THE CHEF'S GUIDE TO THINKING

This started with me realising that Anthony Bourdain had written the seminal book on management in his “Les Halles Cookbook”. It had things in the introduction like this about cooking:

…“it’s all about transformation, about taking the ordinary and making it extraordinary. That’s magic.”

And that’s what creative thinking does. That’s what the whole concept of “value added” is about. Taking a commodity and making it special and desirable. Welcome indeed to the inner sanctum of marketing. Creating a brand….that’s magic too.

Let’s examine this maestro’s attitude towards cooking. It’s a pleasurable process in its own right and the more you practice the better you get (sound familiar that?) and the outcome is or should undoubtedly be pleasurable. But before you start, it requires deep planning and preparation.

• Be a  fanatic about writing lists - “sorry I forgot to” is not an excuse in the kitchen or the boardroom - have a brilliant countdown timetable
• Reconnaissance - what’s available, what’s good, what’s easy - don’t try to work with bad ingredients.
• “Mise en place” - the belief system - this is the basis on which genius can be based and without which incompetence is likely
• Deep prep. - the chopping, peeling (or in our case the slicing and dicing of data) - putting things into to marinade (letting ideas mature.) 
• Prepare the ingredients - getting everything ready, in the right quantity 
• Assembling everything ready to use - in thinking have all your reference points ready to hand - no more research
• Cook slowly, don’t rush things, stir, let the sauce reduce and relax. 
• Serve, eat, relish and enjoy 

And you know what? Take-away thinking, ready prepared thinking, fast thinking or deep fried thinking just isn’t as good as freshly prepared thinking.

How to solve problems and make brilliant decisions. (Business Thinking Skills that really work) published by Pearson is coming out on November 7th 2014