Shop talk

There were two painful turning points in my life. The first reshaped my character; the second changed my priorities for ever. The first came when I was 11 and my brother was 12. My dad went into hospital on Christmas Eve. He never came home. We were so shocked we didn't know how to react – my mum had to coach us in how to reply when people said "sorry". She is my real hero; somehow she coped, taking cleaning jobs to hold her family together. It focused me – from that day, if I want to do something, I won't stop until I've done it. For instance, I bought a guitar for a fiver when I was 14. Within six months I was in a band and earning money teaching. My mother later remarried, bringing us a kind stepdad. An engineer, he warned me not to follow in his footsteps. So how did I end up? A five-year apprenticeship with Ferranti, HNCs in mechanical/production and electronic/electrical engineering and a budding career as a design engineer. The sun shone on me for years afterwards. Soon after I'd joined PAC, my boss asked me to make the big leap to operations management. It went well; we made profits and won awards. I'd gone from an apprentice at 16 to an MD before I was 40; I had a happy marriage and two great kids. Ironically, the second life changer also started at Christmas. My wife, Denise, fell ill with a brain tumour. She had an operation and I clung to the 20% chance of her pulling through. But she died in August at only 39. Our boy was 10 and our daughter was 13; it really showed me what is important in life. I've always been very committed to work and I suppose I've had reasonable success, but this put the whole thing in perspective – do I live to work or work to live? I left PAC six months after – I was trying to run a company and be a good dad and one day I realised I couldn't do all this stuff. I had to think what was I good at that would earn me some money? We had won a Best Factory Award and people kept asking me for advice – I thought I might as well get paid for it. I got work from people in the PAC supply chain who respected what I had done and some from The Manufacturing Institute (TMI). I did interim work, reorganising a business into value streams and improving flow. Some of it was home-based, which made juggling the two sides of my life easier. Get up early and work; look after the kids and take them to school; work in between; pick them up; feed them; and work again when they were in bed. It was lonely, but I put the pain in the box and dealt with it the best way I could. You have to focus your effort on things you can influence. The ones outside your scope just have to be borne – that lesson applies to a lot of things. Things improved when TMI asked me to come on board. I stayed until a customer – Ultraframe – asked me to join full-time to lead a radical change programme. Today, with the job done successfully, I'm back with TMI, heading a coaching and improvement team. In fact, I've been employed by them twice, an associate twice and a customer from three different organisations. Friends lent a hand when they thought I was getting over my immediate pain. Roy had been my mentor when I was an apprentice. He and his wife introduced me to a young widow called Hilary. She had twin girls of 9. We got married in 2003 on the beach at St Lucia with all our kids around us. And my first grandchild will be born this year. I am a happy man. High points? Two Best Factory Awards plus a Shingo prize. At Ultraframe my great team went from zero lean to BFA in two years. Low points? The first time I ever had to make redundancies. Best advice? Delegate to motivate. Makes you mad? Potential wasted through laziness. Better to be average with the willpower to learn than possess natural ability, but no determination. We won awards through 'average' people. Relaxing? Me, the wife, Anglesey, the dogs – and the odd glass of Chianti.