Business skills can be learned by baking a batch of cookies. Planning, preparation, presentation are just a few skills that being in the kitchen can teach.
While making chocolate chip cookies, I had an epiphany.
The skills you need to be successful in business can be learned in your kitchen.
Planning
When you bake have to figure out what you are going to make and how you are going to make it, whether your market (your kids) are more likely to enjoy chocolate chip or sugar cookies. Same in business you have to plan for time, money, resources and market demand. In the kitchen, the recipe is what guides your actions. In business, your strategic plan is your North Start.
Preparation
When you cook or bake, you have to assemble the ingredients, measure them carefully and make sure you understand when and how to use them. There is nothing worse than to be half way through preparing, a lemon meringue pie only realize that you have run out of eggs. In business, you to make sure you have the human and financial capital to deliver a product or service. You have to make sure you have steady supplies of raw materials and that you can marshal the right team. It’s a constant state of preparedness.
Improvisation
Things never go according to plan. Sometimes the pizza falls on the oven door instead of on the hot stone. Can you turn it into a Stromboli? I learned that while taking an online pizza class with Chef Alon Shaya Or can you find a substitution for the missing ingredients or in the case of our missing eggs for lemon meringue pie, do you make lemon squares instead? In business, critical parts don’t arrive on time or team members get sick. You have to learn how not to panic and instead find a work around.
Presentation
Those cookies are going to be more appealing served on a nice plate than on a piece of tin foil. Your ideas and products will more readily accepted when they are packaged well with nice graphics and crisp layout.
Passion
The best food is made with love. The best products and services are created when you give a crap, when you care about delivering value to others, when you do what’s right for the customer or client even if that is more
What are some other ways that the kitchen might develop your business skills?
