Plan and schedule your journey!!!

Have you ever gone for paddle with your friends? It’s really exciting to paddle a canoe and floating on the water. I have actually experienced it and I can tell you that it was incredibly enjoyable. However, the journey contains some risks. Therefore you have to be prepared for it. There are some requirements that you need to procure in land and before you get in the canoe. First of all, it’s essential that you plan and schedule your journey. Secondly, you have to prepare your scope such as food, life jacket, sleeping bag, light, drink water and other useful tools that you maybe need during your trip and of course your paddles.


In addition to the above mentioned preparation, you must identify on the map the direction, time required to reach the goals and break stations before you start the journey. Sometimes it is beneficial that you take a break and reward yourselves because you have done a good job, by taking a cup of coffee or eating something, on the other hand you can use the time within reviewing and controlling the direction, obstacles, short cut, tools and the whole canoe or making some calculations regarding the distance.

In order to keep the canoe floating on the water, enjoying the journey and reaching the target(s) one should be equipped with some skills and strategy. For example, as a paddling’s team you have to consider the speed of the paddling and the balance of the canoe, thus you have to cooperate with each other to divide working load into halves. Furthermore, you have also to communicate continuously with each other when paddling to keep the boat floating on the right direction and not overturning into the water until you accomplish your goals.

I will not drift away from the main issue, since I think the above example exhibits clearly the purpose of the content. As well, if we imagine the similarity between the canoe, paddling’s team, and company/plant and its departments then we can easily understand the correlation.

Moreover, each department must have a clear strategy which contains a transparent framework that is available for the staff that belongs to this unit and other involved people at the plant. Further the obstacles, resources, skills, qualifications, goals and benefits must be identified. In addition to the clear direction that department must has, all people should feel that they are sitting at the same boat by implementing partner relationship among department’s members and also among different departments. In order to reach the goals, all departments must be integrated properly, having high level communication, and cooperate continuously regarding working load. That enables the boat staying balanced and floating on the water towards the target(s).

The development of any system, issue, strategy etc must consider the entire organization on a horizontal axis. Thereby, prior to develop any specific working area or a department the impaction on company’s vision and other working areas and departments should be taken into account and must be estimated properly by using life cycle cost methodology. Since this culture enables the company to destroy the wall among plant’s silos and facilitates information’s flow throughout all units. Also, each department will identify and consider the amount of work contribution and the amount of profit, which in return enables them to grow and develop parallel based on company’s requirements and customers demands.

Continuous improvement strategy strives always for finding new methods, techniques, systems, thoughts, tools etc that could enhance the current situation and gives out the desired outcome. Thus, the plant will experience “continuous change process “that rely totally on innovations, experiments, and brain storming. Furthermore, rewarding yourself and your team after a hard work leads to renew your energy and recharges the batteries to continue the journey. Additionally, the empowerment of people encourage them to create and develop new thoughts and ideas and will also in return motivate them to work harder and being result oriented within doing the right things on the right way.



Best regards

Hamid Al-najjar