Big Five for Life Strategic Session

We are continuously moving. The Masters in Membrains are working daily on the development, designing and delivering of membrane filtration systems for process streams in the Food and Dairy industries. Internally – within the company – we are always working together behind the scenes on individual and group targets and on the strategic focus for the coming years. Together with, among others, Sijbe Bonsma we had put various strategy- and growth sessions on the agenda. Step by step we are working on our plans via the Big Five for Life method, with the ending point ‘what would we do if we were already at the point where we wanted to be’ as the starting point. Last week, the Wafilin team attended another of these sessions.

A Big Five for Life session always starts with a personal touch. Every employee of Wafilin gets the opportunity to share a museum moment ( a personal milestone that you cherish) with the group. During the session, we look whether the museum moment can be connected to the personal Big Five for Life. After that, everyone gets the opportunity to share a business-oriented museum moment, and to compare this to Wafilin’s Big Five for Life (Membrane Application Specialist, Partners, Team, Quality & Reliability and Business). In every case, the Wafilin’blue line’ could be discovered. This way we keep testing whether we are all still doing what we love and are good at.

We split up in groups and started analyzing Wafilin’s Big Five for Life. We looked at what went well, what went needs to be improved and at what needs to change. What is most noticeable is the strength of the Wafilin team. Everyone brings a unique quality which impacts the end-result. The specialisms that we are still missing can be developed internally, recruited or hired externally. All in all, this analysis gave us sharp insights into how we can improve the decisions that we make internally in order to retain our customer focus.  

Afterward we started working on the strategy and plan of action for the coming year. The starting point for this was the recently updated SWOT (strength, weaknesses, opportunities, threats). As a team, we decided to commit to 4 actions per segment of the SWOT. By using a ‘make me better method’ the team got the opportunity to have an equal discussion about the chosen team.

The strategic session was concluded with qualities- and talents game, in which everyone got feedback on their strength by all of his or her colleagues. It was a good conclusion of the session, as well as being a great introduction for the next session, in which the roles for implementing the actions that were written down will be divided.    

We have made good progress to reach the spot on the horizon. For us, this spot means ‘being able to contribute to necessary future high-end products in the Food and Dairy industry. The Big Five for Life method helps us with a good, organization-wide strategy with clear goals., which are understood by everyone in the organization and to which everyone feels connected. Because the people at Wafilin are the ones that are of utmost importance. They are the Masters in Membrains, and are the ones that will bring us closer to the spot on the horizon.

Would you like to learn more about the Big Five for Life, or would you like to better understand how our way of working impacts the execution of our services? Feel free to contact our CEO Henk Schonewille without obligations: h.schonewille@wafilinsystems.nl

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