Working in the kitchen and working on projects – apparently two very distant activities, but they have many common features.
No meal comes out of thin air. First, you need an idea, some concept or inspiration that will guide you and lead you to your final result. We need to ask ourselves a few questions: Is the dish supposed to last for a few days? Who will eat it? Is it supposed to be more sophisticated or maybe single-potted? The same is true of investment planning, although of course the sense of the questions changes.
Planning
Before cooking, you should check the culinary tastes of those who will eat it. Will it be not too spicy? And this question shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone nowadays – someone doesn’t eat meat? And if he does not eat meat, one has to ask if he is “only” a vegetarian, or maybe “as much” as a vegan? You should also ask about possible allergies to nuts, lactose and gluten. These are all very important details that must be considered. Imagine the situation when we have made and invested a lot of work in preparing an exquisite meat dish that will not be touched by a couple of vegetarians whose diet we have not been informed about? Or we will cook a little bit of spicy food, which goes on the plate of a person with a very delicate palate. You have to consider it all and show your ingenuity so that each guest will come out having both eaten and been satisfied. Now apply the same thinking to the business.
Ingredients picking
Once we come up with an idea of what to cook, we have to gather the right ingredients and check that we have all the tools necessary to prepare the meal. A working stove, pots or plates are of course the basis. But what if it turns out that we need more specific tools to make our dish? Are we planning to cook an Asian dish but do not have a wok? Do we want to grill something at home but don’t have a suitable pan at hand? All these things should be assessed and noted long before you start cooking. The same applies to the design of investments.
And finally, on to the ingredients. When checking the recipe, we have to remember that the lack of one spice can spoil the final result. The dish will not taste as it should and will lose its character. In this case, we must include everything: suitable vegetables, high-quality meat or fish, spices given in the recipe and used according to it. After all, we do not want our dish to be insipid or too intense in taste.
Unforeseen problems
It may happen that before getting started with the cooking itself, it turns out that we are missing something. Perhaps we missed one ingredient somewhere. We thought we had it at home or forgot to buy it. In the case of cooking dinner, there’s nothing else to do but make a quick trip to the store. However, if we run out of a link before we start a project (a suitably qualified employee, for example), then we must react very quickly. We have to announce that we need such a person, search the job market for him/her, release ads to the Internet or look for such a person among the specialists we know. In both cases – whether in cooking or projects – we must act quickly and decisively.
Planning of activities
Once we have all the ingredients and tools necessary to prepare a meal, the next important element is the order of their preparation. After all, we cannot allow the vegetables to be boiled and the meat to spend several minutes longer in the oven. The same goes for delegating tasks while working on the project; we have to smoothly complete one task to move on to the next. Working with a top-down schedule and successive point by point unhooking is not only systematic but also effective.
Timing
When the dish is ready, you should inform all interested parties when it will be served at the table. Or when inviting them to dinner, let them know in advance what time they should arrive. After all, we don’t want to have to keep food waiting for someone to arrive. Much less is it our intention to have them wait for us. When working on investments, on the construction site, any scheduling delays can be a real nightmare. To maintain our credibility we simply cannot afford them.
The summary
Working in the kitchen and working on projects – apparently two very distant activities, but they have many common features. The idea, getting the right ingredients in good proportions, planning everything and catching up in time – and that’s it.
If you want to know how we prepare our professional engineering dishes – call me.
