July 24 has been interesting.

The UK has changed Government, and most people seem to be happy about it even though 80% of us didn’t vote for the winners. President Biden has declared himself a lame duck after the felonious ex-President Trump narrowly avoided a teenage assassin’s bullet and the Vice President now carries the hopes of the saner part of the US electorate. The Paris Olympics have begun after an alarming right turn in French politics while warfare in Ukraine and Gaza continues unabated and North Korean diplomacy features excrement delivered by balloon.

Meanwhile our mixing and packing efforts have been rewarded by a profit for the first time in three years. Productivity measured by turnover and profit per head is up and we are looking for a strategy that will deliver both a sustained growth and an exit path for me. The King’s envoys are still trying to understand the business that they have inherited but appear to be enmeshed in a complex web of systems that seem to prioritise compliance over customer service. Time will tell!

In many ways this is a really exciting time in which we have shown that we can make a profit and also find new opportunities to grow. We have begun a new strategic initiative that will bring a clearer focus on our objectives and on fulfilling them. Roles and accountabilities will be more sharply defined and mine will be particularly concentrated on leadership, delegation, succession and my transition out of the business.

My worry, however, concerns sustainability in the face of difficulties in recruiting and training the calibre of people that we need to fulfil both today’s and tomorrow’s production. This can also be said to be a national problem but, in our location, the national success in attracting more technological manufacturing to the area directly reduces our chances of recruiting the people that we need and of keeping those that we have. Some of our recruits come to work by train but two or three times per week their train is cancelled. How sustainable is that?

347 words FRE 45.5 FKG 12.6

What will the election mean to your business?

I was asked the question in the gym in the morning after the polls closed and the change of government was already certain. The result was unsurprising in so far as it reflected the pre-election polls, but the reality also shines a spotlight on our version of democracy. The winning party was voted for by 33.7% of those who voted and only 60% of the electorate chose to vote.

The result was to give the winning party a majority of 172 and consequently an almost unprecedented power to act and barely one in five of us wanted it to happen.

So, what about the question? How will the new government affect our business? I don’t know.

We want to grow and so does the Government. The problem is that the Government wants to focus on the NHS and the many other pressure points in daily life from care to housing to railways and simultaneously to make strategic preparations for defence and climate change. Where will the money come from and how will the Government stimulate growth in our business?

It is easy to see how they can make our business more difficult. Increasing the amount of working time that is devoted to social and personal discretion will directly reduce the time available for growing output. The application of new EU regulations which reduce the quantity of new chemical compounds that can be produced, imported or used without expensive registration will restrict our ability to enter new markets or continue in existing ones. Can the Government see the danger and resist the temptation to make our business more difficult?

So, what could they do that is going to make it easier or less expensive to do more? We need willing, capable and competent people to make the products that our sales efforts have called for. How can the Government help us find them?

We shouldn’t wait around and hope for any help. We must find our own way!

In due course, the King’s envoys visited, and meetings were held in person and via the Skynet. The audits resulted in action plans that mysteriously excluded any commitment from the envoys to fulfil any obligations on the King’s behalf. Nevertheless, the negotiations over transferring stock, the new prices, and the monitoring of production against forecasts and orders progressed steadily over the next few weeks and a new contract with the brothers evolved.

The total number of products that the King required had reduced by a quarter, but the forecast sales value was much the same as before.

The brothers had felt concerned that the contract wording was going to trap them into unsustainable commitments and liabilities that would undermine its value to the business. They sent for advice from the Elfin princess on the far side of the island who had experience with these things. She suggested some alternative wording that made the envoys a bit irritable but the brothers a lot happier as the date of the changeover approached.

The brothers had a long list of matters to be addressed under the new regime. All of them needed to be communicated within the business and managed effectively according to an appropriate priority whilst delivering the same product and service that they had been doing for the last twenty years for what seemed to be no more money than they were paid before.

Whereas they once needed to talk to only two or three different people in the course of a month it seems that in future, they must talk to three or four people every week about production and another different person for every issue from label design to bottle testing, raw material specification and formulation.

“This is an investment in our future” the brothers said hopefully!

The first week of the new regime passed uneventfully as stock from the old regime was collected and the King’s representatives grappled with the need for over-labelling of cartons with the new address until new cartons and labels are approved and available.

The brothers began to settle to the new arrangements and hoped that their new contacts would learn quickly how to respond to sales by adjusting forecasts rather than asking for production in response to orders. Let us see how the first quarter goes they said!

394 words FR 46.1 FKG 13.2

We have spent some time recently in reviewing our business strategy, and in so doing we have looked at our core values using a particular model which discounts “qualifiers” such as “honesty” because who would choose someone who was not honest as a business partner or an employee?

