Chapter 15

Work 1 - Moving On Up   1981 – 1997

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - career, colleagues and bosses.

Thirty-six years.  The same commute, car or bike, just 10km out through Downend and Frampton, over the railway bridge in Yate, turn left onto the factory site. The same factory entrance, the same driveway, the same buildings, the same products.  It really doesn’t sound like a particularly exciting career, hardly something to keep an ambitious business professional from searching elsewhere for new challenges, wider opportunities and higher rewards.

Somehow, something, someone, sometime conspired to create circumstances that anchored him in place.  Maybe another trip back through the decades will identify the influences, the decision points, the highs and lows, and the people, and shed a light on the reasons he stayed put.  Why were the factory gates he finally drove out of in January 2018 the same ones he drove into in through for the first time in May 1981?

This could be a rather long tale so let’s do as my English teachers often suggested and break it up into digestible parts:

Moving On Up         - The Beginning

Life at the Top        - The Middle

Controlled Descent   - The End

Moving On Up 1981 to 1997

It nearly didn’t even get started.

There weren’t too many choices available for those of us on the TI (Tube Investments) Group graduate intake that year.  Recruited as part of the university milk round I’d joined TI the previous autumn on £4,500 pa and spent the time until Christmas at college in Birmingham gaining some rudimentary business and manufacturing education.  Looking back it was a high-quality induction that ranged from hands-on experience in workshops and foundries, through team-building skills in the Welsh mountains, to classroom explanations of law, finance and marketing.

After Christmas we were deployed into training placements at the various factories the Group owned around the country.  For me there was the possibility of joining the Personnel Dept. at British Aluminium, based in the north of Scotland; the Accounts Dept. at Raleigh in Nottingham; or the Purchasing & Supply Team at Russell Hobbs near Stoke-on-Trent.  I didn’t fancy the Scottish Highlands, or the prospect of more study and exams that a career in Finance required, so opted for the kettle manufacturer.  In theory after this three-month placement we’d be ready to drop into ‘proper job’ vacancies as they cropped up around the Group.

The problem was, this was 1981.  Maggie Thatcher's monetary policies were beginning to bite and unemployment was soaring, racing past 3 million.  UB40 were on the radio with ‘One in Ten’ but the reality was worse as factory lay-offs drove the numbers up to one in eight and the funding for social security safety-nets was cut leaving gaping holes for the have-nots to tumble through.

Desert Island Discs

UB40  One in Ten

‘I am the one in ten, a number on a list

I am the one in ten, even though I don't exist

Nobody knows me but I'm always there

A statistic, a reminder of a world that doesn't care

My arms enfold the dole queue, malnutrition dulls my hair

My eyes are black and lifeless with an underprivileged stare

I'm the beggar on the corner will no-one spare a dime?

I'm the child that never learns to read 'cause no-one spared the time

I'm the murderer and the victim the license with the gun

I'm a sad and bruised old lady in an ally in a slum

I'm a middle aged businessman with chronic heart disease

I'm another teenage suicide in a street that has no trees

I’m a starving third world mother, a refugee without a home

I'm a house wife hooked on Valium, I’m a pensioner alone

I'm a cancer ridden spectre covering the earth

I'm another hungry baby, I’m an accident of birth’

This was written forty-two years ago, 31 of them under the Conservatives - how far have we moved on?  How far have we gone backwards even?

We were concerned, but luckily TI were protective of their latest graduate intake and pressure from HQ ensured we would eventually be matched to possible roles.  This of course depended on getting through the interview with your new potential boss.

In April I was told to head for an interview at the Bristol factory where a role in the Supply Dept. had cropped up due to an internal promotion.  I had no real knowledge of Bristol and it seemed some distance from my comfortable home territory of the Midlands and North.  Both Bristol football teams were in the lower divisions, there was no Test Match ground and I couldn’t even name a Bristol band.  On the other hand it was a lot closer to the surf beaches of north Devon and Cornwall.

‘There’s supposed to be a good theatre scene,’ was Na’s comment as we drove down for my interview.  She was taking the chance for a break from Finals revision and the plan was I’d drop her in the centre for a few hours whilst I drove on to the factory in Yate.  I’d massively miscalculated the journey time.  We crawled from the M5 junction along the A38 through Filton and down the Gloucester Road and I was already late by the time I’d dropped her off and was heading out Yate-wards through Fishponds: my first time on this road that would become so familiar.  I was actually at least an hour late and must have made up some excuse about an incident on the motorway.  Not exactly a good first impression on Dennis Arney, the Purchasing and Supply Manager, and I was further unsettled as he outlined the role.  It sounded daunting: responsibility for £1m of stock, scheduling and expediting the materials from the suppliers, and a team of three to manage.

