Last weekend my wife was baking bread. This is a big deal in our house, because we burn through bread like a hot knife through butter…or like a non-heated knife through butter on a warm slice of bread.
My oldest son’s favorite breakfast is anything with two slices of toast.
My daughter’s favorite lunch request is grilled cheese.
My wife and I enjoy bread right out of the oven, often coupled with our favorite coffee.
You see, we love bread. Bread can be put to a lot of different uses. You can enjoy it as a snack, with a meal, with dessert. French toast is bread that evolved into a meal. Meatloaf is bread that conquered meat.
All that said, bread can be a pain to make. It requires patience. You have to combine flour with yeast and water and baking powder, then it has to rise – which takes time. Some recipes have bread rising more than once – taking even more time. And when you put the bread in the oven, it has to bake for several minutes, which can honestly seem like way longer. However, if you pull the bread out too early, it can be doughy. You can’t cut it and finish it the way you want. If you’re not careful you can ruin the loaf. It’s a problem if you don’t want to wait.
Couldn’t you turn up the heat? A hotter over bakes bread faster, right? Well, yes and no. Yes, it bakes the bread faster, but developing a great loaf of bread is more complicated than it sounds. There are a few chemical reactions going on in the loaf as the air, gases, and liquids all experience an increase in temperature. The impatient and unskilled are often left with a well done loaf, with thick, hard crust. Ultimately, the pieces that are overdone cannot be consumed and are wasted.
Baking bread is a lot of like executing your strategy. You go with a recipe that works for you. Once you have identified your ingredients (for example your culture and values + your tactics), and applied them in the proper measurements, you must be patient. Changing your strategy in the middle of execution can have disastrous (and costly) consequences. Your results may end up being half-baked and unusable. Or, worst case scenario, your end result may end up charred to ash, and rather than providing any nourishment or sustenance, it ends wasted, and possibly causing harm to your company and your customers.
Learn to have faith in your strategy and the people who put it in place. As you execute over time, feel free to make minor tweaks and experiment as needed, but remember that more often than not, overhauling your process in the middle of heat and pressure simply because of impatience will lead to ruin. Don't let that happen.
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