The result is a shorter list than we had before but one that still retains the same direction and emphasis on a can-do attitude to the customer. I hope that the simplification and the greater clarity of the new list will be easier to communicate and to promote within the business.

This came to mind when my daughter told me of a recent experience when she had cause to advise someone on her team how to respond to an example of potential corrupt practice in the selection of a supplier in return for a financial or political incentive. The case was of a low commercial value and may have been entirely acceptable. My daughter quickly identified that the circumstances necessitated a particular course of action in accordance with her company procedures designed for the purpose. The potential corruption or dishonesty was caught in whistleblowing process which is designed to protect both the individual and the company by means of a third-party investigation which, depending on the evidence, might lead to a disciplinary outcome or to the expunging and complete elimination of all reference to the matter.

The original complainant, however, has no certainty that the matter will be resolved without an adverse reflection on them. The decision to engage in any form of whistleblowing requires a considerable amount of trust in the integrity of the system and the people who run it. This is true of any company or institution whether private, public, or state, as many in the NHS have learned to their cost. My daughter must also trust that the fact that the issue has been raised will not be tallied and reflected on her management of her team whatever the outcome of the third-party investigation.

This situation highlights an ongoing one of my own in which I was approached by an employee of a blue-chip new client who suggested that they could improve the prospects of further business with that client if I would commit to make them a regular supplement to their salary. The conversation, whilst carefully phrased, left me in no doubt as to the intent and to the potential significance to our business. The Bribery Act 2010 would be contravened.

I chose to delay my response until I had consulted my Management Team who impressed me with their quick and unequivocal reply that this would not be in line with our values, which at that time included “honesty.” I duly responded accordingly, and I have not heard from the individual since then. But that is not the end of the matter.

It is not the end of the matter because I have not blown the whistle, and this is unfinished business.

First perhaps a thought or two on bribery. The Bribery Act is clear: A person is guilty of a crime if he or she “offers, promises or gives a financial or other advantage to another person” intending that advantage to “induce the person to perform improperly a relevant function or activity” or to reward a person for such behaviour.

A person is guilty of this offence if he or she requests, agrees to receive, or accepts a financial or other advantage intending that, in consequence, a relevant function or activity should be performed improperly.

I remember a conversation with my father many years before the Act was passed in which he explained his belief that “the Sheik knows very well that his Defence Minister is being bribed by one contractor or another and that he, the Sheik, is paying for the bribe in the price of the armaments but that the Defence Minister is his son or his nephew and that is the way that the Sheik pays him”. It is just the way things get done in some countries. Who is to say that this is wrong?

Our policy and employee handbook covers the matter clearly but on returning to the office after receiving the approach I Googled the 2010 Act for confirmation. There is no doubt about it and our new blue-chip client publishes a global whistleblowing policy to the same effect but based on the assumption that I might be offering the bribe rather than being asked for it. Reading the policy, I find myself wondering if I was being exposed to an integrity test which my failure to “blow the whistle” has caused me to fail.

Then I wonder if to “blow the whistle” would in any way, jeopardise the on-going contractual negotiations with that same company for what, to us, is of existential significance. When is the right time to speak? Is it already too late or would a premature revelation disrupt the process and introduce unnecessary doubt and uncertainty? Where should I place my trust?

839 words FRE 45.6 FKG 13.7

There was an island populated by a tribe of agrarian people who harvested seaweed and grew vegetables, wheat and fruit crops to live on.

They employed a band of brothers who converted their seaweed into a range of fertilisers that they used for their farming.

Every year, for twenty years, the islanders sent a legate who predicted how much product they needed, and the band of brothers made it for them, and they were paid when it was made. This business wasn’t very profitable for the brothers, but it was reliable and consistent enough to support them so that they could undertake more profitable work for other customers and so to sustain and grow the business. The business with the islanders grew steadily and the brothers contributed to it in various ways as the product range evolved and supply chain problems were overcome.

Then, one day a man came to visit the band of brothers. He looked an ordinary sort of chap and he said:” Hello, I am an envoy from the new King of this island. The islanders have voted the new King into power, and I have come to tell you how the King wants your business to be conducted from now on. The King wants to transition to the new way of working by the end of June, in three months’ time.”

