Hungary 

​

I was helping a Hungarian friend to achieve certification for his business in the UK when the Iron Curtain came down and he was, at last, able to return to his country of origin to meet up with family and friends. This was around 1991 and we were soon off to Hungary to see what business opportunities might arise. We decided to set up a business in Budapest that was a replica of Penarth Management. The deal was he would find the clients and collect in the fees in hard currency (not an easy task) and provide the language skills; I'd provide the credibility and know-how (which he soon acquired).

​

Our first client manufactured oil filters for engines and made them for every model of car, van and truck that roamed the roads of the Soviet Union. The factory was immense and the management team had little knowledge of western business ways. The primary difficulty was that they'd been brought up on business decisions being made by committees. This was a safe environment as no finger could be pointed at an individual if anything went wrong. Accordingly they were reluctant to make even the most minor decisions alone. It took quite a while to change this company culture, but eventually we persuaded them to write down the processes and develop procedures that could be audited. We had to rid them of a 'blame culture' and persuade them that improvements can only be made if we all knew what went wrong and work out how problems could be corrected.

​

The typical timetable was to fly out for week, gee them up a bit and return a few weeks later to see if they'd implemented the agreed changes. While this was on the go we were visiting other potential clients and soon had a healthy list of people who thought the best consultants were from the UK and from London. We didn't stop to point out Penarth was a much more prosaic place.

​

Among the industries that engaged our assistance were a thermometer maker who produced beautiful glass instruments for measuring temperature and specific gravity for the manufacturing industries. We also worked for an international airline that had a large freight division carrying everything from documents, components and even day old chicks. These people had their operation air-side at Budapest so we spent a lot of time negotiating with Customs to reduce the clearance time from several days to just a few hours. But that wasn't the biggest problem.

​

Our client had an office in the city centre and their warehouse at the main airport. Telephone lines were scarce and the waiting time was said to be two years, so we set up a satellite link between their office and warehouse. These were the early days of satellite technology and it is amazing how quickly you can assimilate the knowledge but the snag is, obsolescence strikes almost as soon as you've installed and commissioned the systems. It was all part of the great learning curve.

​

One of our more prestigious clients was the new governmental Quality Assurance department in Hungary. They talked the talk and were influential in drawing down funding for public and even some private enterprises. As they were staffed by academics and civil servants, there was much for them to learn about process improvement but they seemed to espouse the concepts and were ready to have a go themselves - except that they weren't 'doers'. They facilitated the early projects but left us to do the donkey work.