Article 4 of 4 in the Productivity in a green world series
by Chris Rea
Managing Director of AES Engineering Ltd group
It is a fallacy that a successful business is one that turns its workers into soulless automatons. In fact, emotion is everything.
In earlier articles I looked at “Defining a Customer,” “Training to Win”, and “Staying on Top of Technology”. However, all the ingredients for success will have limited impact without positive emotion.
So, who is responsible?
In a business that intends to win, responsibility lies with the Managing Director and then with the Board of Directors. We set the tone, and if we don’t show enthusiasm, we can hardly expect our staff to do so.
I am often asked what drives me to keep coming into the office at a time when many of my contemporaries are kicking back and enjoying life.
I enjoy running my business. I am a continuous improver, a pursuer of excellence. I love the idea of our team beating their team by doing more in the same number of hours, which is a definition of productivity.
My current ‘love child’ is Machine Sentry, which is an accessible system allowing the health of our customers’ machinery to be remotely monitored anywhere in the world and reported on via the cloud, allowing timely intervention in case of problems.
AVT Reliability Ltd. and AESSEAL® globally are uniquely positioned to be the world’s leading reliability business.
It will not happen in the time remaining to me, but it is fun aspiring growing and running the business as far and as fast as possible to achieve this goal.
Why? “Because we can.”
In my 45-year business career, There have been emotional highs and lows. Success is fuel for positive emotions and even a slight loss of momentum can reverse the virtuous cycle.
When you lose that loving feeling, it is not gone, gone, gone forever, but it takes years to get it back.
In this short series we have seen that productivity comes from knowing who you are as a business, who you want to serve, and from creating a business that is designed to be lean (productive) right from the beginning.
Improvements in productivity come from a massive investment in technology (often information technology), equipment, and most importantly, people.
Truly productive businesses are never satisfied, are not complacent, and are always self-critical, so they can find things that are capable of being improved.
Perhaps it just comes down to a business that is not hypocritical, has a purpose to serve customers, and provides internal customers with everything they need to provide the best possible service.
This series is titled “Productivity in a green world” because I strongly believe that businesses need to be productive and profitable in order to be sustainable.
Without business success there are no jobs and no well-supported communities.
It is implicit in the term “sustainable business” that this is not about making profits at any cost. I am painfully aware that the planet is in peril and that human activity, including global industry, is responsible.
The Betterworld Solutions project is about sharing knowledge on how to be successful at a lower cost to the planet. I hope that it encourages all of us to play at least a small part in the solution to the climate crisis, for the sake of our children and grandchildren.
Note: This article is the last in a series of four bite-sized articles commissioned by the Betterworld Solutions project to share information on sustainable business practices, with a special emphasis on encouraging global industry to prioritize investments that favour the environment.
The other articles were “Define a Customer”, “Train to Win”, and “Stay on Top of Technology”.
Note: AES Engineering is a global group headquartered in Rotherham in the United Kingdom that makes and sells high performance mechanical seals and provides reliability services to industry worldwide.
Our main global brands are AESSEAL® and AVT Reliability. We serve industrial sectors ranging from food and beverage to mining, oil and gas, pulp and paper, chemicals, and everything in between. Our highly engineered seals help the pumps and rotating equipment at the heart of almost all industries to work more cleanly and productively, with less harm to the environment.
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