The Chief Buyer took me on a factory tour during which he divulged that ideally they’d have looked externally for someone with more experience but there was a ban on recruitment so they’d now got the chance to see what these ‘corporate graduates’ were made of.  He added to my doubts as we walked through the towering racks of parts in the warehouse.

'This could  all be yours.  All you do need to do is keep everything moving.'

1981 - 1983  Material Controller

They didn’t have much choice, and neither did I, so at the beginning of May I joined TI Jackson at Yate as the Material Controller on £5,500.  In those days Personnel knew how to make new graduates feel wanted.  I didn’t yet own a car so I was met at Temple Meads on the Sunday afternoon by a driver and they put me up for a fortnight in a charming guest house in the nearby village of Old Sodbury.  In the morning I cadged a lift with another resident and walked through the factory gate just before 9.00am.

Except I didn’t.  The gate was being picketed and none of the management or staff were crossing the line.  Already a few delivery lorries were backing up.  I joined the crowd milling in the car park listening to the voices.

‘More talk of job-cuts…’

‘Overtime’s been cancelled…’

‘Closed by Christmas…’

Someone in the Department spotted me. ‘Come on.  The Boss is having us round to his house till this blows over.’ And so my first morning was spent drinking coffee in Dennis Arney’s lounge, listening to my new colleague’s pessimistic forecasts of our likely future.

I had joined a factory in peril, battling for survival in an industrial landscape increasingly littered with casualties as demand in the economy fell off a cliff.  The unions tried to fight but walkouts and bans ultimately weakened their position and, as the Government tightened strike and picketing legislation, they had to adopt more defensive strategies.  A few weeks later, HQ would announce a radical plan for the factory as a last ditch attempt to keep it open.  Sell off a third of the sprawling site to a housing developer, cut the workforce from 2,000 to 1,000, and eliminate some of the product ranges. The break-even was 2,500 tumble dryers a week; if that didn’t work out within a year, it would be curtains for the site.

(Note - 35 years later we could produce 5,000 dryers a day, 25,000 a week)

A difficult environment to find your feet, uncomfortable in the knowledge you’re not on the redundancy list, whilst other faces disappeared, production lines were dismantled and offices re-laid to accommodate fewer desks.

I missed three weeks of the re-organisation turmoil having previously booked a USA holiday with Na.  Flying back from Chicago, we hired a car to travel up to Nottingham, pick up a load of stuff, and using the family Ford Escort I’d recently ‘bought’ off Dad, we travelled from back to Bristol listening to Test Match Special.   Headingly 1981 and Botham was fighting his amazing rearguard action against the Australians.  Na was left sorting out the decrepit flat in Cleeve Wood I had found for us whilst I headed back to work where the Boss had brought in a radio and kept us all posted as Willis tore through their star-studded batting to seal the most unlikely of victories.

I was lucky.  Most people were helpful, taking time to explain what I was supposed to be doing.  Week by week I became more familiar with the routines, the systems, the components, the people.  The traditions and behaviours of the time were evident everywhere:  managers ran their departments like fiefdoms, each with a secretary that fiercely guarded access to their lord and turned a blind eye to any early departures to the golf course or late returns from lunch with a supplier.

Foremen ruled the shop floor, identifiable in their white coats and coloured collars: red for production, blue for quality, green for technical and engineering.  Like the NCOs in the army, these were the characters you needed on your side; they could help or hinder and a smart-arsed young graduate could easily be toyed with.  I wasn’t comfortable, finding some of them intimidating, but tried to make the effort, listening to their grumbles, riding along with the piss-takes, and trying to spot the little pearls of wisdom that they’d teasingly drop when the mood took them.

Whilst the men might be the ones with the authority, it was the women who actually controlled the smooth functioning of an office.  From tea-breaks to Christmas parties, stationery to seating-plans, alliances or gossip, it was vital that the new boy went with the flow rather than abruptly trying to change the dynamics.  Fortunately, I wasn’t confident enough to jump in with both feet and didn’t ruffle any feathers, so ultimately benefited as the office slowly started to acknowledge my junior management credentials. 

I had a mentor.  Steve Blackledge had been my predecessor before taking on a project leader role to introduce a whole new manufacturing system to the factory.  A graduate of Bristol Poly’, he was something of a maverick, blending a brilliant mind, strong socialist politics, a great grasp of manufacturing concepts, and a driven work ethic with the ability to comfortably discuss anything with either senior directors or shop-floor workers. He spent hours explaining to me, often over a beer after work, the challenges that a materials team would encounter and shared the techniques that would enable a switched-on materials guy to drive efficiencies through the business and ultimately onto the profit line.  Good results would ensure the appreciation of both the finance and production managers and their teams, securing allies in the hurly-burly of factory politics.

