Spaghetti frittata & everyone needs a role

I got a call asking me about the Spaghetti Frittata that I mentioned yesterday. It came from Bon Appetit in 2004 and I found it by searching my favorite recipe database, Epicurious.

I’ve admitted here – publicly – that I’m not a great cook. But I am a great recipe-picker-outer. This frittata was really great. So great that my dad took home the leftovers with a copy of the recipe for my mom. Of course, being home with a stomach flu, she might not have been excited to receive the recipe at that time. But she tells me this morning (she is feeling a lot better, thank you) that she’ll make it. The recipe, I mean.

But this whole recipe-picking-out skill is something I’d like to talk about today. Some people are strategists. Some are implementers. Some are strategists AND implementers. Some add nothing. Hopefully, those folks won’t be around long. In business, I consider myself to be a strategist first and foremost.

I love the thinking process. How can we best address these issues? How can this problem be solved? Where can we go to find what we need to accomplish this?

But I almost always do the resulting implementation. It’s coming full-circle – seeing the results of the planning fall into place. Fun stuff.

I have the joy and pleasure of working (for pay and not-for-pay) with a lot of interesting people. I strongly believe that our roles are cyclical. We start out as implementers and bust our butts to become the strategists. Right? Strategists are more valued, it seems, and we work hard to get there.

In the not-for-pay world, however, I’ve decided there are only a few slots for pure strategists. Even the people at top of the heap need to get their hands dirty sometimes. And those of us who are willing to be both will always have plenty to do – or at least that’s what the doers who have cycled into thinkers keep telling us.