Alan, Nancy with our team of ten-year plus veterans. Dave Stang, Tom Casey, Dave Carney, Mehmet Selman and Donna Joseph (on the far right).
Tom Casey talks to group about his work on one of the Associate Teams.
Last Saturday night, the entire Tanglewood Conservatories team celebrated its 15 year anniversary with a dinner bash at the Lily Pad Café and Bistro in Denton. The Lily Pad is run by Joanne Redden in a beautiful old historic building that was originally a one room school house and is now listed as a National Historic Trust site property.
It was a terrific evening. In all, about forty of us gathered and dined. In my keynote address to the group, I began with a look back at how Tanglewood Conservatories began its life and talked about the many challenges we’ve faced along the way. Some of these have been daunting! As a matter of fact, as I prepared my talk, I began to think that the history of Tanglewood has been the story of how we’ve overcome the many obstacles we’ve had to face.
Some of the more notable moments were: when we moved to our new site in Denton from the suburbs of Washington DC in 1996, we planned that at least half of our employees would join us in the move. Nope! All stayed behind except one- Mehmet, our Senior Designer. We lost our entire production staff in one fell swoop!
In 1997, we were invited to showcase our rooms at the Rockefeller Center Flower and Garden Show in New York- but, we had to design, fabricate and install three major conservatories in only three months- at the same time keeping up with a completely full production schedule of previously sold projects!
Later, when one of our salesmen sold a very large conservatory project, we discovered we didn’t have the space to build it and had to scramble to put up a major new wing to our facility just to be able to complete the project.
Now of course we face the current challenge of uncertain economic times and the new pressures that has created on almost everyone.
I also spoke of our many recent accomplishments. In the last few years we designed and built our new antique-style palmhouses and pool enclosures as well as our copper-clad windows and conservatories. We developed our capability to design and build large scale steel structures. We worked hard to change over our design and production operations to computer driven processes.
But one of the most profound recent changes has been the creation and empowerment of our Associate Teams. These are groups of Tanglewood personnel who have undertaken to identify issues, develop strategies and implement changes throughout the company in an effort to build a more efficient and effective organization.
Our goal is to become the best in the world at what we do.
I closed my address by sharing my conviction that even though we have come a long way in 15 years, all that we have accomplished so far is only the foundation for what will come in the future. We have some great plans in the making. Stay tuned!
Alan