Steve had a vested interest in cultivating me.  A successful project implementation required some disciples to force through the necessary cultural changes and my role was pivotal.  Pens, paper and a computer that still required punch-cards were being replaced with the latest HP 3000 mainframe manufacturing system.  TV Monitors appeared on desks and pages of green-tinged computer print-outs would arrive from the Print Room on a regular basis.  Delivery schedules for suppliers and production plans for the back shops and assembly lines were suddenly being generated automatically.  Outstanding deliveries were flagged for expediting and components could be tracked around the factory.  Brilliant and cutting-edge.  All good in theory but it required one vital ingredient.  Trust.

Trust the data.  Trust the system.  Trust the project team. Trust the training.  Trust Steve.  Trust me. 

‘Don’t second guess.  Throw away that notebook list.  Don’t hide behind piles of safety stock.  I know you’ve done it that way for years.  We’ll back you if there’s an issue.’

We threw long hours at it, learning as we went, changing screen layouts and reports, and creating training manuals on the run.  A chaotic ‘go-live' with the doubters smirking in the wings evolved within a few weeks into something that clearly worked if people behaved and signed up to the process.  Steve led, bashing down obstacles and opponents by sheer strength of conviction, and I followed as a dutiful lieutenant, reinforcing the message, tackling the detail, training, reassuring.

We were HP’s first UK installation of the both software and hardware, receiving superb support from their teams in Bracknell and the States.  It had also been a big gamble by TI’s Domestic Appliance Group to let the Yate factory go first, particularly with a potential axe dangling over the site’s future.  When our ‘big-brother’ factory, Creda, near Stoke-on-Trent, pontificated nervously about launching first, Steve and his boss, John Taylor, the Business Systems Manager at Yate, both had the vision and the confidence to jump in and carry it off.  The cost and headcount reductions, the new system, the greater efficiencies and lower inventories all combined with an order book that, at least hadn’t fallen any further, to ensure the site met its break-even numbers for the year.

I’d benefited from the crash course.  Most people now knew of me.  I’d got a far better understanding of the factory and I was now something of an ‘expert’ on the system.  Additionally I’d been forced to deal with any reservations or nerves I had about dealing with people I didn’t know.  Some key players in the ranks seemed happy to allow me to pick up on the trust we’d built and my little network of reliable individuals steadily grew.  Doreen Campbell, Louise Gauntlet, and Meg Thompson were just three of an extended team that would be part of my set-up for another decade or more.  Dennis, the boss, seemed content with my performance.  He was a commercial guy at heart, happy to spend his time in discussion with his network of supplier contacts and his team of buyers, leaving the technical aspects of material control to me.  He’d even funded a four week training programme early in 1982 at St Helen’s College to enable me to gain a basic Chartership in The Institute of Purchasing and Supply.

It seemed like there might be a future for another year or two in this role.

In contrast it seemed like there was no future in my relationship with Na.  Whilst I was full-on with the challenges of the factory, learning new stuff every day, she was trying to find a worthwhile job or direction, waiting in our rather pokey bedsit for me to get home at some point during the evening.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t really pick up on the frustrations and doubts and, as related in another chapter, she decided to head off to London in search of something more rewarding.  We were on-off for a few months but by June ’82 it was definitely all-off.  I felt lost for a while and work provided a crutch as I started to get my head around a social-life rebuild.

I continued to grow into the role though not without some balls-ups.  The factory was stopped for half a day in early ’83 after I’d opted to use air transport to get a shipment of parts from northern Italy rather than using a 48-hour road service.

'It might look quicker on paper, but this is Italy we’re talking about!’ was the advice.  ‘There’s bound to be a problem.’

‘It’ll be alright. I’ve got two days to play with,’ was my over-confident response.  

I wasn’t so comfortable the following morning.  ‘Fog in the Po Valley.  All flights delayed.’ It was going to be tight.  Should I alert the senior management or keep my nerve?  Compromising, I told Dennis, who I suspect didn’t want criticisms or inquests any earlier than absolutely necessary and opted to cross fingers and hope for the best.  I phoned the shipping agent in the morning (remember this is still a long time before ‘checking on the internet’). 

'Still stuck.  Fog’s cleared but now there’s a strike!’

‘Shit!  We won’t get through tomorrow!’

