This article was co-written by Ren Lee, SVP Marketing at Dataiku, and Mark Palmer, host of Executive Programs for Dataiku. Mark is a data and AI industry analyst for Warburg Pincus and a board member for six AI, data management, and data science companies. Time Magazine named him “A Tech Pioneer Who Will Change Your Life.” Mark is a LinkedIn Top Voice in Data Analytics.
The greatest restaurants in the world are at the cutting edge of precision, innovation, parallel teamwork, and exacting standards that scale day to day. Those leading data and AI projects aim for the same results: creating differentiated business value that continues to be both predictable and innovative. So, how can the habits of great executive chefs inspire enterprise IT leaders as they delve into world-class applications of GenAI?
Here are six pillars IT leaders can steal from the best executive chefs in the world.
1. Start With the Vision of the Dining Experience
Great restaurants are born with a vision: culinary style, flavor, and ambiance. On the award-winning Netflix series Chef’s Table, each story of the world’s greatest restaurants begins with its origin story — the unique point of view formed by their early experience.
Similarly, great IT organizations start with a vision. At a recent private Dataiku executive event in Boston, an IT leader from a leading digital advertising company described how they spent months with business users to define a unique AI product vision that yielded a 3,000% increase in revenue. “We started with a vision, defined KPIs, and even aligned our compensation plans with the success metrics. Once we had a shared vision, we got to work.”
Or, as David Ciommo, analytics leader at Humana, said on the Data Humanized podcast, “The first thing I do is throw away the data and talk about the business.”
Don’t get bogged down with the art of the possible in a world where the possibilities of technology have outpaced use cases. Know your intent and vision first. Like great chefs, invest the time to form a unique vision, create the recipes, policies, and procedures to pursue that vision, and then go for it.
2. Understand, Then Innovate With Ingredients
Multiple-time James Beard award-winning chef Dan Barber doesn’t leave farming to farmers. He works with agriculture researchers to create his ingredients, studying how field, pasture, and garden practices affect food flavor and experimenting with ecological practices. Chefs also don’t stick to the same ingredients year-round, they taste, test, and know what’s fresh, interesting, and sourceable and adapt with the best in season. Similarly, innovative IT leaders dig deep for new data ingredients. They search for new data types that can yield new insights. They simulate and synthesize data sources. And when the data they need doesn’t exist, they collect it from scratch.
A leading health tech firm started its Generative AI journey searching for untapped data sources. They harvested thousands of request-for-proposal (RFP) documents. They integrated them with an LLM to help sales teams explore their library of responses with natural language to respond faster and more creatively than their previous approach: manual curation.
Next, they used another untapped data ingredient — healthcare coverage refusal reports —to find “needles in the haystack” that revealed internal processes that can be improved to help clients improve submissions that lead to exceptions and improve customer experience.
So, make sampling what’s available by testing and tasting a daily part of your job. Like great chefs, consider farming new data ingredients.
3. Organize, Apprentice, and Deploy Trusted Sous Chefs and Line Cooks
Julia Child said, "A well-organized kitchen is the foundation of successful cooking." Surely, that’s true, and large kitchens are tricky to organize. Indeed, executive chefs of large staff spend just 10%-20% of their time cooking; the rest is spent organizing, cleaning, planning, training, experimenting, and adapting processes.
Research shows that the best IT leaders spend more time creating an environment that encourages innovation. In their 2024 research on AI innovation, McKinsey and Company found that top EBITDA-generating AI companies are twice as likely (42% versus 19%) to have carefully structured, systematically monitored, well-governed IT systems. For IT, a well-organized “kitchen” includes data pipelines, standard tools, systematic data quality, training, a self-service approach, communication, data cataloging, well-described policies, and more.
Structure doesn’t constrain innovation; it unlocks it. Innovators democratize access to data, algorithms, and AI infrastructure, encourage teams to use it, and help them grow data-driven critical thinking skills. For example, a major semiconductor manufacturing company runs a program called “Project Democratization” to shepherd business groups through their first AI application. First, they deploy a CoE team member to ideate the best applications to try given business needs. Then, they deploy an expert to put “hands-on keyboards” to build and test a prototype. After demonstrating success, they help prepare the business case for funding and ultimately deploy the prototype into production.
So, chefs and IT leaders create a well-organized foundation, encourage independence, and supply guided expertise, leading to a great meal.
4. Inspect at the Pass: Govern Excellence
While executive chefs rely on their team to handle preparation and cooking, they monitor all food that goes to guests “at the pass” to ensure perfection.
IT leaders do the same. McKinsey’s research showed that high-performing IT leaders are six times more likely to have a robust monitoring system for AI than laggards (7% versus 41%). That means having carefully curated financial operations (FinOps), model operations, and machine learning operations (MLOps) to monitor AI for cost, model drift (changes to the model as real-world conditions change), and business feedback, bias, and fairness.
So, like a great chef, inspect that food before it leaves the kitchen!
5. Choose the Right Tools and Keep Them Sharp
Chefs use quality tools and care for them. IT high performers do this, too. McKinsey found they’re three times more likely (31% versus 11%) to have standardized tools and a systematic approach to training users and sharing best practices depending on skill level and need.
Regardless of the tools chosen, content is made available to teach teams how to use them. At the recent Dataiku executive conference in Boston, over 80% of IT leaders surveyed promoted the Dataiku Academy to everyone who wishes to participate in AI to learn the tools properly. Indeed, the quality and comprehensiveness of these online learning facilities are a central element of the vendor selection process.
So IT teams, like great executive chefs, select standardized tools, pay close attention to the quality of the training, insist teams use it, and then oversee their use as competency and expertise levels rise.
6. Talk to the Business! Experiment! Tinker! Have Fun!
Great chefs communicate with the front of the house (the business unit) and their diners (the customers) to deliver beautiful food and ensure the entire experience from pass to table and beyond serves the entire experience. They are involved with how to curate and storytell their menus, oversee which wines and services are incorporated with the food, and continue pushing boundaries to move the entire restaurant in unison. The greatest executive chefs have the entire team's trust, allowing them to experiment, tinker, and have fun in continuous improvements. In short, they have fun.
Great IT leaders encourage communications, business-focused understanding, and joyful experimentation like great chefs. They introduce new data, tools, methods, and ideas. Indeed, McKinsey found that IT high performers are three times more likely (46% versus 15%) to have a “clear process that encourages iterative exploration” regarding AI.
Or, as Brad Thompson, head of AI for Target, said: “I feel like a kid in the candy store with all the data we have now to understand our guests, our supply chain, and our in-store experience. It’s fun!”
Serve and Refine Your Experience
IT leaders can steal ideas from the world’s leading executive chefs and use them to create nourishing analytics and AI products. The process never stops as they refine their creative vision, create unique ingredients, provide space to play, grow teams, and build competency and trust in tools, all to create an environment of innovation, play, and fun.
So book a chef’s table at a great restaurant on your next business trip. Get inspired by their carefully orchestrated system and reflect on how you can apply them to deliver a memorable AI experience to your customers — your business stakeholders.