Too soon to party

When we opened our new factory in Milton Keynes in March, I was very tempted to have a big party to celebrate the achievement - and it was only the sheer volume of activity in the business around that time, that made it seem like an unnecessary distraction. It was a commendable achievement, being brought in on-time and to budget, and the facility itself is state-of-the art and combines all the learning we have made from the painful lessons that have been chiselled from our experience over the last 12 years of making tortillas.

But as the months have passed, I have had time to reflect - and I am pleased that we did not celebrate the opening. I read recently about Collis Huntington, one of the main West Coast backers of the transcontinental railroad that would connect east to west America. He was invited to a celebration to witness the driving in of the first spike, but he declined - saying that the achievement of the completed railroad would be more appropriate and pointed towards the challenges that lay ahead and obstacles to success.

This is, of course, so true for us as a business. As with any start-up, we still need to achieve the running speeds, efficiency and manpower levels we targeted, we need to knit new teams together and see to it that they are truly capable and inspired, ready to solve problems and maintain quality, day-by-day, hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute. I envy the railroad planners - able to gauge their success by whether the two tracks came together in line with one another, or not, despite being started thousands of miles apart. In business we have to create artificial finite points to measure.

My appetite for a party at a suitable time remains unabated. It strikes me as so important that we do enjoy our achievements along the way. The satisfaction of our souls demands that we sometimes take time to recognise even minor triumphs, even though the summit might not yet quite be reached. While always recognising that it is our resilience over the long term that is the mark of success, we ought to rejoice in our progress along the way.