We didn’t.  Stopping production for a component is a cardinal sin.  Several hundred people going home early, grumbling about lost bonuses; Finance watching the costs going up and the overhead recoveries going down, and Sales and Distribution fobbing-off customers or changing deliveries.  It’s not pretty and it hurts.  No-one outside the department cares about your excuses.  Fortunately Dennis didn’t hang me out to dry when we reported to Bert Pugsley, the Works Director, to explain the circumstances.  I got away with a ‘learn from the experience' lecture although the office would regularly quip ‘Fog in the Po Valley' whenever they wanted to wind me up.

By spring of 1983 it was time to make my mind up on something that had been sitting in the background as an option for several years.  Should I pack work in for a year and go travelling?  I was more settled in Bristol.  The Canoe Club was providing social and outdoor options and, through one of the buyers, Jerry Arnold, I was getting to know the music and pub scene.  I’d even managed to run the Kingswood Marathon without any real training.  At work I was regarded as someone with potential and, although no new role had been dangled, I felt that they were looking after me, at least as much as any business could as the economy continued to bounce across the desolate, battered, monetarist landscape.  I confided in Steve who had just accepted an exciting new job with pharmaceutical giant GSK in London. (When I last looked a few years ago, he’d clearly climbed the ladder and had been on their Main Board for a couple of decades.)  His view was clear. ‘Why not? You’ve no ties.  You’ll easily find something when you return.’  Dad & Mavis weren’t so sure but hid it well.  Friends were mildly impressed; it wasn’t the norm for our generation and most people still associated travelling with either the hippy trail to Kathmandu or bumming on an Australia beach.  The term ‘gap-year’ hadn’t been invented and sabbaticals only applied to academics.

Dennis didn’t get it.  Why risk a career?  He marched me off to see Warren Bradley, the Personnel Director, and Bert Pugsley.  They were more balanced and helped steer me through the pros and cons.  A week or two later it was a done deal.  I’d bought the tickets, the rucksack and the sleeping bag. Most work colleagues suspected I was crazy, especially when they’d worked out where Nepal was, but it didn’t stop them giving me a great send-off.   Warren suggested I stay in touch and give him a call when I eventually returned but Dennis was still shaking his head.  He moved Jerry Arnold into my hot seat, although looking back I’m not sure that Jerry really appreciated the opportunity.

‘Let’s Dance’ by Bowie and Paul Young’s version of ‘Wherever I Lay My Hat’ were a couple of the tracks providing a backdrop to the round of farewells as I cashed in my small pension, sold the Escort, cancelled my flat rental and hopped on the train to London.  I left behind the New Wave fashions and hairstyles of Duran Duran, Culture Club and Banarama, a girl called Sue I was quite keen on and arrived ten hours later in a continent of dhotis and saris.

Dennis Arney    Score 5/10.

Happier on the golf course or enjoying a business lunch he epitomised the seventies manager.  He recognised the need for new systems and methods but had no desire to pick them up himself preferring to leave it to his team.  I was never 100% sure of his integrity, but he always seemed straight with me, supporting my training and development.  It seemed rather unfair that, when he was chopped as part of an inter-company restructure 10 years later,  I absorbed what was left of his department and received a small pay rise as reward for my additional responsibilities.

1984 - 1988   Business Systems Analyst

His secretary put me through.

‘Er, hello, Mr Bradley.  It’s Peter Sheath here.  I’m back in the UK and was wondering if you have any suitable jobs going at the factory?’

A fortnight later and I’d walked back through the gates, gratefully accepting the chance to implement and improve the factory systems as an Analyst in John Taylor’s Business Systems Department.  Lucky again….They were even paying me a decent salary of £8,500 pa so I splashed out on a sporty red Ford Fiesta and became a lodger in Jerry Arnold’s terraced house in Fishponds.

It was different.  Without the day-to-day pressure of keeping things flowing along the supply lines there was time to think, research, learn, develop and tweak.  Looming projects included a major implementation of the accounting systems providing another chance to renew acquaintances with the Hewlett Packard teams and expand my understanding of the financial flows of the business.  We spent weeks adapting the basic package to our specific requirements, drafting the manuals and training the users.

Apart from during the hurly-burly of project launches, it was a relaxed environment.  John had created a small but effective team of smart programmers and analysts whom he constantly challenged to find slicker ways of operating the business.  He strongly held the view that the role of the department was to deliver improvement solutions to the operational teams rather than just being responsible for implementing and supporting the systems the users requested.  Put another way, he thought he knew better than most of the managers what they actually needed.  There was some justification for this.  He read widely on new developments, he attended conferences, and visited ‘best practice’ sites.  Not having hard measurables to defend each month, he could afford to take a secular, broad view across all the other departments.  Without saying it openly he clearly doubted if the current range of managers had the vision, motivation or risk-attitude to step-change out of their current ways and took it upon himself to lead the charge into the future.  This attitude sometimes irritated a few of his colleagues, but they usually, grudgingly acknowledged he was heading in the right direction.

