Back to the floor

As part of our celebrations of National Customer Service Week the management team have gone back to the floor.  We have been pursuing a belief that the road to true enlightenment about our business can only be achieved through a deep understanding of what really goes on, as opposed to what we think goes on from the confines of our ivory towers.  However well we believe that we know our business there is no substitute for observance and experience.  Any student of Taiichi Ohno will understand that we are holding good company.

And so, despite the slight condescension implied in the four words ‘back to the floor’ each of us spent a morning in one part of the business and an afternoon in another.  There were only two rules; you had to do it (with a good heart) and you couldn’t work in your own area.  This morning I found myself in Cestria Primary School in the heart of Chester le Street, working alongside one of the shared engineers and this afternoon I got to play with our new (and very exciting) mailing and insertion machine.  I must confess I didn’t do much work in the morning but watched and asked a lot of questions.  I was even given a tour of the Victorian school building by the teacher with responsibility for ICT who seemed to be pleased to see me there.  This afternoon though I got my hands dirty and even worked up a sweat.  I certainly earned my safety shoes.

So what have I learned from the experience?  Well, I learnt (or was I reminded?) that while we think of the business in high level and general terms, the actual work is full of minute and intricate detail and our greatest plans can founder on the rocks of reality.  A single jammed printer can bring a school to a stop for example, or there is very little money to invest in new hardware and this can make keeping up with new initiatives very difficult or buying cheap paper for a few pence less per ream can cost you dearly in lost production time.  I also learnt (or was I reminded?) that lots of people rely upon our services either to deliver their own, in the example of the school or even to pay their way using the cheques that we posted out.

Above all, it was good to spend some time amongst the very dedicated and highly skilled teams of people that work in our organisation and get back a focus on what the business is really about.  More managers should give it a go.