Apollo 13 was in the news briefly this past week: Ed Smylie appeared in the Economist's obituary , having died on April 21 at the age of 95. Ed led the team of engineers that saved Apollo 13 and the whole won the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their efforts. Apollo 13 probably my favorite space movie, despite a lot of competition, and I think the main reason is the love of the material and the particular competence on display: the astronauts are definitely in mortal danger, but it's not because they're making silly mistakes. I've mentioned a couple movies lately, including Top Gun and Battle: Los Angeles . Love of the material Space travel is really cool! I can't count the number of times that I've watched the scene of the Saturn V rocket launching in that movie and it still gives me chills. All of the people who have to work together on the launch, the rousing music, the sheer power of the Saturn V at liftoff...it's a great sequence. And even tho...

I recently read Kenn Ricci's Management by Trust (2006) . It's a quick read at only 140 pages (according to my e-reader) and a few points jumped out at me that would be fun to share. The thesis of the book is that managers perform better and get performance out of their teams when they are trusting and trustworthy rather than treating their employees transactionally. The money saved catching a few bad actors is far outweighed by the loss of energy and creativity by the part of the team that doesn't abuse their privileges. I'll start calling this a series of philosophy, having previously written about it here:  One-on-one meetings Outrage - uses and defuses Scar tissue Leader standard work Communications channels Remote work e-Commerce I made notes as I read through Management by Trust and I'll address what I highlighted as key points. Image from http://www.managementbytrust.com/  Self-consistency I knew that I could never be comfortable trying to be one person a...

I'm going public with my answer to xkcd's challenge in #2184 "Unpopular Opinions: Unpopular positive opinion challenge: Name a movie that... You genuinely like (not "so bad it's good") Came out in your adult life post-2000, and Is rated below 50% on Rotten Tomatoes. Randall (xkcd's author) came up with Terminator: Genisys which as of today has a 26% rating on the Tomatometer (critic ratings) and 52% on the Popcornmeter (user ratings). For me, it's... Battle: Los Angeles I do dislike that I can't use a colon to indicate my choice because there's also one in the title, and I'll admit to routinely abbreviating it to "Battle: LA". I genuinely like the movie (more on that below) Randall is only a year older than me and the movie came out in 2011 (I first saw it later on a streaming service) Below 50% on both Rotten Tomatoes ratings! Why I like it For starters, I've had a soft spot for Aaron Eckhart ever since I first saw Thank...

In addition to continuing my series on tools that I've built or used to make life easier, this post also lets me associate a blog post with every accomplishment on my resume for the past two roles. This project spanned a year of iteration and improvements as we turned chaos into data and then data into actual improvements. Previous posts in this series:  Overlap tool Follow-up through Outlook, OneNote, and To Do RFQ / CBF SAP tool Change Board Shortage report Small business Square/Google Sheets integration   Headline: 3,000 parts / 11,000 purchase requisitions tracked The purchase-requisition tracker ended up as one of the most iterative projects I've worked on so far. It started with a senior-management directive to quantify how many purchase orders we were late to place, and develop a burn-down plan for those past-due orders. At this company, our SAP system would review all demand for a part (assemblies that used the part, orders, safety-stock, etc.) and all supply for...

Often, we think about rules and regulations as concrete: even if the language is fuzzy (and needs interpretation), in theory there is a single "right" interpretation of the rule, and we can know if we're following the rule. One regulation where this is not the case is the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) rule that moving work between factories can cause "no undue burden" to the FAA to monitor the work. I encountered this issue when cleaning up a regulatory violation at my former company: the violation was inadvertent, we disclosed it to the FAA, and we needed to 1) catch up on undue-burden assessment requests, and 2) put better processes in-place to avoid the issue coming up again. Like other "special" projects , I was pulled in to help on this one because I could quickly absorb the data and turn it into actions and close the issues. This post will have a brief discussion on how I solved the issues, and a longer musing on the difficul...

Unlike any of the "tools I've built to make life easier" posts, I own all of the code for this one. In my spare time on a personal computer I built a software backend for a small local business that lets the owner manage their inventory with much less manual work. Because I use a PC and Excel and the end-user uses a Mac and Numbers, we met in the middle and built the tool using Google Sheets. I taught myself Google Apps Script (GAS), which is a form of JavaScript to create similar automation as my previous experience with Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), and because it was cloud-based the tool is actually more versatile: it runs on mobile devices and interfaces directly with Square, which the business uses for Point of Sale (POS) management. Previous posts in this series: Overlap tool Follow-up through Outlook, OneNote, and To Do RFQ / CBF SAP tool Change Board Shortage report   Headline improvement: from 1 day to 30 minutes (90%) My client Little Bab...

In the past few months, Southwest Airlines has been taking on some major changes in how they fly people. Southwest had several unusual or unique ways of operating, including open (unassigned) seating and free checked bags. It also had an offbeat, loyal workforce that was maintained through a corporate history of never having a layoff. Now all of those are being removed and it makes me both a little sad (end of an era) and wonder whether it will actually work out for the company. It makes me wonder about...New Coke. Southwest's Decision Although Southwest has been profitable most years, has it been profitable enough ? Investment firm Elliott Management says no , and they now have the power to decide . Every other US airline (or almost every?) has embraced ancillary fees like seat-selection, premium seating options (e.g. extra legroom, seats near the front), and baggage fees. So why shouldn't Southwest get its cut? They did market research and it looked like they would ga...

Complying with US export regulations can be surprisingly tricky: at various times in the 2010s and 2020s I've had to be hip-deep in them as part of my various roles. Today I'll focus on an urgent assignment I was handed in late 2024. Normally I don't explicitly name my former employer when talking about projects, but I'll be referring to certain public documents so it'll be pretty obvious this time. Also, the US State Department files are exclusively downloadable PDFs, as far as I know you can't just view them online, sorry. "Uh-oh" In late 2024 my boss pulled me into a meeting to ask how I could help with an urgent project. The company had just negotiated a consent agreement and $200M fine for export violations to China, and I was one of the people who would help with the urgent work of ensuring that we weren't going to find any further violations and identifying any programs or product lines with any export-regulations risk in China. This i...