes back to Lucien Vendome. Lucien was the head of Culinary Innovation for Nestle. (His picture was on the boxes of Lean Cuisine for years). Lucien and I worked together at Kraft years ago and are good friends. He is simply one of the best chefs in the world and a really bright guy. During our years together in Memphis he and I hosted many a dinner party and he was a key member of the original “Impromptu Friday Nights” crew. One night after a particular fun dinner party he asked me: “Have you ever thought about writing about Supper Clubs? Lots people write cook books. Not may people know how to organize a supper club the way you and Susan do”. That planted a seed and when I retired form Kraft I started writing. My plan had been to self publish, but then I hired an editor who actually liked what I wrote and convinced me to try to get a publisher interested. Now the book has been accepted by Morgan James Publishing and gets launched January 30, 2018.

Lucien always brought a certain levity and charm to our Supper Club events. One night our friends Jorene and Steve joined us. Later in the evening Lucien mentioned to Jorene that “Jorene” was a different name and asked her what the derivation was. She explained something along the lines of she had aunts named Josephine and Irene and her parents combined it into Jorene. Lucien turned up his French charm and accent and said: “For the rest of the night I think we should call you Jo-René”. Not missing a beat Jorene’s husband Steve chimed in with “I feel like I will be going home tonight with different woman”. It’s probably been 15 years since that evening, my guess is that the bruise on his arm where Jorene smacked him has just about faded away.

The whole concept behind Supper Clubs is to have fun. I have tried to write in fun way and just hope people enjoy the book as much as we have enjoyed Supper Clubs.

Tips For International Travel

One of the key sources of inspiration for Supper Club menus has been my international travel. I ran Kraft Food Ingredient’s international business for over 10 years and got to do some extensive traveling to a lot of great places. Mostly I saw airports, hotels and offices, but we did get to eat in quite a few great restaurants. Early on in my career I traveled with a guy who was a microbiologist by training. This guy scared the daylights out of me. If you listened to him you would only eat and drink what you brought with you. Thankfully, I am adventurous eater and had a lot of fun. Following are a few key rules to live by:

1. Never eat something that they say “Oh it is a delicacy”

I grew up on the east coast and have eaten a lot of lobster. Some will say the green gunk in a lobster is a delicacy. Trust me, it isn’t. Chances are pretty much the same with international cuisines. Let me tell you about Balut…”Oh it is a delicacy”. Balut is a developing bird embryo (usually a duck or chicken) that is boiled and eaten from the shell. It originates and is commonly sold as street-food in the Philippines. If you ask a Filipino living in the U.S. what they miss most about food in the Philippines they will say “Balut, it is a delicacy”. I am sorry but “developing bird embryo” is just nasty and the smell, really nasty.

2. Never eat anything that they say “Tastes just like Chicken”

If you want chicken eat chicken. I have been told that snake and squirrel and several other more exotic items taste just like chicken. To be safe, stick with the chicken.

3. You can be adventurous and still be safe.

You do need to try things that are out of your comfort zone. When traveling to areas that are more tropical there is a greater risk of food poisoning. A food scientist that I used to work with recommended eating a chewable Pepto Bismol every morning as a prophylactic. It works. I got really sick in Asia on the trip after I traveled with the microbiologist. He literally scared the S**T out of me. Ever since I eat my Pepto Bismol every morning and I haven’t had a problem.

4. If people say “OK, OK, OK, they probably don’t understand you

We were once negotiating a deal in Japan. Before the trip I got advice from one of our attorneys who had lived in Japan for 5 years in an earlier life. He told me that while many Japanese speak some English you couldn’t count on them having good enough language skills to keep up with conversation during negotiation. So if you get OK, OK, OK you know your in trouble. Funny thing, since then I have found the OK, OK, OK rule even works for those of us who grew up with English as our mother tongue.

5. Be careful not to imitate incorrectly. It is safer to be polite and be yourself

Before taking one of my first trips to Asia I asked a friend of mine that was an Asian American and had spent 5 years setting up joint ventures in Asia about learning local customs. Specifically, I asked should I read Kiss, Bow, Or Shake Hands: The Bestselling Guide to Doing Business in More Than 60 Countries. He said your best bet is to be yourself and just be polite. The people you are doing business with have been dealing with Americans for their entire career. They know American customs way better than you will ever know Asian customs. You are at a greater risk of making a mistake when imitating what you think is correct.
I will say that world travel for business isn’t as much fun as most people think it is. It is hard work while you are on the road and harder work catching up when you get back. Modern communication tools are great, but it is still tough. Being retired and traveling for fun is a whole other story. I will say that it always hits me as I go to the airport. I think “thank god I don’t have to go to the Philippines”. And, having run a company in the Philippines for 15 years, I love the Philippines.

Remember to keep an eye out for my book: “Impromptu Friday Nights – A Guide to Supper Clubs” due out from Morgan James Publishing in January 2018