Mise en place
If you try to cook something without preparing the ingredients needed beforehand, you commit to the decidedly wasteful bustle that is going to the fridge, then back to the cutting board, then to the spice cabinet, then back to the fridge (only to realize you’re missing ingredient), and so on. It is needless back-and-forth made necessary by the decision to rush into execution.
Mise en place (“put in place”), a French culinary phrase that refers to the preparation and close placement of ingredients and tools before the cooking begins, is a direct response to this predicament.
The idea is that if you consider what is needed and get it all ready the first time, you will not need to to worry about engaging in mentally exhausting and focus-degrading back-and-forth. Instead, you can just focus on making something great.
Beyond the dinner table, the lesson of mise en place is that anything worth doing well demands its own kind of preparation.
Taking the time to clearly communicate everything in the first e-mail is mise en place.
The daily stand up where your team identifies road blocks and makes a plan on how to address them is mise en place.
Documenting what you will do if things go wrong in your project charter is mise en place.
And on a final note, consider the act of compassion that planning really is:
It is compassion for the people you serve, who deserve the best experience possible. It is compassion for you and your team, who deserve as smooth a working environment as possible. The swift and better execution à la mise en place is compassion for everyone, ensuring the very best use of our greatest asset of all: time.
