The face that launched 1,000 daft ideas

I have an odd request, I am got going mad, at least I am no madder than I was when I joined BWF a little over a year ago.  I want a picture of you.

Why?

I want it on the wall, I want you amidst a sea of member faces looking at us, a visual reminder.  This is not “Big Brother is watching”, but a reminder that BWF is a Member-led organisation.  We have some guiding principles, the first and most important being:

“Make decisions with the best interest of the membership at heart”

That’s you.

The key thing that attracted me to the BWF, before I came on board, was this ethic and how deeply the passion for helping member runs through your team here… from  the Council, through the Executive Board and the Staff Team.  We don’t get it perfectly right all the time (who does?!), but every day we strive to be better.

So how do we get better?  How do we retain and develop the member-led ethos that exists? How do we ensure that our voice is on message and our service on point?

We are focussing on process and the what, when and how of communication, but amidst this process – the web pages, the support documents, the telephone ringing – we can’t lose sight of the people. We must always remind ourselves what it is about and ensure that you are front and centre when we make decisions, prioritise our actions or draft a communication.  The founder of Amazon, Jeffrey P. Bezos, faced a similar issue (on a different scale it has to be said!) and one of his solutions was to mandate that a chair be kept vacant in meetings – this chair was for the customer, a visual reminder to think about what the customer wants and how the company is delivering value.  We don’t have as many internal meetings as I image Amazon have, but we do meet communicate and work together as a team to do our very best for you.

We moved into our new office in the Summer of 2012 and have now unpacked all the boxes (and “lost” anything that was taking up space and we are unlikely to need in the future!).  The new office is better, it is in the Building Centre and opens up a powerful network for us, but it is perhaps missing a little something for it to feel like the British Woodworking Federation’s home.  So I want to embrace the principal above and put something up on the currently blank white wall that defines us.  We initially discussed some pictures of the fantastic wooden stuff that you have made, this would look great, but it isn’t what defines us, you are.  BWF is about helping our community of members…you and your colleagues.

So send a snap of you or a team member to iain.mcilwee@bwf.org.uk .  Please don’t think to hard about it, snap it on your phone or drag and drop a photo you already have.  I just want you as you are to go in our montage as a constant reminder of what we stand for.  Thanks for getting behind this.