In a message dated 10/18/2002 4:25:54 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:


> It is all about production or you will not be doing the work.
>
Leland,

Production has two meanings here, I suppose, 1) where unit quantitiy is the
emphasis and 2) where project completion is the intention. Of course we need
to produce to meet expectations in resolving the needs of the end customer,
the one paying the bills, in order to survive.

When I refer to thinking it is somewhere between the mindless commodity
repetition of setting one brick after another in a straight line as opposed
to building a clean and truly operable firebox. A mechanic thinks all day
long... one mechanic can't get past thinking about a small number of tasks in
a day, the other moves on a scale towards being a master and able to think on
multiple levels about all sorts of stuff. You can lay brick all day and be
thinking out the meaning of the universe or sex, assuming they are not
exclusive. If the mechanics don't think then they can very quickly do damage
in cleaning a sandstone facade.

In my mind production work is on a scale opposite to problem solving. Sorry
to say it but some mechanics are more into problem solving as a product than
they are into reaching a quota of brick laid in a day. If I hire someone to
lay brick I expect them to lay brick and think less. If I hire someone to
think about what may be behind the brick that was laid 150 years ago then I
expect them to think more and move less. I've not yet found a consistent
supply of mechanics that can stop thinking and work more, or stop working and
think more.

For me the task at hand is to figure out who does what and what they will do
when put on a project and how they will do it in interaction with each other.
People refuse to be turned into commodities and will do the damndest things.
I never have two jobs the same and often dream what it would be like to have
an "easy" job of doing something like caulking windows and nothing but
caulking. Every job I do is new, and or with new people, and or with a new
day in a new place. Never twice the same problem. Most often I tell everyone
on a crew that when we get finished we will know what we are doing and never
get to do it again.

It is a different model I have to use than the one that views construction
solely as an allocation of commodity resources of materials and labor. In
fact, a great deal of my time is spent trying to get mechanics and team
members to adjust their perspectives to realize that "production" in the
terms of get-it-done-quickly, is not the primary objective.

The more thinking mechanics you apply to a project the more costly it will be
-- particularly if they are not suited to the task. I have no qualms about
assigning mindless labor where mindless labor is what is needed.

So, this greenhorn site super we have been playing with gets a bug that if
she brings in more work it will save her indebted post-college skin, instead
of just getting done what she has been assigned (unwarranted thinking), and
she contacts the embassy of the Afrikan nation nextdoor to her job, the place
that open-pit barbecues goat in the parlor and had two feet of water & feces
floating in the basement because they did not know their toilet line was
broke... to do some roof repairs. They proceed to call us avery fifteen
minutes all morning for their "small" job. In the mean time, she calls me up
and wants to know if she gets a commission for bringing in work. I'd rather
lay her off than put up with wasting time all morning with this guy calling
about a roof I could not give a rat's ass about while I am concerned, and
dealing with, stuff that I do care about. Then we find out it is maybe so
small it should be her side job, and I got to think through how her
moonlighting will bite us in the ass when she goes and does the work and gets
hurt or whatever and the embassy, a nation not beholden to pay it's bills,
decides she is after all our employee and represented herself as from the
company.

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