We need to find much better solutions so that people can have satisfying home and work lives. I think woman leaders are one, more practical and two, much more sensitive to the whole issue of balancing work and family, which is the big problem facing corporate America today, everywhere from restaurants to big businesses. I think the more you know about the people you work with, the better.ĭo you think that as leaders, women bring something to the table that men don’t? I’ve never felt the need to keep a distance from my employees. But many leaders feel they need to keep a distance from their employees, and certainly between their work and personal lives. You’ve said that privacy is overrated, and your memoirs are exceptionally frank. Find out what everybody on the staff does well and tailor their jobs to them, instead of the other way around. The big secret of management is to find what people do best, not to fit them into a mold. And I learned that you really can’t expect everyone to be just like you. My great triumph with her was that at the end of two years, she came to me and said, “I’m quitting, because being around you has made me realize that I’ve spent my whole life doing something safe, and if I’m ever going to find out what I really want to do with my life, now is the time.” She drove all around the country and ended up in Portland. In the beginning I said, “Just give me your notes, and I’ll write it all.” It took a while for me to understand that management is an art, and to appoint a woman who was good at it as deputy. They were home economists, not writers or reporters. I inherited people who were really different from me. They kept saying, “We’ll give you management lessons,” but I never had time, so the learning curve was really steep. One day I was the restaurant critic, and the next day I had 20 people working for me. So I was sort of blackmailed into becoming the editor. I kept complaining about the food section, which at the time was the largest in the country-60 or 70 pages every week, with a big staff, test kitchen, and photo studio. It’s not evident from my résumé, but I’d actually been a manager before-at the LA Times. How did you make the switch from individual producer to manager when you took over at Gourmet? When her latest venture, the luxury food site Gilt Taste, was also shut down, she turned to fiction writing. First a cook, then a critic and a memoirist, and then the editor of Gourmet until its abrupt closure, in 2009, she’s learned to embrace transition. Ruth Reichl says that the best career moves are the ones that scare you.

Gourmet today by ruth reichl