On a personal level I got along well with John.  He didn’t need the usual hierarchical boundaries to maintain his status.  The team would regularly eat out together and sometimes spend ages chatting about football or other non-work related topics.  An exceptional sportsman until recent arthritis had curtailed his football and tennis in his early fifties, he could still comfortably beat any of us at squash, barely needing to stray from his commanding central position in the court.  With Dad being in Egypt I sometimes turned to him for advice on things like buying a car or what to look out for in the house-buying process.

For me it was an enjoyable period.  Outside of work things were going well with Sue.  We were having a great time with the Activities Club, having little to worry about as we filled our time with holidays, weekends-away and parties.  At the factory I was delivering a number of middling-level improvements whilst simultaneously learning as much I could about new Japanese production methods and Just-In-Time systems.  We were priming ourselves for the next step and sowing the seeds to move the manufacturing forward.

However things were beginning to stall.  The country was still in the grip of industrial recession and most households still had little money.  Low consumer demand ensured that factories across the country were continuously fighting survival battles whilst government policies aggressively targeted the dockyards, mines and steelworks.  Bristol, with its strong defence, aerospace and growing financial industries, was cushioned, many of its inhabitants seemingly indifferent to the difficulties faced in some other regions.  However, friends in Nottingham, Birmingham and other Midland or Northern locations bore witness to the jobs carnage throughout most of the Eighties.

Desert Island Discs - 

A song for the times.  You needed to be there to see, hear and feel it.  I was a fortunate 26 year-old having to decide who of my staff to make redundant.  Phil, the guy with three teenage daughters, or Winnie, the older lady who lost her husband last year? 

Don’t Give Up   - Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush

In this proud land we grew up strong, we were wanted all along

I was taught to fight, taught to win, I never thought I could fail

No fight left or so it seems, I am a man whose dreams have all deserted

I've changed my name, I've changed my face, but no one wants you when you lose

Don't give up 'cause you have friends

Don't give up:   You're not beaten yet

Don't give up   I know you can make it good

Though I saw it all around, never thought I could be affected

Thought that we'd be the last to go, it is so strange the way things turn

Drove the night toward my home, the place that I was born, on the lakeside

As daylight broke, I saw the earth; the trees had burned down to the ground

Don't give up, you still have us

Don't give up   We don't need much of anything

Don't give up   Rest your head

You worry too much   It's going to be alright

When times get rough you can fall back on us

Don't give up   Please don't give up

'Got to walk out of here, I can't take anymore

Going to stand on that bridge,   keep my eyes down below

Whatever may come and whatever may go

That rivers flowing, that rivers flowing

Moved on to another town, tried hard to settle down

For every job, so many men, so many men no-one needs

Don't give up   'Cause you have friends

Don't give up   you're not the only one

Don't give up   No reason to be ashamed

Don't give up   you still have us

Don't give up now we're proud of who you are

Don't give up   you know it's never been easy

Don't give up   'Cause I believe there's a place

There's a place where we belong

Eventually there were some glimmers of hope: it had taken nearly eight years but inflation finally seemed under control; the City was increasingly turning into an economic engine; small tech firms were emerging and the lower exchange rate and costs were helping boost tourism and service industries.  It was massively skewed towards the south-east, but as Chancellor Nigel Lawson presided over a couple of ’boom’ budgets at the end of the decade, it seemed like the worst might be over.

TI Appliances Group had suffered and rationalised their portfolio. The factories making New World cookers, Sunhouse electric fires, Gloworm gas fires and Parkway boilers were either sold or closed.  We were left untouched, although our big sister, Creda, started to eye us as potential acquisition material and increasingly tried to influence our operational direction.  The effect of the wider economic uncertainty and the unwanted focus from Creda put some of the management team into a negative, defensive, keep your head down mind-set.  It frustrated John and his team as we trod water for nearly a year trying to persuade other managers to bite the bullet and support the next step forward.  John needed an ally on the senior team so in the background he was lobbying Bert and Ken Foxall, the Works Manager, to look for an opportunity to promote me.

I wasn’t desperately ambitious but was approaching the point where something needed to change to keep me enthused.  There’d been a couple of opportunities elsewhere in the Group over the previous year or two but I’d turned them down as the roles were repeating projects I’d already experienced, plus I was enjoying life too much in Bristol and didn’t want to threaten my relationship with Sue.  One Director who had offered me a Project Leader job at Gloworm in Belper ended up in prison a year later for embezzlement so that might have been interesting working for him until he was exposed.

A fortnight after Sue and I were married, the chance came.  The Distribution Manager left to join a local haulage company: this allowed Bert to shift the rather dour, traditional Production Control Manager into the vacancy and give me the chance to manage his department. 

