Cooking Up Success: The Recipe for a Thriving Business

Food is one of the delights of mankind. And gratefully, there is a variety of it. The types of food there are, are endless. And what is more, any creative person can ‘design’ his own type of cuisine.

Originally, mankind ate fresh foods—fruits, vegetables, nuts and grains; most of which didn’t require cooking. When cooking actually begun is still a debatable issue. But most likely, that could be when man begun eating meat and fish which would generally require cooking.

There are various forms of cooking—baking, boiling, roasting, smoking, frying, steaming, braising and most recently, microwaving. Invariably, cooking requires the application of heat, although in some cases, that can also be achieved through chemical reactions, as in the case of “Ceviche, a traditional Spanish dish where fish is cooked with the acids in lemon or lime juice”—Wikipedia

Cooking achieves several purposes including enhancing taste, flavour, preservation and the like. But whatever the method employed, food served should be balanced. A balanced diet is a meal that combines all the needed ingredients in their right proportions. These are carbohydrates, proteins, minerals, vitamins, oil/fat and water. When balanced diet is taken, it gives the body vitality and boosts the immune system, among other benefits. If food is not taken over a long period of time, it can lead to death. Meanwhile, if the right nutrients are missing, even though a person may be eating regularly, he would develop such conditions as kwashiorkor and scurvy. Eating good food, not just food, is thus very crucial to life.

Business-Kitchen

We all work to, as the saying goes, put food on the table. But have you ever considered the work you do as food itself? And are you aware that in the business-kitchen, management is the chef? Let’s look at some practical examples:

In the food chain, what is raw material is actually food for another. For instance, the raw material of fish becomes food to man when processed. Similarly, what your orgnisation produces as its final product, may be either an ingredient or whole food for another organisaton. The same principle applies to the final consumer. So what are you cooking? Do you cook it right?

As in the case of real food, the absence of certain ‘ingredients’ in your product or service could lead to ‘kwashiorkor’, ‘scurvy’ or even ‘death’ in another business. Each one of us, then, does well to ask how we are doing in the food chain of business.

Chef-Management

The chef is typically the chief cook. He is responsible for managing the kitchen and its staff and makes sure that whatever goes out of the kitchen meets the right standards. He also creates the menu and procures inventory. He takes responsibility for whatever emanates from the kitchen; whether positive or negative, good or bad.

Management as chef of the organisation likewise takes responsibility for the production and distribution of its goods and services. This is a weighty responsibility that should be handled with care. Management, in creating the menu for the organization to prepare and serve its customers thus takes care of planning and organizing, among other things to ensure that what is required is prepared at the right time and to the expected standard.

In taking care of this responsibility, then, we do well to ask management how effectively it is doing it. If chef-management really pursues excellence, it would be interested in gauging the culinary demands of its customers and make that the centre of its activities. In other words, the company becomes customer-centric. This place that the customer rightfully occupies would dictate to chef-management what menu to create, materials to be procured and the way these materials should be put together to provide a tasty and healthful dish of quality products and services that meet customer expectations.

In the kitchen, the computing principle of GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) applies very much. What do you think would happen if the chef decided to select rotten tomatoes and expired salad cream but in combination with salad leaves in excellent condition, how would the salad taste? It could even poison the eater!

In like manner, if management decides to work with poorly motivated human resources and choose cheap raw materials or spare-parts for production, but with state-of-the-art machinery, the output would be slipshod. That is why it is necessary for management to apply the principles of Total Quality Management (TQM). In this way, an astute management-chef does not need a competitor to prompt them in doing the right things.

It is, therefore, necessary for each one of us in management positions to ask ourselves: “Am I employing all the ingredients of quality human and material resources to produce a well-balanced diet of quality products and services? Or in a bid to beat the competition I select the bad ones and mix them with outwardly impressive edifices and equipment?” the latter scenario would be beneficial in the short-term but not in the long-term!

Management of Cooks

The chef manages the kitchen staff, principal among who are the cooks. The cooks are there to support the chef in achieving his aim (on a lighter note, I wonder why all the chefs I’ve come across are men). If the chef does not motivate the cooks under him, he stands the danger of losing his job or business. This is because a cook may inadvertently do the wrong thing due to down-heartedness and that can cost the chef dearly. In extreme cases, though, the cooks may deliberately sabotage the chef and ruin his reputation!

