365 days of bringing a new era to life

Brafe Engineering is a successful precision-engineering business with deep technical expertise, high-stakes global clients and considerable loyalty among its people. It had been through a period of change leading to an EOT and, although the senior team knew more about where the business was heading, the wider company needed to understand the future it was being asked to help create.

I asked team members, customers and suppliers to tell me stories about ‘Brafe at its best’. The response was unusually enthusiastic. People cared enormously about the company.

Managing Director Adam Dalby later described my approach as “methodical and thorough”. Customers and suppliers noticed things that people who had lived and breathed Brafe for years sometimes took for granted, while the people inside it talked about pride, loyalty, care and respect, much of it stemming from Brafe’s engineering heritage and the skill of its people. They were equally frank about where things needed to improve and the need for the business as a whole to become more comfortable with change.

We used what we had learned to define where Brafe was heading and the truths it wanted to carry with it. The vision was Britain’s leading precision-engineering company for global process industries, supported by five values: Pride in British engineering. Respect for our people. The Ambition to progress. Plan for the Future. Uncompromisingly Excellent performance.

Adam subsequently said that they represented “a true and accurate picture of what it means to be Brafe”. Words, though, weren’t going to bring about the new era the company wanted. People needed to experience them in the life of the business.

So we created Brafe365 – Engineering a new era of Brafe, a year-long programme which gave the whole company something to get involved with.

Each month picked up a different part of the Brafe story, from British manufacturing, STEM and learning to wellbeing, family, community and employee ownership, through talks, events, newsletters and activities.

Customers, suppliers, families, schools, charities and the wider community joined in too. I particularly liked this aspect because those relationships were part of the truth of Brafe. The company didn’t exist in splendid isolation behind the factory gates.

For a year, the new era of Brafe kept cropping up in conversations, activities and decisions, giving people time to understand it and make it their own.

A year after launch, we went back to find out what had stuck, what had changed and what still needed attention. Changing the direction and culture of a business takes rather longer than unveiling some new words.

Brafe began with a strong business, great engineering and people who cared deeply about it. Brafe365 gave them a year to start living the future they wanted to create.