Pickles and Plans
We were honored to host a celebratory lunch and hands-on workshop with an E-Commerce team featuring food, flavor, and teamwork coming together in a joyful, low-pressure way. Through guided tastings, composed dishes, and a make-your-own quick-pickle activity, we explored how simple ingredients—and teams—can transform into something vibrant and memorable.
We began by exploring the surprising world of preserved and acidic foods, and using food science to make our own quick-pickles. Then, over a delicious and bountiful vegetarian lunch by our catering partner Madres Kitchen, we took time to invite reflection on clearing, growing and delivering the growth we want for the year ahead.
What we prioritized and what we achieved for our guests:
A warm, interactive tasting journey
Opportunities for creative collaboration
A space for reflection
A unique learning experience (seasonal quick pickles) and…
A gift collection to recreate and share the experience with family and friends.
The Clear-Grow-Deliver model has a lot going for it: easy words, two of them monosyllabic. Every single thing we do fits into it, else we can question why we’re doing it. It applies to personal life, it applies to work, and it applies to teams and organizations too.
What is it? Three categories of tasks that we need to balance to sustain dignified progress and that help us to filter and sort what fills our day.
Clearing tasks remove noise. Anything that removes friction, provides momentum, and essentially clears the way for other things to be easier, more effective, and more sustainable.
Growing tasks create capabilities or add capacity. Anything that improves readiness for sustainable progress, social, technical or strategic, needs investing in to be useful, and that is this work.
Delivering tasks complete our commitments to other people. Big or small, these are the activities that connect us to others and mark externally recognized conclusions. Moving anything off our plate, whether as done or not going to do, is here.
Okay, this makes perfect sense, getting work done by clearing the admin, reading up on new tech, and meeting my goals. Got it! Hm…not quite. This covers EVERYTHING we do. Growing relationships. Clearing anxiety. Delivering on a promise to be truthful about feasibility. Clearing my mind. Growing my strength. Delivering my personal dignity. Now we’re in the right neighborhood!
Clear-Grow-Deliver can be both a personal and a team manifesto.
“I need to clear some things before I can get to delivering what you need from me. I/We need to grow skills and capabilities before I/we can effectively approach delivering this outcome. I need a spa day or a team connection to clear my/our heads before I/we can take on learning something new with open optimism.”
Use this method to design a roadmap that actively addresses noise, develops with intention, and delivers on its promises to its community of stakeholders-whether at work, or in community, or at home- is going in the right direction. Challenging new tasks through the Clear-Grow-Deliver lens keeps you on track.
As educators and facilitators, we use the metaphor of pickles to anchor the concept of transformation and readiness to make a change. We talk about how culinary acids take a simple ingredient and, through the application of science and time, turn it into something vibrant, complex, and enduring. We can choose many different ways to do that, for different reasons. We practice sequencing tasks, prioritizing based on readiness and capacity, and keeping things simple. It is a dynamic and flavorful way to learn a practical model for managing change and moving projects forward with intention.
Want to try this with your team?
