Do you hear the heartbeat of your business…
I get asked ‘when did you join the business’ but I go on to share what is perhaps more relevant, yet lesser known, is that I spent the first 8 months with steel toecap boots on working in our factory. During this time, I didn’t open a laptop, send an email, make a phone call or attend a meeting.
Instead, my time was wholly given to building the equipment we engineer alongside the highly skilled and time served ‘family’ that is the team.
I was about 8 weeks in - when I was introduced to the Tap section. Our Head of Taps, has given 27 years of service to Tecflo. I calculate crudely that across their time on Taps - 2.5 million have entered the trade.
Without hesitation they greeted me saying ‘…you won’t be testing the taps.’ As standard we assemble and test EVERY piece of kit that is produced. 100% of the time. They carried on: ‘You will polish. You will polish and box – that is all.’
So that is what I did. I polished. Polished and Boxed. Sometimes I polished lots, then boxed lots, sometimes I mixed it up and polished and boxed, polished and boxed. Polishing and boxing is ALL I did. 16 days and five thousand seven hundred taps later they turned to me and said ‘you are ok, you can stay, I like you.’
Fast forward a few years and needless to say I have a laptop, make calls and attend meetings. Yet at times when the ‘busyness of business’ is happening I find myself gravitating to the polishing station, picking up a cloth and tuning into what I now call the ‘heartbeat of the company’. Like a metronome it creates a consistent reminder ( 5700 times ) that results are not based on what we do some of the time but all of the time.