What I learned …
- From our newsletter 7 September 2011 -
“What I learned from a sportsman”
It was around the time of the 1995 Rugby World Cup that I was managing a factory that produced food for Woolworths. We made “High Risk” items. That is food for which the risk of contamination is high. Like a sandwich for instance. You assemble as sandwich by hand. Whatever is on your hand, on the table or on the equipment, will land up in the sandwich. And that is what the customer will eat.
The standards that Woolworths set in this factory were unheard of for the ordinary citizen. You could send these sandwiches with an astronaut to the space station and you would be 100% sure it would be safe and the astronaut would not get sick, not need a doctor and would eat a healthy product.
I had just ordinary tools to work with. A few pieces of equipment, yes. But mainly workers from the townships and the squatter camps around us. Yes – people who have probably never bought any food from Woolworths before. Many were uneducated. Many did not understand much about hygiene.
Woolworths told us where we had to be. No-one told me how to get there.
So I asked Kitch Cristy. I was fascinated by the fact that this man could coach a team like our Boks to beat the best in the world. Not only did they win the World Cup, they had an unbeaten run of 14 games between 1994 and 1996. How do you coach people to go beyond themselves – day after day? I realised that my job would be more of a coaching and leadership job than a management job.
In the quiet, desperate (and sometimes very lonely) dead-end moments I would contact Kitch. What would you do? Fire them? Scream at them? Threaten them? Pay more, pay less? Lead them? How? How would you bring out the best in them? And more than the best – beyond best?
Well, I am not Kitch and it was not easy for me. When you are tired and overworked, the worst comes easily. The tempers, the screams and shouts. Leadership needs calm and that was not the natural way the water would flow with me. It took a few years and a lot of discussions with Kitch. Many times he would ask me “And now do you really think that would bring out the best in them?”
It was around my last days at this factory that I was invited to address a Pan-Africa symposium of Food Technologists. The topic of my address – “First World Standards under Third World Conditions.” Just before the symposium we had our annual review with Woolworths. One of the factors they looked at was our “Customer Complaint Ratio”. We have received 1 complaint for every 600,000 products manufactured.
By this time we have had many visits from the high-brass at Woolworths. They came to see how we did it. They would bring their colleagues from Marks & Spencers in the UK to come to look at our factory. Marks & Spencers would in turn bring some of their high-tech suppliers to see how a low-tech factory in Africa can achieve those standards. (Some of these UK suppliers would manufacture upwards of a million sandwiches per day.)
They all come to look. We were proud…so very proud. In our own way we knew we were world champions. Ordinary people, ordinary jobs, ordinary lives. World champions.
You see – the most amazing thing is – I have never met Kitch Cristie in person. I have never even spoken a real word with the man. All our discussions over the years were imaginary.
What I learned was this:
Life can be confusing and desperate. If you can become really quiet and dig inside yourself you will often find the answer. In most cases in life we know what to do. We know what is wrong and we know what is right. And our limits are way beyond the ordinary.