“Firstly, the King is based in a country a long way away and you will have to invoice him there for your sales, and we want you to change as little as possible while I explain what he needs. The King has a large number of envoys who he uses to manage the many different aspects of his wide range of business enterprises, and you will need to engage with each of them as they assess how you must change to satisfy the King’s model for your business on this island. Their word is law but to ensure that they will never betray the King they will not be in post for more than 30 months. For example, the King can’t pay you for what you make until you send it to his customers, and he can’t let you hold any of his seaweed that you need for production until you have paid for it. You must continue to make the product to the forecast that is given to you so you should continue to operate without any changes for the time being.”

The band of brothers were puzzled as to how the new rules would work and how they would be able to finance the business on these terms, so the envoy asked them to make some proposals based on the previous year’s data.

The brothers presented a pricing proposal they believed would be sustainable on the previous year’s numbers and a new stocking and payment plan for the all-important seaweed component.

At the next meeting the envoy seemed to be unhappy with the proposal but left the brothers uncertain if it was a basis for proceeding or not. The brothers tried to clarify how the King would know that there was stock available to sell to his customers if the brothers had not already sold it to the King.

The envoy explained it like this. “The King expects to operate a system of weekly and daily checks to ensure that the production operation can adjust the forecast of future requirements in alignment with the current orders and the stocks that have been made to forecast, but haven’t been paid for, so that the people in the country a long way away have a continuous oversight of the forecast, sales orders and virtual stock.” The brothers struggled to visualise what exactly this would mean in practice despite a brief illustration of two pages of a process flow chart. The envoy seemed to be frustrated at their lack of understanding and concluded:

“All of this and the unfamiliar terminology of departments, functions and organisations will be revealed to you in due course, as will the list of the products that the King wishes to be made and sold. (With the possible exception of the list of retail products that are still under discussion with another party). Meanwhile we urge you to continue to work as usual but also to accommodate all of our envoys and to submit historic data for the sales and production of the products, particularly concerning variance between sales and forecast, even though the King has had access to all of the island’s data for several months.”

The band of brothers started to be concerned that not only were their requests for terms of business in compensation for the new rules unaccepted, but the new operational processes would be more of a burden than before, and they became fearful.

They particularly feared that the new rules would lead to pressure for frequent changes in production plans in response to un-forecast changes in sales demand with all of the cost, complexity, and opportunity for error that their twenty years of experience has led them to expect.

The danger that they feared most was that not only would their business become less profitable but the new King’s demands would prejudice the fulfilment of service to other more profitable customers and so strangle the business’s opportunity for growth.

The band of brothers returned to their tents and muttered to themselves as they prepared for the following week’s visits by six envoys to audit quality systems, packaging compliance and the King’s new contract (which is yet to be tabled).

Will next week be the “darkest hour before dawn”? It will be week 5.

I apologise to anyone who has been following my blog but I seem to have let things slip in the last three years. I can hardly believe it has been so long but I guess there have a few family and business events which have needed to take priority. Our daughter is now properly married and our son and daughter in law has a second child. Both events deserve a special mention of which perhaps more detail later.

The country has endured a couple of new Prime Ministers after the clown was deposed and King Charles finally ascended the throne. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has impacted energy supplies, inflation and European artillery munition stocks. Last year, an atrocity committed against Israel has resulted in the utter devastation of Gaza and the death of thousands of innocents. We face the prospect of another contest between Presidents Biden and Trump and an almost inevitable defeat of the Tories in the UK before Christmas.

The continuous background of war and death has become the norm and we are being warned to prepare ourselves for a “war footing”. The significance of this hasn’t penetrated the public mind yet but in the interim the public is becoming acclimatised to institutional corruption, incompetence and inhumanity as perpetrated by the Police, the Post Office and the Blood Transfusion Service.

Some of these issues make our mixing and packing seem to be rather insignificant by comparison.

I spent some time reviewing the last eighteen years of mixing and packing this week. We have come a long way on many fronts and have learned a great deal, but we are still vulnerable to the loss of one of our top three customers. Profitability and delivery remain key priorities.

Day to day, we are currently still dominated by the Covid pandemic that leaves us uncertain whether everyone will turn up each day and Brexit, which seems to be causing significant price increases and many difficulties in obtaining materials and components.

Talking to my fellow manufacturing Directors, there is a weariness with all of the Covid restrictions, a barely rational enthusiasm for booking holidays and despite the obvious and vital benefits of the advances in video conferencing, there is a near desperation to be able to meet people and chat face to face.

I have experienced the unexpected dislocation of communications between our managers arising from the separated shifts and what I perceive to be the even more significant lack of what I call the “water cooler moment”. This is the vital communication lubricant in which a few seconds in passing two people transmit and receive the gems of information that can make the difference between an order completed and an order delayed, between a task done and a task unfulfilled. This is barely understood by those who believe that working from home will save them enormous overheads, those who believe that management by email edict and the ubiquitous Teams meeting will easily replace the subtleties of tone and body language that accompany the ten second greeting and “by the way – did you know?”.

