It's the first day of my third week in a new building. A big one. The kind of operation with multiple kitchens, a procurement department, a safety manager, a people-and-culture team, and software I'm still trying to log into.
Here's what I know after two weeks.
The technology is going to take me months. The ordering platform, the HR portal, the way recipes live in the system, the badge and the benefits and the talent requests. That's fine. I'm not stressed about it. Nobody learns a company's software in fourteen days and anybody who tells you they did is lying or didn't learn it right.
The people are taking weeks, and that's about right. I've got a kitchen manager who's a Swiss Army knife, calm and measured and constantly trying to get better at his job. A procurement lead I cannot afford to lose. A chef who's been receptive to everything I've given him, who took one piece of feedback about time management and started spending thirty minutes a day on payroll the very next morning. He'll get faster. He's going to be fine. And I've got one or two I'm still figuring out, which is also normal.
And then there's the basic running of the operation. The coolers. The line. The prep lists. The walk-through. That part I can do pretty quick, because that part doesn't change from building to building. Kitchens are kitchens. People are people.
I think the mistake a lot of chefs make walking into a big job is trying to learn everything at once and feeling like a failure when they can't. Separate the layers. The systems are slow. The people are medium. The craft is fast, because you brought it with you.
So here's my plan for week three. Give everybody a fair shake. Spend real time with the ones I'm unsure about instead of deciding from across the room. Keep the cooler clean. Learn one new piece of software. Drink some water.
That's it. That's the whole strategy. It's worked for thirty years. I'll let you know how it goes.