Come Together - Right Now
“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”
So said Henry Ford about team work, and he be described as successful in business!
At Enigin we realise the importance of team work, it is a vital element of our success as a quality energy saving business.
As a globally operating company we also realise the importance of teaming up with distributors - hence we have a close knit team at Enigin PLC head quarters and a looser team working towards success around the world.
We also encourage Enigin Distributors to build up their own close knit team - again this is a critical success factor for their own energy saving business.
As Henry Ford stated, from experience, at the beginning it is vital to “come together” - through team work a common direction and goal can be set, with everyone pulling in the same direction. Without that you are floundering and soon everything will fall apart.
But how do you come together? Communication and clearly defined roles for each member.
Now the “boss” - the entrepreneur who sets up his Enigin Distributorship - may feel he can crack the whip and HIS team will head off in his direction, but if he is not careful he will face rebellion and mutiny if he is too authoritarian, as it will not lead to a “coming together.
To illustrate this reference to an airliner can be useful. A plane flies from London to San Francisco, a regular well traveled route. Does it get their automatically? No - a pilot has to fly the aircraft to its destination, we accept that.
But is it only the pilot who achieves the successful flight? Again - no. On a modern aircraft he will have assistance galore! The second pilot, a navigator, engineer maybe a communications officer are there on the flight deck.
That is not all - his goal is to reach his destination, in this case San Francisco, can he do that with the team we have listed - yes but his ultimate aim is greater than his destination. He is also charged with transporting a plane load of passengers - people like you and me, all who are a bit squashy and squidgy when it comes to crash landings. So he has to get us there safely and unharmed, and in fact in comfort.
To achieve this goal apart from his close knit technical team on the flight deck he needs the cabin attendant team to care for the needs of the passengers on a 13 hour, 5,371 mile flight. That’s a long time and way and they require food, drink and entertaining - all this is part of the captain’s responsibility.
He needs his team to come together to achieve their goal in each aspect and he needs ot be able to delegate and allow his team members to operate to fulfill their roles.
Hence policies and processes are put in place early on to allow the everything to run reasonably seamlessly - but first everyone needs to come together to define who is doing what.
On a plane they do not meet for every trip as they have well defined areas of responsibilities. Hence we do not find that the pilot is pouring your drink as they have decided just before take off at a meeting that the stewardess is going to fly this time.
By the same token, the Captain, the leader and the one with ultimate responsibility on the flight does not need to sample recipes or check the temperature of the white wine - meanwhile cabin staff are not analyzing the engine operation data.
They work together to produce the desired effect, of landing the passengers safely and comfortably in San Francisco.
They would fail is they did not come together first, if the captain decided he had to rule on everything, or was left to, the rest of the crew would not extend themselves if they were not dignified with an input and say on their duties or how others work impacted on them - soon everything would break down and the team wouldn’t care, because they are not a team, just a bunch of individuals.
By coming together and sorting everything out and with good communication everyone will pull together - there will be hiccups but a strong team spirit overcomes those more difficult occasions.
So like we do at Enigin, build your team but make sure you “come together” - the boss will have the ultimate decision on matters - but he needs to remember he doesn’t know it all nor can he do it all, he needs his team for success.
So “come together” but it is just the beginning - in the next article on this blog we will consider the next part of Ford’s quote “Keeping together is progress”
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