‘Flippin’ heck!’  To the soundtrack of The Edge’s distinctive guitar on U2’s Joshua Tree or the harsher voice of Simple Minds Jim Kerr on Street Fighting Years, 1988 was turning out to be a memorable year.

New house, new wife and now, a new job!

John Taylor   Score 7/10.

Almost a father-like figure he demonstrated a style that delegated and allowed flexibility and creativity from his loosely-managed team.  Not afraid to challenge the status-quo, he continually sought out opportunities to move the business forward, often ruffling feathers along the way.  He nurtured me and helped facilitate my promotion but was an increasing nuisance to his nominal boss of Group Systems, based at the Creda site.  His pushy attempts to move the operation ahead were at odds with the steadier, more structured Group approach, and at the first opportunity for re-organisation, they decided to rid themselves of a relatively expensive manager and fully merged the Yate systems team into the control of the big sister.  Needing another ten years to fund his retirement he moved into consultancy and, to my regret, I’ve completely lost touch with him.

1988 - 1997   Production Control Manager to Materials Manager

Nervous, but quietly confident I moved back into the world of operations with its associated hour- by-hour pressures, problems and personalities.  I knew some of the team from supporting the manufacturing systems, but now I was actually responsible for an office staff of six, plus a warehouse team of 20, including 10 forklift drivers.  In addition, there were half-a-dozen ‘progress-chasers’ whose role was to spot and resolve potential shortages and keep parts flowing around the plant.

I’d a second-in-command ‘Progress Manager’ called Kevin Gard, a one-armed energetic ‘doer' who didn’t appear to resent a 28 year-old being appointed over him, and a couple of supervisors  overseeing the day-to-day control of the teams.  Not sure what they all thought when I scooted off to Kashmir for four weeks in September on a previously booked holiday! (In Systems you could get away with that due to the nature of project work, but back in Operations I would be largely constrained around factory shutdowns).  By the end of the year I was bedding in.  The practical side was easier; tightening procedures, jettisoning some old methods, insisting on adherence to the systems, adapting stores layouts.  The challenge was with people.  How to deal with an office of women?  Supervisors nearing retirement, cautious about change?  Storekeepers and drivers ranging from illiterate to alcoholic, workhorses to skivers, old hands to young lads with potential?

Bert sent me to night-school.  He was a fan of Dale Carnegie methods and I spent three months being indoctrinated in ‘How to win friends and influence people.’  I didn’t particularly enjoy it but there’s little doubt it helped. The weekly course requirement for a speech or presentation provided a useful mix of techniques and instilled a confidence for future occasions.

Bit by bit it seemed like I was getting the hang of it.  One or two of the team retired, one or two were sacked, one or two were promoted, and most were trained, and re-trained again if necessary.  Team meetings, praise or discipline, a shoulder for a teary-eyed office clerk, trying to be calm, trying not to lose it when things went wrong.

Something called Lotus-123 had appeared on the scene and a new word, ‘spreadsheet’, entered the vocabulary.  I was a keen pioneer and managed to acquire use of one of the few ‘desk-top’ computers it would run on.  With a colleague up at the Creda site where the Sales and Marketing teams were based, we put together a sheet that allowed a much easier assessment of the sales, forecast, stock and production situation.  It saved us hours in admin time, was easier for Doreen, the Production Planner, to interpret, and resulted in genuine productivity across the process.

I enjoyed the interface with the Marketing and Commercial people and it helped us build on our reputation as a flexible factory, responsive to their ever-changing requirements. The export side was growing quickly and we’d often host visits from French, Norwegian or Spanish customers.  

I trod carefully with my fellow senior managers, most of whom were at least a couple of decades older. Bert held a daily meeting to run through the previous day’s performance and highlight any issues for the day; sometimes the arrows would fly so it was best to be well prepped, completely honest, or quickly form a temporary alliance.  Each Friday lunch there was a more low-key management meeting in the grandly-named, but rather pokey, old Directors’ dining room.  Over sandwiches, the discussion was supposed to be more strategic, but would invariably drift to the ongoing uncertainty about the site’s future.

TI wanted ‘out' from domestic appliances and for a year we drifted in a slack water, wafted back and forth by rumours.  Eventually a deal was struck, and overnight we transferred to GEC, the huge electronics conglomerate owned and managed with a ruthless attention to detail by Lord Weinstock.  Already in his appliance stable were three Hotpoint factories and it was clear from the outset that they considered themselves the top dogs.  Head Office was moved to Peterborough; senior heads rolled at Creda, and we steadily adopted GEC/Hotpoint reporting structures and timescales.  The big question was, how would the factories be rationalised?  There was some duplication with the same products being made in two factories so it made sense to focus the products into individual factories. At Yate we were nervous that the arrogant Hotpoint approach wouldn’t allow us a fair assessment.