I think that there is a Ph.D. thesis in there somewhere.

Meanwhile, back at the Plant, we have continued to be busy, and doubly so, with the number of mistakes and miscommunications that have resulted from the loss of vital details and missing insight. Obviously, we are trying to improve our systems, our training and our leadership on the shop-floor. I hope that we will be stronger and more resilient for the experience, as long as we can learn from it.

Like Boris, we are continuing to invest in the business and in our people. Politicians at home and abroad are positioning themselves to be in the best light when the final reckoning comes. Boris has an advantage so far, in that he backed the Astra-Zeneca vaccine and the health service has done such a good job of delivering it. How will he and the First Minister fare in the longer term?

In the wider world we have a placebo that proves to be more effective than the substance under test and the need for traffic police in space to keep Elon Musk’s satellites from crashing into NASA’s.

And the Mars rover is squeaky.

I said that Boris was compromised when the NHS saved his life from Covid. This hasn’t been thrown back at him yet as he has cunningly placed Matt Hancock in the firing line to face the anger from the NHS staff after they have been awarded a seemingly paltry 1% pay rise. The NHS is still under stress, daily deaths from Covid are over 250 and the front line staff remain at risk despite the impressive vaccination of over 14 millions of us, including my wife and I. Boris has laid out a “roadmap” to the end of lockdown and the first step, getting children back to school, comes into effect on Monday. If his luck holds and the virus doesn’t proliferate again, or the effect of the vaccinations keeps the virus in check we could be back to the pre-lockdown state by the end of June. The Government has spent a great deal of our money and needs to plan a way back from all the borrowing. The Brexit fiasco is still in the shadow of the pandemic and the Irish Sea border is still the nightmare that Mrs May said it would be.

In practical terms, we have experienced a limited amount of frustration from the new import and export documentation requirements but there have been delays and fortunately we have had the time to learn how to cope. I can also begin to see that there may be some opportunities arising for the business out of the inconvenience that some potential customers are finding when trying to deliver to the UK market from the USA via the EU. If we can do the job instead of an EU company then we win perhaps.

This week we have been particularly stretched with the usual high level of seasonal orders at the same time as we have begun the new regime with our seconded Shift Manager experiment. As if that wasn’t tricky enough we were faced with three key managers forced to self-isolate due to the contact tracing app mid week, all from the same shift. This was, and will be, extremely tough for a while yet but we are slowly making progress. On the plus side, the daylight hours are getting longer and we all feel a bit better for that.

My pre-occupation is with trying to plan and implement a serious culture change towards the adoption of a PDCA approach to everything and thereby to make fewer mistakes and avoid repeating them. There is so much to do and I find it so difficult to really engage with people when we must keep the social distance and do so much by Teams and Zoom.

On the positive side, we seem to have weathered the storm that we experienced at Christmas with the pigmented suspension product range. We now seem to be producing at an acceptable rate and in a good consistent quality. It remains for me to set up a capital project that will give us a capacity and productivity lift to exploit this excellent work by the team concerned. Then we must find a way to meet the demand that has built up due to Covid for the crematorium de-odourising powder. Our customer has four or five times the volume of orders that we would normally be required to supply and perhaps we are fortunate that the impact of the pandemic has restricted the ability to bring a key ingredient across the Atlantic. Now we must work as hard as we can to refill the stocks.

As suppliers to the agrichemical sector it is common for us to be under pressure at this time of year but while our customers’ customers are sitting in a tractor or in the open air, or stacked in a mortuary, we are trying keep socially distanced and unsure how many people will turn up each day. It is difficult to answer everyone’s question: “when can we have our stuff?”

So, having promised us five days for Christmas Boris had to face reality and reduce it to only one. A better leader would have seen and acted on this earlier and more drastically but surely we knew what were getting when we voted for him. However, he did manage to scrape us into an agreement with the EU and now we have to find out what it means.

At the factory, still working the two shifts we all had a break from Christmas Eve to Monday 4^th and as I write this, none of us became infected as a result of Boris’s weakness. In my case, family ties worldwide were strengthened by growing competence at Zooming and I spent extended periods on the sofa with the log burner in front of hours of television and box-sets. I did none of my action list during the break and justified it in terms of my personal well-being and sharing time with my long-suffering spouse who, unlike me, is forced to spend time alone at home during the shut-downs when she would prefer to socialise with her friends. This pandemic has brought home to me how different we are in this respect and that I should be more considerate.

