I’ll admit, one of the things I love most about being in professional kitchens is the feeling of performance when working. But performance is not enough, let me explain…

What are some other industries that come to mind when I say the word perform? You might think about musicians, actors on Broadway, a big flashy show in Vegas, or even athletes in a championship game.

What’s different for us, as chefs, especially in high-caliber kitchens, is that we have to possess two other abilities, in addition to the ability to perform:

We need to be able to prepare, and we need to be able to problem-solve.

Let’s Prepare

We begin with prepare because for most of us at work, the day has two distinct sections. There’s prep, and then there’s service.

I remember when I was working at The French Laundry, even though prep would start at noon, the chef-de-parties (who were busy out of their mind) would all show up at 11am.

The goal was to get your station fully setup and all your prep done so that when that first order came in at 5pm for service, you were ready to perform.

Said differently, you needed to execute your tasks, build your setup and know your counts before you can actually start firing and plating.

Take that actor on broadway as an example of the opposite of this. Once that person has their lines memorized and has learned all the choreography, they can just show up relatively close to show time every night and just focus on performing.

But for us in kitchens, everything we prep and serve is, by definition, no longer available to be used, so we have to start over again the next day. Imagine if you could just walk into work 45-minutes before service and everything would be ready to just start picking up dishes.

For certain folks, upon initially hearing this, they give the push back of:

“But Justin, the actor DOES have to prepare. They have to rehearse!”

As chefs, we do that too. It’s called R&D.

It’s a process of testing, iterating, memorizing, failing, and executing in the comfort of the team without any paying customers.

Can you imagine if at the end of a basketball game, numerous pieces of that game were either given to the fans or just thrown away? And then the athletes had to show up the next day before playing and re-net the hoop, lay down wood flooring and sew together a leather basketball?

All of these are just “part of the job” for a chef who needs to re-setup the pass, lay down place settings on tables and truss together chickens on a daily basis.

In Total Station Domination, we use three questions to determine someone’s ability to prepare:

• Can you provide a status update on your owned tasks within 60 seconds?

• Are you able to create (and maintain) a setup that’s basic, strategic and hygienic?

• When asked, can you accurate counts (and timings) on key deliverables at all times?

Each of these can be inverted. Think about the person who:

• …has NO idea what tasks are still left, much less how to prioritize them

• …built a half-baked setup that’s over-complicated, inefficient and dirty

• …stumbles through an guessed list of portion counts and estimated timings that are full of lies

All I’m saying is, I know which person I’d much rather have on my team.

Problem-Solving

I need to start off this section with a gripe. In an industry full of daily challenges and obstacles, why aren’t problem-solving frameworks typically taught?

When I was progressing through my culinary school program, the environment was like a bouncy house. Sure, you could go through the motions but there weren’t dire consequences if you screwed something up or didn’t finish on time. That’s arguably good for when you’re learning, but doesn’t really prep you to enter an actual restaurant.

When I refer to 'problem-solving,' I mean the actions that are taken when an issue arises, an inaccuracy occurs, or an obstacle impedes success. What happens in these situations?

• How does one communicate, both with team members as well as customers? Is it in a kind and accurate way? Or is it full of snapping, cruel quips and lying?

• What happens when the results aren’t as desired? Do people even know what we’re looking for in the results?

• When feedback is dished out, does it take a week to bounce back from that? Is the initial reaction to take ownership and improve, or to blame and point fingers?

In both the culinary school I attended, as well as several of the high-caliber kitchens I worked in, these problems ran rampant. In fact, in certain restaurants, more problems is how you were supposed to GET AHEAD. It was through backstabbing, brown-nosing and sabotaging that you played the politics to jockey for a promotion.

We have to develop an aversion to problems.

We should strive to mitigate chaos.

We need solutions.

It becomes even more important when you realize that problems don’t isolate themselves to just the “prepare” or the “perform” sections of your day. They show up unannounced and unexpectedly. Your ability to address them, quickly, is often what determines success.

Also, notice I'm not saying we can make all problems go away forever. But the roller coaster ride that a lot of people have every day might not be needed.

Back to mirroring other industries, it would be like if the acrobat in the big Vegas show was having trouble coordinating with someone else on a big maneuver. How might they solve this problem? What might you tell them?

“Are you communicating clearly with your team mate?”

“Have you deliberately practiced the motions enough?”

“Is your timing accurate?”

“Are you in your own head about this maneuver?”

As chefs, we struggle with all of this, too! Go read those questions again, imagining two station partners talking to one another.

Not to mention, we have wildly out-of-left field problems that are restaurant-specific.

Take a modification to an aversion. Chefs will often prepare an entirely separate dish for someone who can’t enjoy a specific ingredient.

That would be like seeing the acrobat start to juggle in the middle of their routine because the person in Row H, Seat 4 said they didn’t like aerial acrobatics!

Just Let Me Perform

Listen, performance is the best part, I get it.

Going fast, moving in flow, juggling projects, executing at a high level…there’s nothing quite like it.

If you feel the same, I’m arguing that you can continue to love that aspect of your work. But you can use an awareness and developed level of understanding how to prepare and how to problem-solve to enjoy the “perform” parts even more.

Said another way: smoother preparation, less problems, better performance.

Compared to what plagues so many in the industry (and often just goes unaddressed): janky preparation, gnarlier problems, lackluster performance.

In fact, we created a program that specializes in boosting skills across all 3 of these qualities and it’s called Total Station Domination. I’d love for you to check it out yourself, or share it with someone that you think might get value from a more confident, capable and adaptable team in their kitchen. We offer the program to individuals as an alternative to culinary school, as well as to businesses as an onboarding and training resource.

I’m already writing an in-depth breakdown of each of the 9 Domination Measures and how they relate to the pillars of Prepare, Perform and Problem-Solve. If you want to get a heads up when that drops, be sure to subscribe to The Repertoire Newsletter here.