I wasn’t senior enough to be involved in the analysis, just providing background data on costs, manpower and so on, to the Hotpoint assessors.  Our dryer was a better design and our range was broader, but undoubtedly we could be absorbed into another larger site if the cost equation was attractive. It wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last, but we had an ace card to play.  We were cheap to run and our costs were low because we paid ourselves less than all the other sites.  Transferring our operation to a more expensive site would result in an ‘on-cost’ that would roll on each year into the future and significantly out-weigh any short-term closure and relocation benefits.  Our unions were also behaving, smart enough to see the bigger picture, and we were able to present an image of a relatively efficient, relatively harmonious site.  The numbers don’t lie and even a parochial Hotpoint Board couldn’t avoid deciding in our favour.  Over the next year, their Llandudno factory was closed and their volume of dryers was transferred to Yate, along with the dryer motor production from the Peterborough site.  We breathed a big sigh of relief and got on with the not inconsiderable challenge of integrating the extra production.

Shortly afterwards I reached another crossroads decision.  Over an evening meal, the Service Director offered me the position of Spares Manager based at the Creda site.  It was a higher profile role but would have meant relocation and Sue and I had no real desire to move.  To be honest I don’t know why he made such an offer as a month later it was announced that all Spares and Service operations would be centralised at Peterborough where there was already a manager in place.  What the outcome would have been if I’d accepted is anyone’s guess, and I never got chance to ask as the Director himself was shortly on his bike looking for new pastures.

I needn’t have worried unduly about career prospects as the next roll of the restructuring dice landed in my favour again.  A move was announced to centralise Purchasing in Peterborough so this meant the end for Dennis Arney and his Yate team of buyers.  His remaining material control section would form part of a new site-based Materials Management department that merged material and production control functions.  I was appointed Materials Manager and suddenly had the familiar world of suppliers, shipments and inventory control under my wing again.

It was still a decade when certain managerial roles warranted a secretary and I was fortunate to acquire the mother-hen-like attention of Pat Hawkins.  Traditional in every sense, she was kept busy controlling my diary, tapping out letters, filing the numerous documents and supplying endless tea, coffee or biscuits.  I’d use her to pick up on the little details and vibes that floated around the enlarged office, helping me to optimise on the dynamics or nip in the bud any issues.  Some of the younger faces in the office and several from the shop floor were ready for bigger roles and with a bit of shuffling I managed to get people into the right slots. 

I made some errors.  Early on I tried to make a bit of a statement by recruiting externally a Stores Manager, an ex-Navy guy with a strong CV, but within a few weeks I was having doubts.  There was little evidence of any extra commitment; he was not really gelling with his peers, and had thinner systems knowledge than I was expecting.  I was embarrassed but, with some good advice from a manager I respected, I ate humble pie, ended the relationship within the probationary period, and appointed Gary Kemery, the young guy from Accounts that I should have chosen in the first place.  He did a great job, especially around introducing new systems, and it was with some regret that we allowed him to move to Renishaws a few years later where he could command a higher salary and better prospects.  We kept in touch and were dismayed to hear that, following a fall from his bike whilst gently cycling with his young family he’d broken his back and would be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.  If you ever want inspiration then Gary and Di, his wife, are the ones.  They’ve just cracked on and made the best of it; travelling Europe in an adapted camper-van, going for numerous walks from their New Forest home and, on the surface at least,  not allowing anything to dampen their spirits.

The early nineties were a blur.  At home we were adapting to the arrival of the boys, taking holidays and short breaks in the camper van whenever possible and I was squeezing in training for various marathons.  At work we were steadily improving, and across the other factories formed a small best-practice group with my fellow, more experienced Material Managers. I learnt some useful stuff.  Probably the biggest lesson was that there was still plenty of room for improvement and I endeavoured to replicate some of the successful techniques I was seeing elsewhere, particularly at the large Hotpoint Washing Machine factory in North Wales.

I was on the ‘high-potential' management development programme and benefited from a whole range of training.  GEC had adapted a small stately home at Dunchurch near Coventry into a management college and I attended several residential courses there. It was intense: lectures during the day, outdoor challenges, management games that often ran well into the night and high profile guest speakers from the world of industry, sport and politics.  Some of it rubbed off and undoubtedly helped my managerial career over the years.

