A story of lateral thinking leadership
Keith was a fairly junior office worker, who spent his days at a drawing board designing tools and components for a precision engineering company. He was a talented engineer, though, and had a reputation for being able to diagnose problems and fix stuff. The company had two sites, about 30 miles apart, and when the company decided it needed to move one of its departments from the head office to the remote site, he was a little surprised to be asked to run the project. He struck up a productive and enjoyable relationship with the team at site 2, and the project was going well. Being an engineering company there were many tons of machinery to ship, in dozens of lorry loads, and then everything needed to be sited and assembled on arrival. When he visited site 2, he and the team would spend the morning working, break for a spot of lunch, then back to it in the afternoon. Now, this was the late 1980s and the company had its roots in what one might call “the old days”. So, the canteen w