Years ago during my engineering apprenticeship, I became aware of the ‘Right First Time’ philosophy. In other words, a good Engineer will take time to consider all parts of a plan and work through them thoroughly before commencing production on the shop floor. This is to ensure that any physical work is only ever done once. It is so that an army of personnel operating expensive machinery and processing precious materials only use their time in adding value rather than producing scrap.
You may ask why this is relevant. Why right a blog about such an odd topic like thinking and pondering? Well, the reason is that, for almost three years, I have been questioning how we can manage to grow on a major scale across geographic regions by replicating a recognised process. It has without doubt been a challenge to find a procedure suitable for our type of company because customers only seem to respond to a subjective, emotive connection they have with a supplier - someone they know and trust on a personal level.
Well, the stages spent constructing puzzles and hypothetical solutions seem to have finally started paying off because in the last few weeks we have visited exhibitions across the UK, read numerous articles and interpreted countless teachings that finally conclude smaller puzzles which in turn form pieces of the solution to one big puzzle - the puzzle that has intrigued me for so long. It is like a final concept has been constructed on a grand, master scale and is finally ready to be built and developed in reality.
Even though it has taken so long and cast so much doubt in the process, I’m glad this lengthy period of physical inactivity has occurred because for the first time in years I’m brimming with a new enthusiasm. I suppose you could compare it to a game of chess where a player takes a very long time to make their move but when they do, they do it with the confidence that every move there after is planned to such a degree they are going to achieve check-mate no matter what.
