Big Picture Thinking

Fitting all of the disparate pieces of life together is important for those who don’t want to stumble through existence on autopilot.  Noticing the details allows me to see that there are a lot more problems than I thought, and some of them are complicated.  Apparently insurmountable problems need specialized tools to resolve.  I have always been a huge fan of cramming the square peg into the round hole, but brute force isn’t the most useful solution for every issue.  Some require a bit more finesse or a bigger cutting bit on the Dremel.

Perhaps I was guilty of another instance of square peg round hole action in my decision to gift Snob Duben the Scuderia AcMo F-One team principal role.  The problem was never about his ability to do the job—if Flavor Flav Briatore can do it, anybody can.  I failed at an organizational level because I didn’t supply him with the supplemental personnel he would need to accomplish such a monumental task.

I overestimated Snob’s competence when I assigned more than 50 projects at once.  He does not have that capability and I should have recognized that before tasking him with a mission that was guaranteed to fail.  I see now that his ludicrous requests for Apache helicopters, a MAGLEV train, a warehouse full of Inconel™, a Ferrari 488 GTO (which doesn’t even exist yet), Bugatti Veyron (final, final, final, no seriously this time, final edition), a rail gun (with functional targeting system), aircraft carrier (stocked with aircraft), and hovercraft were all just subtle pleas for help I chose to ignore.

I’m paying attention now because I could at best supply half of those items.  The full breadth of AcMo’s resources is about to be deployed for this project.  I was ready to abandon this entire project before I realized I couldn’t let AcMo admit defeat.  A random thought allowed me to see the pieces from a different perspective and understand what I needed to do.  I was thinking about ways to increase our production capacity when I thought that the build process would benefit from more welding.

Snob doesn’t know how to weld, but I remembered we do have someone on the roster that is a certified welder.  CKC was placed in a stasis chamber while we figured out the technology required to shrink his clubfoot.  He has the welding skills Snob needs to amp up production of our F-One cars.

I popped down to the stasis facility to see about signing him out for a few months so we could get the team on the grid for at least one race this season.  The thing about our stasis facility is that it frightens me a bit.  It’s so cold, dark, and quiet that it is unnerving.  The scientists haven’t yet figured out how to completely reanimate people exiting stasis, but I didn’t know that when we agreed to store our inactive roster there.  I’ve been told that there is a 90% chance something will go wrong during the process.  While that may seem horrible, it is a lot better than the 99.99% chance of disaster when we first started the stasis project.

The power requirements for this facility are obscene.

CKC had no idea the kind of danger he was inviting by agreeing to enter the new MRI machine stasis.  I’m sure he would have declined if he had been made aware because his foot isn’t that much of an impediment for most normal activities.  We’ll be satisfied as long as he can still walk and weld once he’s reanimated.  The earliest we would be able to activate CKC would be Monday because the reanimation process is arduous.  We won’t know until late next week after we’ve completed his full health check whether or not he’ll still be able to weld.  We’ll have a nice surprise for him if he passes his tests.

CKC is a certified metal welder, but we aren’t working with metals for the chassis and suspension of our radically innovative F-One car.  CKC is going to have to be able to weld plastics or he’s going right back into his stasis chamber until we figure out how to shrink his foot for real this time.

The learning curve for plastic welding doesn’t look like it will be too bad.  I found an image which explains everything one would need to know in order to execute the process successfully.  I am certain that as long as he can still read and understand pictures that he will be able to weld plastics for us and give Snob the opportunity to focus on other aspects of the project since swift construction isn’t one of his strong points.

How hard can this be?

I don't have a clue what this is but it looks serious.

I plan to spend most of my weekend studying the above tool to make sure it can’t be used as a weapon.  There is a slight chance CKC may take exception to his prolonged stay in the stasis chamber if he learns the truth.  I will not tell him, but secrets always have a way of escaping.  I got him to enter the chamber the first time by fooling him into believing it was an experimental MRI machine that would help us unlock the mystery of his clubfoot.  He won’t fall for that twice.

The build team will continue to grow with more specialists as long as CKC doesn’t go on a rampage.  Snob will have all of the help he needs to be successful, and he will hopefully cease his ludicrous demands for military hardware and exotic sports cars.

And just like that the plan may have changed.  This is why AcMo never sets a firm course.  Our malleability allows us to pivot at any given time.  We may abandon the entire F-One operation to instead focus on our comprehensive road car-testing program thanks to a client’s new arrival.  The hurdles so far have been agreeing upon minimum daily drive times, and who pays for insurance, race gasoline, tires, and batteries.

A decision about which program will survive will be made after a board vote, but the situation isn’t looking good for Snob’s continued role as team leader while CKC is probably headed back to the stasis chamber.  This AcMo Scuderia F-One team may be finished before the first lap.