Mies-en-place, the French phrase translates literally as "put in place". Culinary professionals use mies-en-place to mean assembling and arranging the food ingredients and cooking tools needed to prepare a meal. Instead of running to the refrigerator, cupboard or drawer while stirring the pot, looking for soy sauce, the saffron or the zester, most chefs gather everything they need first and set out each item in a planned and convenient spot. For them, this discipline is essential to cooking the dozens or hundreds of good to superb dishes they need to create every day in the kitchen.

As business professionals and leaders, mies-en-place offers a sound practice model for us too. Preparing for meetings, writing and sharing agendas, reading the reports in advance, clearing our desks and laying out our business technology tools in their proper places will help us focus on the tasks at hand. We often say "let's get organized". All good ideas.

However, to many chefs, there is a deeper, almost religious, meaning to mies-en-place. To meet the challenges of coordinating people, tools, space and ingredients to satisfy the demands of diners, time and budget, chefs become very focused, even Zen-like. They concentrate their minds on the tasks of that moment, blocking out all distractions. Before they start cooking, great chefs imagine how each dish will taste and look when it is presented to each customer, then they gather and organize everything to support that goal.

For business leaders, this deeper form of mies-en-place speaks to us as well. We need that focus on the task at hand with confidence that each task fits with the overall goal and strategy. Instead of starting the workday with reacting to emails and voicemails, consider clearing our minds, reminding ourselves of our life's purpose and getting centered as leaders. Imagine that you are at the end of the day and feeling amazed, delighted and fulfilled and then ask yourself, why? What was accomplished? What has our team done to achieve this incredible result? Then you are ready to put everything in place to make it happen.

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