With tiny children and full-on work, there wasn’t much time for other things.  The mid-nineties is a wasteland for me as far as music is concerned.  The airwaves were dominated by emerging boy bands (Wet Wet Wet, Take That) or solo MOR singers (Whitney, Phil Collins, Billy Joel, Annie Lennox, Madonna).  It was a time of Meatloaf and REM but I just didn’t have the opportunity to dig below the surface to find the bands that would appeal.  Consequently I didn’t really pick up on early Green Day, Chilli Peppers or Blur.

With nothing to get a hook into, the months flew by, dictated by the metronome of month-end accounting deadlines and the seasonal ebb and flow of the dryer business.

Before we knew it Bert had reached his retirement, and in typical, honourable under-stated fashion, quietly left the scene.  Another excuse for HQ to make a structural change.  Rather than replace Bert with a Works Director we were placed under the remit of Bob Vernon, the Works Director at Creda.  Ken Foxall, our Works Manager, who ‘unofficially’ only wanted a couple more years, was made General Manager and a young hi-potential called Rob Plimbly was pulled down from Blythe to manage the Production Department.

Bert Pugsley   Score  7/10.

A dapper, pipe-smoking, gentleman who I’m sure I never heard swear.  He wasn’t part of the golf scene, only drove a small car and was a man of unerring routines.  Every morning he’d walk almost exactly the same route around the site, stopping to chat briefly to anyone who buttonholed him.  Some of the workforce were wise to this and would invariably have a word about the state of the loos, or why overtime had been cancelled, or a myriad of other issues.  He’d jot it down in a little notebook and then request explanations from his team later at the morning management meeting.  It was quite common to find that your priorities for the day altered to ensure Bert would be able to respond positively to a particular workforce gripe by following day.  He didn’t like conflicts, so invariably told managers to sort any issues out between themselves and in his later year had no desire to travel to Board Meetings at Stoke or Peterborough.  His focus was on keeping the Yate site open, but he was never really a Director to take us forward and fight the coming battles.  There’s little doubt he had a soft spot for me, promoting me when possible and often inviting me into his office for a chat on all sorts of topics, trying in his rather old-fashioned way to offer some guidance.  He sent me a congratulatory letter when I ended up in charge (more later).

Bob Vernon bumptiously rolled into Yate to take on his overlord role.  In reality he was a down-to-earth, clever engineer who could comfortably hold his own in the boardroom or social club.  Putting aside his high opinion of himself, I got along quite well with him and he generally left me alone to run the Materials team in my own fashion, knowing I’d be operating broadly in line with targets and in general alignment with the other sites. 

I’d managed to get competent people into the key roles and things were relatively harmonious within the team.  Steve Ball was grumpy but effective as Progress Manager and had recruited Michelle Matthews a year or two earlier who had slowly gained enough confidence to do the Assembly Line planning for the production lines.  In the other half of the factory I had Bernard Berry planning the Primary Shop.  He was a real pencil, rubber and calculator type of chap, partially deaf after years of working in Press Shops, and no matter how many times I tried to enlighten him on the new PC type tools becoming available, he didn’t bite.  I put my effort into influencing Brendan Duffy, his heir-apparent, a young intense guy who’d I’d plucked off the shop floor and was supporting through a degree at night school.

Once again, as Ken Foxall, the general manager, approached his final months, there were changes in ownership as GEC went into a joint venture with General Electric (GE), the huge American conglomerate who were keen to get a foot in the door of the European appliance market.  The resultant partnership was called General Domestic Appliances (GDA) and it was against this background that speculation about who would succeed Ken began to mount.

I felt I was capable of at least another step upwards, working on the basis that I thought I could do at least as good a job and had some ideas for taking the factory forward.  The other senior guys, with one exception, were too long in the tooth or had more narrow functional skill sets.  The ‘rival’ was the Engineering Manager, Mike Osguthorpe, ten years my senior; competent, experienced and forceful.  He and Bob Vernon warily tolerated each other, whilst Mike and I worked well together without ever actually acknowledging each other’s ambitions.  I honestly don’t know whether Mike had learnt from Bob he wasn’t going to replace Ken or the offer of a new big role with Hoover tempted him away, but he left us a few months before Ken finished and was replaced by a young, very bright engineer from the Blythe Bridge factory called Neil Mannering.  This left one question.  Would they go outside for the top job at Yate?  Would they find someone from the other sites or HQ, or would I get it?

In August 1997, Ken and Bob gave me the news that I would be the General Manager at Yate. 

Life at the factory was going to be a whole lot different.   A few months earlier, Tony Blair had walked into a new home in Downing Street with some big plans to change things.  It wasn’t quite the same but, taking up residence in Bert’s old office, I did think it was time to do some things differently.   Time would tell…….

Images removed – Logos for Russell Hobbs, Creda, TI Tube Investments, GEC