I heard the story in the early-to-mid 2000’s of the assistant at a popular rice and beans (waakye) joint in Accra, Ghana who deliberately poisoned the food of her mistress for whatever reasons. That sent many customers to hospital.

So chef-management, how do you treat your employees? Do you view them as non-entities whose responsibility is to just do what they are told, get paid a pauper’s wage and leave? Well, in that case, your employees would be working perfunctorily and sometimes absent mindedly. And if that continues, you may end up losing your customers because quality is not being served. And as in the case of the ‘waakye’ joint episode, some of your employees, albeit wrong, would be so disgruntled that they would deliberately do things to jeopardize your organization or business.

On the other hand, if you treat them well and give them a stake in the organization or your business, they would do all they can in their power to elevate the image of your organization. Once again, no amount of competition would help you to reach that height!

In Ghanaian cuisine, one ingredient that is cherished by a lot is stinking fish (mormorni). It stinks alright, but when added to such dishes as palava sauce, okro stew or garden egg stew, many can’t help but continue devouring the food without even realizing that they’re full!

In your organization, is there a mormorni-emplyee? The first reaction may be to get rid of him; throw him out to the garbage dump. But you might actually be throwing out what you really need to enhance the taste and flavor of your services or products!

The natural smell of mormorni is repugnant, granted. But we appreciate its use. Similarly, in your employee selection process, or even after full-employment, you may come to realize that a particular employee seems to be a non-conformist—almost always wrestling management. That could amount to pungent smell for management. But is that person necessarily bad? Does he desire to see the company slump? Or could it be that, blended well, this person may be the one to give the organization that new direction or luster and progressiveness through his constructive criticisms and willingness to challenge the status quo?

Yes, seek to make good use of your mormorni-employee; he might just be the one to help you win the loyalty of your customer!

Employee-Cook

As an employee, you are the cook in the organization or business, helping the kitchen to serve sumptuous, healthful meals of quality products and services to the customers of the organization. A cook who is not engaged in the company’s activities would become a weak link in the food chain of production. If that should happen, you can’t earn the trust of your employer, let alone be accorded honour with bigger and more dignifying roles or responsibilities.

As an employee-cook, then, you need to understand the menu of product/service mix of the organization. It doesn’t matter whether you are in marketing or accounting. You must educate yourself adequately on the company’s products and services vis-à-vis its mission and vision. This would arm you with the right perspective to discern creative and innovative ways to contribute towards the achievement of success for the organization.

In the kitchen, a cook who doesn’t appreciate quality customer service would take things for granted and use ingredients that are either inappropriate or rotten. In like manner, if you as an employee, whether in production or reception don’t appreciate the essence of customer service and how to deliver it effectively, you would become ‘sand’ in the ‘gari’ prepared by chef-management.

When your employer’s customers are dissatisfied, they will leave. While you might find another job elsewhere if the business collapses as a result, you have just deprived a sibling or a relative of yours of finding a job with a highly successful organization!

Hence, as an employee, you do well to ask yourself if you are really a good cook in the kitchen of your employer or a bad one. If you are of the latter category, do an honest introspective analysis of yourself and find areas in which you need improvements. Even if you are of the former category, there’s always more room for improvement.

Some ways you can contribute to the quality of the meals of products and services served by your organization is to be creative and innovative.

In the kitchen, a creative cook can think of the creation of a dish that could become the hallmark of the restaurant’s reputation. In the same vein, by studying your organization and understanding the functions of each department, you could come up with ways in which the resources of the departments could be better harnessed to develop a new product or service that could become the milk-cow of the organization.

Cook Right!

Whether chef-management or cook-employee, we all have very critical roles to play in the outworking of things in the organization. How we perform our respective roles and the mutual respect and dignity accorded each other, would go a long way in developing an excellent menu of product/service mix and nutritious meals of high quality products and services for our customers.

If you haven’t yet taken breakfast or lunch, I hope I whetted your appetite for it. All the same, what are you cooking, poison or food?

The Author is CEO/Managing Partner at Soleil Consults; Management, Strategy & ICT Consultants (www.soleilvision.com).