60
PERSONALITY PROFILE
Training tells its
own story
Accurate Patrick Gordon, incoming General Manager of CalAfrica, received
knowledge is a visit from Plumbing Africa in his second week at the office. After
the big thing 19 years at Cobra, “I’m enjoying a new challenge again,” he says.
in plumbing, By Eamonn Ryan
and that’s why
whenever a question came up I would make it my business
Just three months before, Chris Kyle, then General
I’ve always Manager of CalAfrica had first called him to announce to learn everything about that question so that I was able
to explain it exactly – rather than just tell customers where
he would be retiring in four months, and would
to find that answer. I’ve always been very keen on gaining
enjoyed Gordon like his job? In fact, that role has been split
knowledge and understanding the ‘behind the scenes’
into two – with Gordon, previously national training
training. manager of Lixil Africa, taking over this position, and story; taking things apart and seeing what’s happening.
Jackie van der Merwe retaining the role of chief op-
erating officer. Kyle says when thinking of a replace-
ment, he could think of ‘nobody more suitable’.
Like so many eventual plumbing specialists, plumbing was
the last thing on Gordon’s mind when he left school. In fact,
his first job was in agriculture on the mechanical side, which
was to stand him in good stead when finally he did enter the
plumbing trade with Boumat (the forerunner of Plumblink,
featured in this issue in a supplement) in 1985.
The seeds of his extensive career in technical and
training were sown at this early point. He explains, “Being
a newbie, I wasn’t yet allowed to talk about product or
technical issues to customers, so I made it my policy that
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“I spent two months enrolled on learning all about
plumbing products and their application – and that was
really the beginning of my career. Today, when I do training
I always try get students to get the proper background to
the subject. Often the ending is less important than where
it comes from, because that is what gives them the big
picture of why they’re doing what they’re doing, and how it
all fits together. It tells its own story eventually.”
When the pursuit of knowledge becomes a career
Gordon adds that “accurate knowledge is the big thing in
plumbing, and that’s why I’ve always enjoyed training.”
Still a relative novice, training was his passion but not
his function at this point. He made his way through H
Incledon’s showroom, sales, learning about civil engineering
and sales repping on the mines. That experience took
him throughout the country and was rounded off with
domestic plumbing and buying, ensuring he had a broad
exposure to every aspect of the plumbing industry – which
coincidentally was what he was coming to realise was
necessary for a full understanding.
Eventually, he came back to Johannesburg and got the
opportunity to join Cobra where, until his recent move, he
remained for an astonishing 19 years. Again, he started at
the bottom, in the service department, which gave added
vigour to his learning. “I was fielding calls all day from
people wanting technical information. Essentially, I was
now in the position of the person that in my previous job I
used to phone.” He may have started at the bottom, but he
didn’t linger there; his boss resigned and within one year
he was the service department head. A year later he was
promoted again to Product Development. However, after
Patrick Gordon, incoming General Manager of Cal Africa.
www.plumbingafrica.co.za
One of my first exposures was with Mervyn Jordan, who
at that time was running an organisation known as the
National Institute of Sanitaryware and Plumbing, doing
product knowledge training.
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August 2019 Volume 25 I Number 6