I have found something you need to know.
While most of my discoveries come from reading dry books on tactics, leadership, or management, sometimes I venture into more colorful realms. Today, you get to enjoy the fruit of my aimless intellectual wanderings. On this week’s edition, I’m introducing you to an eclectic but highly successful artist, Tom Sachs.
Tom builds art. Notice I used the word “build”. I didn’t say paint, write, draw, or any normal modality of artistic expression. He builds it in a shop complete with hammers, nails, screws, and the normal junk you have in your garage. Most of his “sculptures” conjure the typical confusion you experience when subjected to modern art. When I see his work, I scratch my head and wonder why someone paid so much for it. However, its not Tom’s art that interest me.
Instead, the rules Tom forces his subordinates to adhere to made me stop in my tracks. Partly because NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory believe his rules to be worthy of commissioning a video about them. However, the most compelling reason I want you to read and understand Tom’s rules is because they are my rules. I just never wrote them down. Perhaps that’s why he’s the great and successful artist and I’m not.
Here they are:
Work To Code.
Sacred Space.
B.O.T (Be on Time).
Be thorough.
I understand.
Sent does not mean received, get confirmation.
Keep a list..
Always be knolling (A.B.K).⠀
Sacrifice to Leatherface.
Persistence.
Everyone of these rules I have learned the hard way on flightlines and hangar floors. Each one I have made a mental note to abide by as if they are some sort of sacred spiritual maxim never to be trespassed. When I first saw these rules, I had to pick my jaw up off the floor. I felt like someone had taken my work experience, extracted it from my brain, and codified my lessons learned.
The truth is, these rules don’t belong to Tom, me, or anyone. These rules belong to each and every worker who seeks to get things done in a professional manner. Miyamoto Mushashi said “Once you know the way you see it in all things”. Tom simply wrote the way down for us. Thanks Tom.
This newsletter is intended to be a five minute read and I have to get to dinner. So I won’t go over each and everyone for you, but I do want to tell you how I learned a few of them. Each one of these stories shaped who I am today, and apparently molded me into the type of worker ole’Tom wants to share studio space with.
Be On Time
I literally got my ass kicked once for being late. When I was 16, a recently retired Army Colonel taught an introduction to aviation maintenance class I enrolled in. Turns out it would be the first step in a long career. On the second day, I showed up three minutes late to class. Normal high school antics from a normal high schooler who didn’t care much for school to start with. How did Col Deaver respond to a late 10th grader who didn’t wake up on time? With love and understanding?
Hell no.
I found myself bracing a wall as the good Colonel knife handed me and asked me if I knew how much time I had wasted. I responded with a confused, “three minutes?” His response: “Hell no! Can’t you do math?!? You wasted my time by being late and twenty of your classmates. That’s 66 minutes of human productivity we will never get back thanks to you and your laziness.”
I sat there for a minute and let what he said sink in. Then, he holered at me, “turn around so I can kick your ass!” So I turned around and he kicked my ass hard enough to send me stumbling into class. That was one of the last times I have ever been late to anything. Thank you Col Deaver.
Keep a List
Back when I was a young mechanic, someone smart told me to write everything down. Every serial number, task number, phone number, if its data that you can capture, write it down and keep it as long as you can. As the years wore on, I started putting dates and tail numbers of the various aircraft beside each note so I could refer back to them with ease.
My salvation, many times, has arisen more times than I can recall from the tattered, oil soaked pages of those little green notebooks in my hip pocket. I’m being accused of not doing something correctly? Consult that date in my notebook. Someone lost the information they were supposed to caputre, “no worries, I wrote it down”. Accused of messing something up on some aircraft I had nothing to do with, “well on that date I did XXX”. You can lie all you want, but the notebook will always be my alibi.
This is why Sachs demands his workers keep a list. Keep a list of what you did, what you bought, and where you were. When you look at the amount of money that he is dealing with, I have to believe that his little list rule has saved him from being put out of business more than once. The rule isn’t genius or innovative, its codified experience.
Persevere
There was a circuit breaker that kept popping. However, it wasn’t anything to worry about (or so management thought). It was only a measly 2 amp breaker that went to the copilots aux panel. What made it difficult was that no one could figure out why it was popping. They had replaced all the components, trouble shot all the wires, and were at the point of giving up.
However, I didn’t want to quit. I knew that technical problems all had technical causes and technical solutions. Solving it didn’t lie in intelligence, tooling, or anything other than patience and perseverence. So I kept shooting wires and working my way back to try and find the cause of the problem. Engineering management wanted to sign it off, forget about it, and just fly the jet anyway. Who cares, its just a headset, right?
Wrong. On a day when I wasn’t at work the plane burst into flames. When they extinguised the flames and started trying to figure out what had happened, loose nuts in a powerpanel showed to be the dastardly culprit that had started the fire. The only indication that something was wrong was a popping circuit breaker for the copilots headset.
Einstein wisely said that he wasn’t a genius, he just stayed with problems longer than everyone else. Had they stayed with troubleshooting the circuit breaker longer, that plane would have never erupted into flames. Whats the lesson to take away? Persevere.
Hone the Edge.
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