Category Archives: Helpful Hints

March 30, 2012 · 8:56 am

Cooking Tips For Business

We’ll end the week with our usual food-centric piece.  Today, I want to direct you to a piece by Food Network Magazine – the 100 Greatest Cooking Tips Of All Time.  While the list is far from exhaustive, it’s pretty good.  Many of them revolve around a few themes and many of those themes have application in business.

The first one comes from Marcus Samuelsson:

If you’re cooking for someone important — whether it’s your boss or a date — never try a new recipe and a new ingredient at the same time.

Well, I haven’t cooked for a date in a very long time, but I have presented to new clients, and I definitely see the application of this principle.  When it’s important to put your best foot forward, it’s not the time to experiment.  Stick to what you know works – there will be curve-balls aplenty even under the best conditions.  Your job is to reduce them to a manageable number.

Next is something I was taught to do many years ago by an Italian grandmother and comes from Chef Issac Becker:

When making meatballs or meatloaf, you need to know how the mixture tastes before you cook it. Make a little patty and fry it in a pan like a mini hamburger. Then you can taste it and adjust the seasoning.

At the risk of singing one of my familiar refrains, this is all about feedback.  Analytics.  Measurement.  Tasting as you go (to paraphrase Chef Anne Burrell‘s tip) is how you keep a business on track.  If something is off, you need to adjust the seasoning (or the plan) and you can’t know that unless you taste.  Otherwise, the dish (and the deal) can turn out inedible.

Finally, the value of planning from Chef John Besh:

Take the time to actually read recipes through before you begin.

and Chef Gabrielle Hamilton

Organize yourself. Write a prep list and break that list down into what may seem like ridiculously small parcels, like “grate cheese” and “grind pepper” and “pull out plates.” You will see that a “simple meal” actually has more than 40 steps. If even 10 of those steps require 10 minutes each and another 10 of those steps take 5 minutes each, you’re going to need two and a half hours of prep time. (And that doesn’t include phone calls, bathroom breaks and changing the radio station!) Write down the steps and then cross them off.

One of my great culinary joys is getting a four course meal on the table for 20 people at exactly the time the Mrs. informs me dinner is to be served to the guests.  That can’t happen without thoughtful and careful planning.  Then again, that project is much simpler than many of the business tasks we all face.  I’m surprised at how little planning goes into many of the most complex tasks.  Failure to think a project through to completion, to break it down into the component steps and to plan accordingly, is one of the great causes of failure.  It leads to cost overruns and shortages of time.

What’s your favorite cooking tip?  How does it apply to work outside of the kitchen?

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March 27, 2012 · 9:10 am

Out Of My Head

I saw my niece in a production of Sondheim‘s “Into The Woods” over the weekend.  It’s the same show my eldest daughter was in 10 years ago.  Both productions were terrific but different enough to show how one can take the same general concept and insert your own vision to transform it.

Into the Woods

Into the Woods (Image via RottenTomatoes.com)

One thing wasn’t different, however: the music.  The score is wonderful and contains, in my opinion, some of Sondheim’s best work, and the plot is a mash-up of several fairy tales such as Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack and the Beanstalk.

So here I am well after I’ve left the theater and I can’t get the songs out of my head.  My musical tastes are definitely NOT Broadway score focused and yet these are the only tunes popping into my brain several days later.  Which of course is the point.

We should all be trying to create things that consumers and business partners can’t get out of their heads, whether it’s a game that people can’t stop playing, a show that creates massive sharing and grows organically, or a book that readers can’t put down.  We’ve all seen lines for new movies but what about the lines where people are going back to see the film several times?  How many people are on their third or fourth iPhone?  Lots of people post about their obsessions – it’s practically a default category on Pinterest.  How much is what you’ve created there?

The Electric Light Orchestra had a hit with the song “Can’t Get It Out Of My Head“.  Keep that in your head as you work today – like Sondheim, create something that burrows into people’s brains!

Midnight on the water
I saw the ocean’s daughter
Walking on a wave’s chicane she came
Staring as she called my name
And I can’t get it out of my head
No, I can’t get it out of my head…

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March 23, 2012 · 6:52 am

More Doh!

A couple of Foodie Fridays ago, I wrote about a Cooking LIght piece that discussed some of the more common mistakes we amateur cooks make.  Since it’s Friday again (funny how that happens every week or so), I thought I’d present a few more lessons from the kitchen and remind us how what goes on in the kitchen is a lot like what goes on in business.

Today’s first mistake comes from the world of baking.  Unlike cooking, baking is very precise, mostly because it’s chemistry.  The problems come when untrained bakers begin to make substitutions in a baked good.  You know – something sounds too fattening (I hear that’s possible) so you change the butter to oil or applesauce.  Maybe you use a sugar substitute instead of some or all of the sugar.  That’s a noble idea but it disrupts the basic chemistry of the cake and it often comes out badly.  Business is a lot like that.  Some supervisors think that all their workers are interchangeable and ignore the basic chemistry of a good team.  Unfortunately, that kind of thinking often results in a less than optimal result.

Error number two is not understanding the difference between boiling and simmering.  Boiling something happens at a much higher heat than does simmering it gently.  While boiling rather than simmering can cook a dish more rapidly, the result is rarely edible.  Boiling a stew instead of simmering it can result in tough meat, for example.  In business, the equivalent error is yelling and screaming at someone – turning the heat way up – instead of applying a gentle heat that might take a bit longer to work but yields better results.

Finally, many home cooks don’t use thermometers to check the temperature of meat.  They rely on timing as stated in a recipe or some calculation like 6 minutes per pound instead of checking to see if the meat has come to a proper temperature.  This can result in a product that’s over- or under-cooked.  I know of people who don’t rely in measuring devices such as analytics to run their businesses and that’s the equivalent mistake.  There’s no way to tell how a business is doing – digital or otherwise – without using impartial measurements of some sort.  Just as a beautifully browned roast may not be cooked, a business that looks nice on the outside may not be fit for consumption once you dig in.

Enjoy the weekend!

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