Finish Great, Start Great!

Chef Ricci runs a cozy Italian restaurant that wows customers with fantastic authentic Italian dishes. An array of entre selections keep customers traveling down the menu to try a different dish each time they stop by. Chef Ricci pushes his staff for excellence in all that they do in order to make his restaurant the best. At the end of the day, the restaurant staff performs a mass cleanup of every area of the restaurant. The tables are cleaned and disinfected along with the restrooms and floors. Flowers are refreshed and repositioned. The kitchen is cleaned from top to bottom and all trash and spoiled items are removed out of the facility. The light fixtures are dusted and checked. Menus are checked to see if they are soiled. Everything is double checked to ensure that nothing has gone untouched as part of closing out the restaurant’s day. All of this cleanup work is performed in preparation of the next day. Finish great, start great!

What can you do to start great on tomorrow? Finish great today. Not everyone is designed to wake up with the blueprint for conquering the world, therefore let’s examine a blueprint for closing out today. It’s all about the prep work. Ask yourself three questions: 1) What did you accomplish today? Write it down. 2) What did you not accomplish today, that you attempted to do? Write it down. 3) From the other two questions’ list of answers, what was your part in facilitating what you accomplished and what you didn’t accomplish; what were the things or people that hindered you or helped you? The answers to these questions will help to govern the amount of cleanup or prep work you will need to do in order to make tomorrow more successful.

 When you accomplish something, knowing the strategies that made that accomplishment work, are the same strategies you can incorporate into your success routine. Do what works! On the other hand, for the things that you didn’t accomplish, it’s helpful to know what stood in your way. What’s the plan to get around the obstacles? What can you do differently?  What tools and resources do you need? Think about whether you need to back off or turn up the volume? Sometimes we need to sit down and stop and at other times we need to get up and get busy. Once you ponder these thoughts, write down your answers and brainstorm on solutions…. you can then decide what your next move will be. All of this Q & A brainstorming and strategizing is your cleanup, your prep work for tomorrow. Now you can prepare to tackle a new day and promote your chances for success by finishing great on today.  -Leen