Before the First Move

Preparation is not there so you can postpone the start indefinitely, but so you do not stop after five minutes because a tool is missing.

Karl Weick wrote about the strategy of “small wins”: a large, poorly defined problem produces helplessness, while a small completed shift creates information and changes the field of the next decision. A small step is valuable not for its modesty but because after it the system is already slightly different.

Preparation therefore has to carry you to the first testable move. If a project cannot be started on a small scale, its parts may not yet be separated from one another.

Before starting work it is worth checking:

Result

What has to be produced and how it will be accepted.

Inputs

Whether they are sufficient, current and where they came from.

Method

Whether the sequence is clear and the critical stages are known.

Resources

Whether there are people, tools, materials, access and budget.

Time

Whether there is enough of it not only for the main operation but for checking, fixing and waiting.

Environment

Whether the workplace is safe, whether the task is comfortable to do, whether there will be constant interruptions.

Competence

Which skills are already there, and where an instruction, training or a specialist is needed.

A full analysis is not required before every small task. Nobody has to draw up a project charter before making a sandwich.

The depth of preparation should match:

• novelty;
• the cost of a mistake;
• irreversibility;
• complexity;
• the number of participants.

There is also the risk of preparing for the sake of preparing. A person improves the workspace, picks the software, reads tool reviews and never starts the work.

Good preparation ends in action.

If absolute certainty is still required afterwards, the problem is probably no longer a lack of information.

Kitchens formalised this as mise en place: before the room opens, everything is cut, measured, set within reach, and the stove is hot. The point is not tidiness but the fact that during service there is not one free minute to go looking for anything. The same principle applies on an installation job: a crew that turns up without a single adapter loses the whole day, because the shop is forty kilometres away, and without the adapter nothing can be tested and there is nothing to sign off.

The boundary is simple: preparation ends where preparation for preparation begins. A sharpened knife helps you cook; choosing a third knife by reading reviews no longer does, although it feels similar and takes up just as many evenings.