Coordinate and act
Mise en place
Set everything up before you start
Treat setup and preparation as real work, so the work itself runs calm instead of scrambling.
Borrowed from professional kitchens, where "mise en place" (French for "everything in its place") means setting up a station before service. Read the original source.
Ongoing habit · Minutes to start · Anyone on the team can start it
Try this first
Before the next big piece of work, protect the time to get context, tools, and inputs ready first.
Use it when
Work is chaotic because setup gets skipped and prep is seen as overhead.
Skip it when
Preparation can swell into procrastination and setup that never starts. You want right-sized prep, not perfectionism.
How to introduce it
Professional kitchens put everything in its place before service. The prep is not overhead, it is what makes the service calm. For a team it means protecting setup time. Gathering the context, readying the tools, organizing the inputs, before the work starts.
How to show up
Protect preparation time against the urge to dive in, and name the payoff out loud when a well-prepared start shows.
How long it takes
Varies with the work. The point is protecting prep time rather than cutting it.
What makes it hard
Prep feels like not working, so it gets cut under time pressure even though it repays the time several times over. Finding the balance is the skill. Enough to run calm, not so much that it becomes avoidance.
What it looks like when it's working
Work starts with everything in place and runs without scrambling for missing pieces. Repeated mid-work scrambles mean prep is getting skipped.
How long until it sticks
A few pieces of work before the value of protected prep is felt and it becomes routine.
How you know it stuck
People invest in getting ready and treat preparation as real work.
The idea behind it
Preparation is what makes the work calm and sharp. Skipped as overhead, it turns the work into a scramble. The prep is the work.
Where it comes from
Professional kitchens. Protect setup/prep time and treat readiness as real work, not overhead. "Everything in its place" before service. The prep is the performance. A station set up right makes service calm.