Print Pack Publish Asia • 10/2011
44
Packaging Technology
The great game of business
Singapore-based Winson Press has been a regular winner at the Asian Flexo Excellence Awards. Tan Jit Khoon,
CEO, shares with us his victory secret: taking the business as a game. Christel Lee reports.
Tan Jit Khoon and his team illustrating the importance
of individual involvement in the great game
Before anyone assumes winning awards
is nothing more than purely investing
in equipment and people, Tan Jit
Khoon shares that Winson Press’s
secret lies in its holistic approach to
running a business. “We have recently
adopted the ‘Great Game of Business’
approach by Jack Stack, which has three
cornerstones,” he explains.
Firstly, know and teach the rules:
one needs to know the rules before
playing the game. Secondly, keep
score and follow the action! We need
to ‘keep score’ in the game and follow
the developments; and just like any
game, strategies need to be changed in
accordance to changes in the score line.
“Lastly, have a stake in the outcome.
This is not limited to business owners
per se, but also involves the team.
Let them know what they get if the
company scores, or if it doesn’t.” He
added that through this approach
Winson Press has invested heavily
in people in the company, including
himself. Tan highlights, “The best
equipment will not be the key to your
success if you don’t have the right
people to handle the technologies and
developments in the industry.”
This year, the company started to
rediscover its values. The introduction
to the concept of “BHAG” (Big
Hairy Audacious Goal) led to the
“termination” of Tan as CEO while
the company sought to find itself …
and it did! Tan explains, “Having the
leader out of the picture provides a
more conducive environment for the
team to reflect their current position
and the next step. The feedback that
comes out subsequent is assured to be
free from biasness.”
He relates the process wasn’t easy in the
manner of turning into an expert after
a two-day course. “We had to always
revisit the principles we had learnt and
keep talking about it. Eventually what
we wanted was the grasp of inside-out
knowledge of every individual’s scope.
That led to the conceptualisation
Print Pack Publish Asia • 10/2011
Packaging Technology
45
Right-left: Tan Jit Khoon, CEO of Winson Press Pte Ltd,
Jack Stack, Creator of Great Game of Business and Dr Ilan
Kogus, the Great Game coach
of improvising and ways to enhance our company’s
profitability.” However, Tan also swiftly highlights it was
a challenging process to get to the open-book phase
of managing – relating to bouts of crisis the company
overcame. “When all is well, it’s easy to swear loyalty. Values
are challenged when the crunch comes,” he laments.
Adopting the great game of business was not an easy
journey for Jit Khoon and his team either. “The concept is
simple but it is not easy to implement. The devil is in the
details. We have many questions and have to slowly figure
what is best for us in the long term before we can really get
the game going, it all start from the top” he adds.
Road mapping
Winson Press invested in an HP Indigo in 2008. The
press had been a hit with many other players much earlier.
However, while companies jumped on the bandwagon with
the investment, Jit Khoon instead was contemplating the
company’s roadmap.
“It’s important to know where one is now, and where
one wishes to be later. In that respect we had to consider
whether if the machine or technology fits into our longterm business goals and if we have the right people in place.
He relates tactics adopted by many equipment sales persons
that failed to address the printers’ interest. “We should
not adopt a herd mentality and blindly invest just because
our competitors did as the mistake can be very costly,” Jit
Khoon notes.
“Technology is an accelerator, not the cause. We prefer to
prepare my team before the adopting technology in our
business. Our team will evaluate the technology that will
help us achieve our long-term strategic goals and prepare
accordingly before investing. ” he explains.
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Incidentally, such practice has resulted in smoother
introduction of technology resulting in overall costsavings for the company either in prepress or Narrow
Web department. Today, Winson Press’s business remains
evenly distributed between commercial and packaging
printing. In terms of technology, Jit Khoon is not inclined
to steer towards any particular field. “There is a place for
each and it would not be fair to r ule any out,” he notes.
“We should follow the framework as outline in Jim Collin’s
book Good to Great.
find out exactly how it works.
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