Tough and Competent, or: Ad Astra per Aspera

For some time, I had a badly drawn image of the Apollo 1 Command Module on my desk. I recently replaced it when I needed a badge design to upskill myself with the library's badge maker. Instead of a poorly drawn image, I now have a home-made badge using the official mission insignia.

I've been slightly obsessed with the Apollo 1 mission ever since I first read about it. You may be more familiar with Apollo 11 (landed on the moon) and Apollo 13 (had a movie with Tom Hanks), and maybe Apollo 17 (last manned mission to the moon), but Apollo 1 was the first manned Apollo mission. Then they had a bunch of unmanned missions and tests before having the second manned mission with Apollo 7.

Why such a long gap between manned missions? Because Apollo 1 was a death trap. All three astronauts were killed in a systems test before they even got close to launch.

The Command Module of Apollo 1 (which I had badly sketched to keep on my desk) was riddled with problems. It had faulty wiring, flammable materials and a badly designed hatch that couldn't be easily opened from the inside if it was under pressure. As it turns out, the hatch couldn't be easily opened from the outside either, if the inside was on fire. 

They pumped the thing with oxygen for the "plugs-out" test, then an exposed bit of wire overheated and the interior of the module went up in flames. Then, thanks to the poor hatch design, they couldn't get out of the module to escape the fire.

They also couldn't call for help, because the comms system was faulty and kept cutting out. The patchy recording of the crew's last words included the phrase "How are we going to get to the Moon if we can't talk between two or three buildings?"

Why did I keep a drawing of this death trap on my desk? Why do I now have the mission patch as a badge?

Because every single one of the faults that lead to the deaths of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger B. Chaffee were noticed before the test. They knew each and every one of these problems (and many more besides) existed, individually, prior to trapping these three men in a tiny fire bomb.

No one took the time to fix them, because there were budgets and deadlines to meet. And no one made sure you could get out of the module if something went wrong, because everyone just assumed nothing would go wrong.

This disaster, and the knowledge that it was entirely preventable if people just took the time to fix the little isolated problems when they noticed them, lead to Gene Kranz, the Chief Flight Director of Mission Control, making the following speech:

“Space flight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity and neglect. Somewhere, somehow we screwed up. It could have been a design in build or in test, but whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung-ho about the schedule, and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work.

“Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily. Nothing we did had any shelf life. Not one of us stood up and said, 'Damnit. Stop.'

“I don’t know what the Thompson Committee will find as the cause, but I know what I find. We are the cause. We were not ready. We did not do our job. We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day when, in our hearts, we knew it would take a miracle. We were pushing the schedule and betting that the Cape would slip before we did.

“From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words, 'tough’ and 'competent.' 

"Tough means we will forever be accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control, we will know what we stand for.

“Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect."

 "Tough and Competent."

Tough means we will not compromise when it comes to our responsibilities, competent means we will not fall short in our knowledge and skills.

I have this reminder of Apollo 1 floating around to remind me that I should try to take care of a problem when I see it. I should make sure that, when I do a job, I should make a point of doing a good job. 

I know nothing I do will ever be perfect. I know I'm not capable of doing perfect work – and I'm especially not capable of single handedly changing an organisational culture that is far from "tough and competent"... But...

But insofar as it's within my ability to do so, I should strive to be tough and competent. Insofar as it's in my ability to do so, I should encourage the people I work with and work for to be tough and competent.

It's easy to forget this when you have deadlines and budgets to meet, and when some of the problems you notice aren't yours to fix, and some of the jobs you have to do are outside of your current abilities.

Sure, no one is going to die in a fireball if I let something slide, but I expect whoever didn't get around to checking they'd removed the nylon from inside the Command Module before the plugs-out test didn't expect a tragic outcome either.

No harm comes from doing a good job.

Yes! And...

It took me a ridiculously long time to understand the point of "Yes, And..."

I didn't get it at all when I was in school and my drama teacher was trying to get us to learn improv skills.

I didn't really get it at university, where I was studying to be a drama teacher (gods save us).

I barely got it when I was a drama teacher, and certainly didn't understand it well enough to teach it to my students (one of many reasons why I'm not a drama teacher today).

It wasn't until after I became a librarian and found a book on Improv Skills in the library I was working in that it all clicked into place. And, like many things that should be self evident, it was both a life-changing revelation and an embarrassing "well, duh!" moment.

"Yes, And...", for those of you who haven't been introduced to the joys of Improv, is an improvisational technique, but also the name of a Theatre Sports "game" that is designed to teach that technique. 

In this game, whenever anyone says anything, the other person is supposed to reply with "Yes, and..." and then say something that builds on what the other person said:

"Isn't it a lovely day today?"
"Yes, and the whether forecast is looking very promising for the weekend."
"Yes, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the football match."

"That person just shot a gorilla!"
"Yes, and not before time – that escaped gorilla was about to climb the Empire State building."
"Yes, and it would be dreadful to have to get the biplanes in."

"I really wish I hadn't watched that horror film straight after eating all that weird street food."
"Yes, and I really wish I wasn't sitting next to you at the time."

That's the game. In Improve, the principle of  "Yes, And..." is essentially the same, but you don't actually have to say the words "Yes, and..." You just have to keep going in the spirit of what has gone before:

"My goodness, Jack, you look like you've been dragged backwards through a hedge!"
"I was! A Hawthorn! By a Sasquatch!"
"Oh, no, don't tell me Benny's back in town?"

The fundamental idea of "Yes, And..." is that you just accept whatever reality has been offered to you and riff on it without hesitation – and offer the other players in the improv something to build on and riff with in return. It requires a complete lack of defensiveness and an open-handed generosity, with the understanding that your pride isn't at all important, but the flow of the story is.

