We are still packing in the warehouse and slowly reinstating the processing areas in the factory. The new roof is being installed but is stopped for Christmas. Fortunately the forecast gales were not a problem and there is no snow to worry about yet.

There is netting under the roof and everyone underneath it must wear a hard hat. Production of the gloopy stuff is beginning to catch up and we should be back on target by the end of January. The dry product processing is up to date, we have made two new products and we have plenty of work in hand for packing in the New Year.

I expect that the roof will be completed by the end of January but the final reinstatement of all the the building functions will take us until late March.

Meanwhile we have unexpectedly high forecast demands for some products and some potentially high volume new orders in the pipeline. So plenty of work to look forward to if only we could raise the productivity where we are working in less than ideal conditions. At least we have everyone’s cooperation working in the cold at the moment.

We also need to catch up with our strategic thinking as we will soon be in the thick of our busiest period which not good for that sort of thing. We still need to fill a significant sales gap and to identify where we should be looking for new orders. The strategy should also focus on the new areas for added value in the product design at the front end and innovative delivery at the back end. Both areas are potentially rich in opportunities to tell a story but are also minefields of additional complexity so planning a way through to profitable growth will be tricky.

We have something to learn from all of our clients although it is sometimes difficult to see the wood for the trees. Should we drop some of the crazy ones or teach them to behave differently (less expensively)? One way is to invoice them for their expensive behaviour: i.e. we give them what they ask for and charge them for it. However, if they don’t understand that it is their behaviour that is adding the cost they will think that it is our failure or incompetence which is the cause and so we eventually lose the business and our reputation. The most simple example is one in which the client specifies which items that he wants to be packed into one of his boxes and when we advise that they won’t fit we go through several iterations until eventually the job is packed. This involves a considerable wasted time for a number of people, including the client, until he can be persuaded that we can be trusted to optimise the use of his boxes. It is what we do after all:”pack stuff”. This takes us back to some fundamentals: “trust” in people to do the right thing and “understanding” of what is the right thing and then links us to the strategy thing.