Cooking & Business Management

I started cooking lunch every day for the past one week. It is not only that I wanted to learn cooking but also I wanted to know what it is like being in kitchen. I have picked up in a very short time. I saw an amazing connection between cooking and management principles like time management, material management, presentation and marketing. Here they are in detail.

Time Management:
Success in cooking is not only the taste but the time that you finish cooking. It makes no sense to have food missing the right time to have it. In business quality matters a lot but timely delivery is the most critical matter. Afterall it makes no sense to submit a quality RFP after the submission deadline. The other day I was making some dal gravy, beet poriyal and rasam. I know dal has to be cooked well before it is fried so I steamed in the cooker for almost ten minutes and then I kept rice for cooking. In the meanwhile I started making other stuffs. After a while I remember my mother use to keep rice & dal at the same time and cook. A simple time management technique. Aint it?

Material Management:
There is never a perfect kitchen which has all the materials and so is a business that has all the resources in hand before starting any activity. It starts with assessment of the materials including resources required for the task to be completed in both kitchen and business. A good assessment and getting prepared with the materials/resources well in advance will not only help to carry on the task seemlessly it will also compliment your time management efforts. For Ex: Get ready with the onions and all the other stuff and keep it lined up while the dal is getting cooked. I think you would have alredy related this in business terms.

Presentation and Marketing:
In the initial days I banked a lot on my presentation and marketing skills to make my pathetic dishes look/sound like they are delicious, to my wife. Sometimes it worked when I garnished simple boiled egg which is cut and spread neatly. I remember my mother rolling the chappathi with the masala inside than having them seperate and presented it in my lunch box in such a way that I would eat everything without missing one.

I believe a good cook should have better management skills and Vice Versa. After this experience I changed my thought on home makers whom I believed knew nothing about management and understood the way they manage the whole house multi tasking between various activities.