Move, Then Adjust Archives - understand-culture

Making It Up as We Go

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.

Apollo 8 Changes Course

Apollo 8 was planned as a test of the lunar module in Earth orbit. But the lunar module would not be ready before early 1969. On Friday, August 9, 1968, the NASA manager George Low proposed sending Apollo 8 to the Moon instead. That same afternoon, he and three colleagues flew to Huntsville to discuss it.

NASA then had only four months to prepare. The flight in December 1968 became the first human voyage to another celestial body.

Hackathons

A hackathon is a short event where teams build something that works, often within 24 or 48 hours. The goal is functioning software or hardware by the end. At the end, each group usually presents what it built.

In June 1999 Sun Microsystems used the word for an event at its JavaOne conference. There Sun’s John Gage challenged attendees to write a Java program for the new Palm V. Facebook’s Like button was conceived at a hackathon.

All Our Movies Are Bad at First

“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.

Everybody Has Plans

“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” People quote it about plans that fail when real events go against them. It is credited to the boxer Mike Tyson. His own words were slightly different.

In August 1987, before a fight with Tyrell Biggs, Tyson told the Associated Press: “Everybody has plans until they get hit for the first time.” The wording with “punched in the mouth” appeared in a newspaper column in 2004. Quote Investigator concludes that the saying belongs to Tyson.

Building the Plane in Flight

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.

Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly

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

“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.

Embarrassed by Version One

“If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” Reid Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn, posted this line on March 29, 2017. The same day he published an essay with the title “If There Aren’t Any Typos In This Essay, We Launched Too Late!”

He did not say it only once. The author Eric Ries wrote that Hoffman “often says” it.