Layer by Layer

Shireen Dreyer explains how baking a cake slices into project management

There’s something oddly satisfying about watching a cake rise. It starts as chaos; flour in your hair, butter on your sleeve, gooey batter threatening to leap from the bowl. But with time, structure, and just the right amount of heat, it transforms into something tangible. Something complete. Something delicious.

Project management, surprisingly, works much the same way.

Before you dismiss the comparison, take pause. Every great cake has layers, and the first layer isn’t the one with candles or decorations. It’s the one on the board. The one that carries the weight. The one you build everything else upon.

That’s where we start.

Layer One: Initiation

“Everything starts with clarity. If you don’t understand the ask, you’re already behind.” ~ Melba Duncan, Founder of The Duncan Group

Every cake begins with a why. A reason. A purpose. Someone’s turning 50. Someone’s getting married. Someone got dumped and needs a chocolate mousse distraction.

You launch into action, asking the right questions:

• What kind of cake?
• How many people?
• When is it needed?
• How much time do I have before I panic?

You’re not just baking. You’re initiating. Scoping the request. Evaluating your capacity, your resources, and your oven’s temperament. Just like any project manager worth their salt – or caster sugar.

Mistake #1? Skipping this step. That’s how you end up baking a carrot cake for someone who’s allergic to nuts. In project terms? That’s a deliverable no one asked for.

For Executive Assistants, this is familiar territory. Clarity is your first line of defence. You’re used to translating vague requests into workable outcomes. You’ve been project-managing from behind the curtain long before anyone called it that.

Layer Two: Planning

“Being prepared isn’t a skill. It’s a mindset.” ~ Joan Burge, Founder of Office Dynamics

A truly great cake, like a truly great project, relies on thoughtful preparation. This isn’t just about reading the recipe. It’s about seeing the whole production:

The allergic niece.

The heatwave that could ruin the ganache.

The guest list that mysteriously doubled overnight.

You make lists. You plan for contingencies. You second-guess the croquembouche and lean toward lemon drizzle instead. But these aren’t just tasks, they’re the early movements of a project plan. You’re defining scope, mapping timelines, assessing risks, assigning roles, and managing your resources, whether that means coordinating actual stakeholders or calling on cousins to pick up eggs and friends to prep decorations. You may not call it a Work Breakdown Structure or a RACI matrix, but the logic is there, in the scribbled lists, WhatsApp groups, and colour-coded spreadsheet tabs.

Layer Three: Execution

“Our job is to make things look effortless, which means executing flawlessly under pressure.” ~ Phoenix Normand, Founder of MEGA Assistant University

Now it’s time to do the real work, where your careful planning meets action and heat. Execution is where your planning is encapsulated in the doing. It’s where everything you shaped in the initiation and planning is tested. You follow the recipe, measure with care, stir with focus. Batter in. Timer on. No going back.

The batter is in the oven. It’s too late to switch flavours, too soon to decorate, and exactly the moment where things might go sideways. Maybe the cake rises too fast. Maybe it cracks. Maybe it sags in the middle. This is where the heat exposes your preparation. You don’t stir or poke. You resist the urge to fiddle. You trust the process and focus. No more tweaks, no more taste tests, just timing and quiet confidence that the work will hold.

This is the turning point. The moment your planning either holds or doesn’t. It’s not glamorous, it’s granular. This is where the transformation happens. The batter becomes sponge. The vision becomes real. This is what execution delivers: not perfection, but precision.

Layer Four: Monitoring & Controlling

“An executive can afford to look ahead, because someone else is watching the ground beneath their feet.” ~ Emily Goldfischer, Founder of Hertelier

Ever crouched in front of an oven, willing a cake to rise? You know not to open the door. But you’re watching, always watching and quietly waiting. Is it rising evenly? Is that smell burnt… or just caramelising nicely?

This is the sweet spot of monitoring and controlling. The phase of quiet vigilance. Not micromanaging, just noticing. You make small, smart pivots: turn down the heat, rotate the pan. In projects, this looks like updating timelines, refining scope, catching a risk before it melts all over your schedule.

And sometimes, you do everything right, but the centre still caves. That’s when your calm matters most. You breathe. Assess. Adapt. Maybe you whip up a backup sponge. Maybe you cut that tier and serve it with confidence anyway.

Layer Five: Closure

“Celebration is part of completion. Take the win. Then take the notes.” ~ Emily Goldfischer, Founder of Hertelier

The closing phase begins when the cake, your project deliverable, is presented to the client or stakeholder. But delivery isn’t just about boxing it up and sending it off, it’s about the reveal. The unboxing, the admiration, the smile it evokes as the aroma and first morsel lands on expectant taste buds. That’s the handover. That’s final approval. That’s the moment ownership shifts and your work is not only delivered, but truly received

Closure continues behind the scenes. Tasks like issuing final invoices, closing vendor contracts, and archiving project assets may not sit on the critical path, but it’s essential to closing the loop with integrity. These final steps create the polish, pave the way for a clean handoff, reveal opportunities for learning, and reinforce the standard you want your name attached to. It’s not just admin; it’s the finishing flourishes that turn closure into completion.

From start to finish, cake baking mirrors the lifecycle of a well-managed project. The need sparked initiation. The recipe and ingredients were thoughtfully planned and gathered. The batter transformed into sponge in the heat of execution. The bake called for patience and precision, a disciplined phase of monitoring and control. And closure? That came with the final nod of client approval, confirming that the outcome aligned with the intention, and every layer achieved its purpose.

The Personal Layer

Let’s be honest, it’s never really just about the cake.

Baking and project management both exist in service of something bigger: joy, celebration, solutions, support. Whether it’s plated for a gathering or sold digitally, what you deliver carries purpose, intention, and meaning.

Many administrative professionals don’t realise they’re already fluent in project work – they’ve simply never had the vocabulary. Every timeline you manage, every risk you anticipate, every resource you juggle is strategy in motion, quietly mastered.

That’s why the metaphor resonates. Baking simplifies the complexity of project management. It takes what feels abstract and makes it visible, structured, and transferable. It reveals what’s been quietly present all along: your ability to support and shape projects in ways that may have been unspoken, but not unnoticed. So, when the next project comes along, remember cake and trust that you’re not stepping into the unfamiliar. You’ve been layering these skills all along.