I don’t suppose we will soon forget the events of Wednesday 6^th January in Washington. I watched the CNN reporting in a state of simultaneous amazement and puzzlement.

I was amazed to be witnessing what I was told was insurrection incited by the President of the United States. A large number of white people, many of whom were carrying backpacks and Trump flags, seemed to be clustering on and around the steps to the Capital building with a remarkably disorganised and ineffective police resistance. The CNN coverage seemed to endlessly recycle pictures of a confrontation between the crowd and some very well armoured policemen as well as the breaking and entering of some windows in the building. The commentary was earnest and appalled at the sacrilege underway but strangely the people in view seemed to be unlike rioters in conflict with security forces and much more like tourists wandering into forbidden places and wishing to record the event for their grandchildren. The Police seemed to be lacking any urgency or command and totally in contrast to the behaviour earlier in the year in the face of BLM protest. Why was this?

My puzzlement extended beyond this contrast to wonder if the Police tactics had been designed in a most un-American way to minimise any deaths amongst the invaders so as to avoid inflaming the situation and creating any martyrs to the cause. Was there collusion between the two forces? Was the conspiracy wider than the President and his brainwashed acolytes?

There were some deaths on both sides. There have been some arrests too, so far only sixty or seventy, and the ostensible objective of the invasion, the interference in the process for the confirmation of the President Elect was thwarted. In the event, the President Elect made a rousing speech and the President a strangely clockwork one and one outcome was that the President was banned from Twitter. This was itself puzzling. On the one hand a reasonable response to the President’s use of the medium for incitement and on the other an affront to the first amendment. My reaction was surprise that the most urgent and immediate response to the President’s malfeasance came not from the Government but from an un-elected commercial body. My boyhood friend Jeremy, who is now retired from journalism and lives in Atlanta says the story is far wider and deeper than Trump the mascot, so I guess that Mr Biden will have a hard time as peacemaker.

Meanwhile, what is the situation back at the factory? We realised in December that although we are surviving, a little ahead of budget, and keeping mostly on target with our orders we need to make a significant change to our production management if we are to thrive and rise to another level. We also need to reinforce our Covid security measures as the vaccinations won’t be changing the game before the Summer. There are 80,000 Covid deaths on the slate already and the new Covid mutation will infect many more before the vaccines can bring the pandemic under control. Apparently the UK Covid death-rate is the worst in the world at the moment.

The principal task this year will be to improve our leadership fundamentals: planning, direction, communication and control. If we can do this, install increased capacity for our new orders and cope with the consequences of Brexit we might achieve our objectives despite the crazy environment that surrounds us at home and abroad. Let’s focus!

Well several weeks have passed since I last expressed my thoughts. We have been fascinated to watch the election results in the US and marvel at the number of people who honestly believe the lies that Trump has propagated and forgive him for the deaths that he has caused. At home, our own clown continues to perform his high wire logical acrobatics and we are nearly through the second lockdown. The country is excited to imagine that Christmas will be normal-ish although some are afraid that Granny will die because of it. Then there is the encouraging news of vaccinations by Easter although the distance ‘tween cup and lip seems to be huge.

Meanwhile, back at the factory we have plodded on with the two shifts and managed to keep slightly ahead of budget. The deluge of enquiries for hand sanitiser has diminished and we are keeping on top of the PPE situation. We have had only one case of COVID 19 and the “Test and Trace” failed to require anyone else to self-isolate. Sadly, the one who caught it is still suffering and for a while we couldn’t see a route for a safe return to work.

Of course, we have been lucky in so many ways that the inconveniences and stress of maintaining and reassuring people about the safety of the working environment weigh small in the balance. One thing that the two-shift system has shown, however, is the importance and difficulty of maintaining adequate communications between shifts when they can’t physically meet. The handover notes are never sufficient and the speed of degradation of team working to “them and us” arguments has been striking. For me, the silver lining is that these issues have been exposed and we are in the process of remedying them with management training and extra focus on communication and the accountability of individuals for the outcomes.

In one example I’m particularly impressed with the performance of our process development guy in the lab who has carried the burden of a new product introduction for a key customer and kept a difficult project up to speed despite the communication difficulties. In another example, I was impressed to sit in on a Teams meeting to discuss the introduction of a 140 tonne run of powder blending and packing that is planned to start in the next couple of weeks.

Personally, I have managed to take two days out at a retreat in North Yorkshire, which at this time of year is populated with sheep, and gave me a chance to think about the business and my role within it. Now, I just need to be disciplined about keeping these things in focus and avoid being distracted by day to day details.  

Now we also need to focus on Brexit!