Whatever the other person says to you, you're all in. Whatever character is suggested to you, that's who you are – no questions asked. Whatever offer is made, you accept whole-heartedly, without any ego.

Which is, of course, why high school students struggle with it so much. All teenagers instinctively feel very embarrassed at all times, and they want to try to protect themselves from anything that might threaten the appearance they want to present to the world. Teenagers and youths instinctively want to control the narrative, so they can control how people see them. 

In addition to this, conversations amongst teens and youths have a tendency to become combative. In a good Improv, the conversation is a volley and the aim is to keep it going for as long as possible while making it interesting for the audience. But most kids can't engage in a conversation as a game without trying to "win" by scoring points off your "opponents".

A good improve is supportive. You carry the rest of your team through it because you want everyone to be able to shine. Sometimes, for the sake of an amusing performance, this involves making at least one person an unfortunate clown. But this should never be done out of malice – only for the sake of the story. If everyone knows that they are safe, then they can play the clown happily without feeling like they are being attacked.

Because that's the point of "Yes, And...": to know that you are all part of the same team, and whatever ball you throw, you are throwing to a member of your team, and whatever ball is thrown in your direction is something you should catch and play, for the good of the team. And because we all have each other's back, we know to throw the balls in good faith, and to catch them with good grace.

Which is one of many reasons why I'm ashamed that it took me so long to understand the point of "Yes, And..." It's a principle I try to live by, these days – to varying degrees of success, it must be said, but I'm working on it.

My Job Still Doesn't Exist

 I was cleaning up some comments on this blog when one of them lead me to an old post from 2009:

My Job Doesn't Exist

In this post, I talked about how my job is almost entirely made up: I teach people to use things that they only need to use because I told them these things exist and they should use them. In the post I mentioned several tools that no longer exist - I'd completely forgotten they existed, to be honest, and we don't miss them. I wonder how many of the tools I teach people to use today will be forgotten relics of a brief period of time in the near future?

Almost 15 years later, I'm still teaching people to use tools they only need because we tell them they exist, but with slight variations. Instead of "training a unicorn to fly a spaceship", I'm now teaching people what they should now about flying spaceships with unicorns, so they understand the principles and can better adapt to the new spaceships they may encounter in the future and the legendary creatures that might be flying them.

But... 

Teaching transferable skills is all well and good, but - as I have bemoaned many a time - if these skills aren't transferable to a post-apocalyptic wasteland, then what's the good of them?

After the "something that happened", will we need to know how to use a database that uses boolean operators? I doubt it. Will we need a plumber? Yes.

If I run away from this job and move to a quaint sea-side town with a population of 20 farmers, 10 fisher folk and a vet, will these people need me to teach them how to use EndNote? Probably not. Could they do with someone who can make cupcakes and coffee? That's more likely.

What I do isn't real. I don't make anything real.

I need to learn how to bake bread. Bread is real. People will always need bread.

Photo by Mae Mu on Unsplash

Patronage

In this day and age, modern business parlance tends to use the words "customer" and "patron" interchangeably.  At some point, I expect, someone decided that "patron" sounded nicer than "customer", and businesses should call all of their customers "patrons" to make them feel special.

As is the way of things, using "patron" for every day customers didn't make customers more special, it just made the word "patron" less special.  That's the way the language works.

But there is a difference between a customer and a patron, and this was brought home to me the other night when I walked up the street to buy some food.

My family used to eat fish and chips quite regularly, but we've scaled back on our take-away consumption, and we now buy it roughly once or twice a year rather than once or twice a month.  When I walked up the street to by some fish and chips recently, the shop wasn't there.

In hindsight, I think it hasn't been there for at least a month, because the last time we bought take away we phoned the shop to put in an order, but the number didn't work so I dropped in to a different place on the way home instead.  I didn't frequent the shop enough to know exactly when it shut down.

I was a customer of that shop, but I was not a patron.

You see, a customer buys things, but a patron supports. A patron goes out of their way to buy things from that person. The patron of an artist or artisan commissions work from that artist/artisan in order to make sure they can still work, pay bills and live. The patron of a business makes a point of buying things from that business to keep the business viable.

I didn't patronise* that business.  I liked having it in my neighbourhood, I wanted it to be there when I needed it, but I didn't make a point of giving them regular custom.  That's what they needed from me.  It's what they needed from everyone in our neighbourhood.

If every person in the neighbourhood who wanted the shop to survive just made the point of buying one thing from that shop once a week, the shopkeepers would have made a decent living and it would still be there.

The trouble is that we're not really patrons anymore.  We're customers - and pretty mercurial (and mercenary) customers at that.  We'll give our money to whoever will offer us the cheapest deal - even if, in the long run, it doesn't benefit us, our neighbours or our community at all.

We congratulate ourselves for getting things cheaper elsewhere.  Or for keeping our money to ourselves and trying to get something for free.

The real trouble is that the relationship between a patron and their patronee is different to that between a business and their customer.  There is a tacit agreement that the patron is willing to pay good money for good work, so the patronee will do their best work for their patron.

Without that relationship - without people agreeing to care about each other, support each other, and provide each other with their best - what do we have left?  Businesses trying to get the most money out of customers who want to pay the least money - and nothing good can come of that.

It's worth taking the time to think about what it means to be a patron, and to make a point of patronising the things we want to keep in our communities - the local shops, artists, craftspeople and sporting clubs.

It is, quite literally, for the best.



*From the OED:
 a. trans. Of a person, class, organization, etc.: to act as a patron towards, to extend patronage to (a person, cause, etc.); to protect, support, favour, or encourage.