There’s a saying in professional kitchens: “Mise en place saves your ***.” You can imagine the ending. Roughly translating to “everything in its place,” mise-en-place is the guiding principle that ensures chefs can handle the heat when service begins. Without it, even the most talented chef would drown in the chaos of a busy kitchen. But the beauty of mise en place goes far beyond the culinary world—it’s a mindset, a strategy, and, ultimately, a saving grace for anyone juggling complex tasks under pressure.
The Perils of Poor Preparation
As a student at Leith’s School of Food and Wine, you were not allowed to enter the kitchen without a well prepared time & resources plan. But that lesson didn’t really drive home until I was still fresh from culinary school, eager to prove myself in a Michelin-starred kitchen. Heading into the Thursday lunch service, notoriously busy, I was clearly running behind in my prep. Still, I thought I could wing it. My prep was scattered, my tools weren’t where they needed to be, and I had no backup plan.
By the time the first orders came in, I was clearly in trouble. The head chef’s sharp words cut through the din: “Your workspace is a mess and you keep getting in your own way. You’re only as good as your prep, and today your prep sucks balls.” He was right. I floundered that day, the sous chef had to jump in and save my bacon, but I never made the same mistake again. (Though I’ve made plenty of different ones since!)
The Power of Preparation
Mise en place isn’t just about chopping onions or measuring out ingredients in advance. It’s about creating a state of readiness that allows you to adapt and respond, no matter what’s thrown at you. In the kitchen, this means knowing exactly where every tool and ingredient is and ensuring backups are ready. In business, it might mean rehearsing a presentation until its second nature or having contingency plans for your contingency plans.
When you’re prepared, you free up mental bandwidth for creativity, problem-solving, and staying calm under pressure. Instead of scrambling to fix a mistake, you’re already thinking two steps ahead.
The Universal Appeal of Mise en Place: From Kitchen to Boardroom
The beauty of mise en place is that it applies to nearly every aspect of life. Planning a family dinner? Organize your ingredients and set the table before guests arrive. Launching a product? Make sure every team member knows their role and the timeline is watertight. Facing a packed schedule? Block out time for priorities and tackle the most challenging tasks when you’re freshest.
Business planning is no different. You start with the big picture, the grand plan – liken it to designing the restaurant menu. But that needs to be broken down to make it workable – every dish needs a recipe, every recipe needs a work plan. And based on the day, week or month you’ve got coming up, the building blocks of all the recipes you need to prepare need to be neatly arranged to ensure you work efficiently, optimizing your time, with each dish or deliverable arriving in optimal condition to delight the end consumer.
At Shutta, the executive team draws up the big plan and communicates it to the wider team. The team leaders break this down and divide up the work, and the operational teams organize the work they have been assigned in neat processes and checklists.
Progress and quality are checked in daily scrums, weekly iterations and monthly retrospectives in a perpetual cycle of improvement. It might sound cumbersome, but the process is well established, meetings are short, and everyone understands the benefits. By the time we sit down to do the work, there’s no mental clutter; we can dive straight into what matters. Our methodology is our mise-en-place.
Avoiding Autopilot: Staying Agile and Adaptable
Chaos is inevitable, but you can manage it. Even the best-laid plans can go awry. But when chaos hits—and it always does—a solid foundation of mise en place gives you a fighting chance. You’re not scrambling in the dark; you’re pivoting with purpose.
That’s what I took away from that disastrous Thursday lunch service. Mise en place isn’t about creating a rigid structure that can’t bend. It’s about laying the groundwork so you have the freedom to adapt, innovate, and thrive, whether you’re in a kitchen or are heading up a team.
Your Mise en Place: A Recipe for Success
So, where can you apply mise en place in your life? Is it your workday? Your home? Your personal goals? Start small: organize your tools, define your priorities, and prepare for the unexpected. You might just find that the saving grace of mise en place isn’t just a mantra for chefs—it’s a philosophy for life.