On June 8, 2017, the former FBI director James Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee about his memos on his meetings with President Donald Trump. “I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meeting, so I thought it really important to document.”
He said that the first meeting “led me to believe I’ve got to write it down in a very detailed way.” He added that he had never felt the need to document his conversations with Presidents Obama or Bush.
In the National Football League, Black Monday is the first Monday after the regular season ends. It is the day many head coaches are fired. An Associated Press headline of December 29, 1998, read: “NFL coaches face ‘Black Monday’ with five fired.”
Long service does not protect a coach. In 2024 the New England Patriots parted with Bill Belichick after 24 seasons.
In 2012 New York City started a program for 16- to 18-year-olds at the Rikers Island jail. It was paid for with a social impact bond. Goldman Sachs invested $7.2 million and would be repaid only if reoffending fell by 8.5 percent.
In 2015 the evaluation found that the program had no effect on reoffending. The program ended. Goldman Sachs lost $1.2 million, after a guarantee from Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the city repaid nothing.
In November 2022 the texting company SimpleTexting analyzed the language of more than 6.6 million US job postings on LinkedIn. The phrase “team player” appeared about 37 times per 1,000 ads.
“Proven track record” appeared about 31 times per 1,000 ads. The most frequent buzzword was “innovator,” at about 82 times per 1,000 ads.
Wing it. To wing it is to do something without preparing first.
Fly by the seat of your pants. The person decides as things happen, without a plan.
We’ll figure it out as we go. The start comes first, and the details come later.
Make it up as you go along. The plan is created while the work is done.
Course-correct. To course-correct is to change direction during a project, not after it.
Call an audible. To call an audible is to change the plan at the last moment. The phrase comes from football. There the quarterback changes the play at the line.
Throw it at the wall and see what sticks. The team tries many things and keeps what works.
Ship it. The work is released now, as it is.
In 1992 NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin introduced a management approach called “faster, better, cheaper.” Over the next eight years, NASA launched 146 payloads. All but 10 of the missions succeeded.
In 1999 two Mars missions failed. Mars Climate Orbiter was lost on September 23, because the subcontractor Lockheed Martin had not converted English units to metric units in its software. Mars Polar Lander was lost on December 3. Goldin said: “I, Dan Goldin, pushed too hard, and in doing so, stretched the system too thin.”
After the losses, NASA put less weight on “faster” and “cheaper.” It expected stronger test programs from subcontractors.
“Early on, all of our movies suck.” Ed Catmull of Pixar wrote this in his 2014 book Creativity, Inc. He continued: “They are not beautiful, miniature versions of the adults they will grow up to be. They are truly ugly: awkward and unformed, vulnerable and incomplete.”
At Pixar, directors were expected to show these “ugly babies” to colleagues early.
In 2000 the information technology company EDS ran a television ad called “Airplane.” A construction crew builds an airplane while it flies. One worker says: “Some people like to climb mountains. I like to build planes. In the air.” The text on the screen reads: “In a sense this is what we do. We build your digital business even while you’re up and running.”
The agency Fallon made the ad. The phrase “building the plane while flying it” is now a common business cliché for work that starts before the plan is finished.
On April 20, 2023, SpaceX tested Starship, the most powerful rocket in the world, in Texas. About four minutes into the flight, the rocket exploded. SpaceX called it a “rapid, unscheduled disassembly.” SpaceX employees could be heard cheering.
SpaceX said: “With a test like this, success comes from what we learn.” NASA administrator Bill Nelson congratulated the company. Elon Musk said another booster of a newer design was ready for the next test.
“Done is better than perfect.” Facebook painted these words on the walls of its offices. Mark Zuckerberg explained why in his letter to investors. The letter was part of the filing, dated February 1, 2012, for the company’s stock market listing. The words were there “to remind ourselves to always keep shipping.”
In the same letter he described what he called “the Hacker Way.” Hackers, he wrote, build “by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once.”
The saying is older than Facebook. It has been in print since at least 1979.