The world of Validation is made up of PREVENT-DETECT-CORRECT. The high calling is Prevent. If you do a good job of Prevent with a minimum of last minute shoe-string catches (Correct) then you will Make it Look Easy.

When you Make it Look Easy:

You bring results with a minimum of exceptions to meeting requirements. You bring data which you don’t have to explain. You have time to talk about finesse and continuous improvement and how to make things even better. You are accomplishing incredibly difficult things with seeming ease. Sully Sullenberger. Joe Montana. Anton Chigurh. Ayerton Senna in the rain.

So, the Exhortation: When I tell a team mate “Make it Look Easy”, I’m sending him or her off with commanders’ intent to accomplish a long complex series of tasks, dependent on a matrix team, including people who are senior in years and experience to them, at labs, tier 1 suppliers and in the internal engineering team.

A Parable

Imagine you are invited to a meeting to show status to a Chief Engineer. Two teams (A and B) are scheduled into the same time slot, each is to show progress and risk.

Team A brings 8 people and reams of PowerPoint slides. Their story is long and sad, lots of late items, items that require deviation to standard, recovery plans and risk items. They get invited to a follow up meeting / beating.

Team B sends one guy. (1) Team B reports all is on time, except for one item that finishes on the day of the deadline; a small amount of meeting time is spent describing the one close-to-deadline item and how it is being managed. Since there is plenty of meeting time left, the Team B guy talks through what is being done to make sure it will never happen again. Team B made it look easy! (2)

1. The Team B manager tags along to catch random incoming from Chief Engineers (who sometimes need to show the size of their “personality”). PS: It could be Team B Guy or Gal, the person who did the work and therefore needs the exposure and credit.
2. Was it easy? Nope. Cal Ripken turning a double. Ted Williams stroking one out. Patrick Mahomes dropping it into a moving basket from 40 yards away. Insert cliché here for a person or team that worked hard to develop their craft, strategy, contingencies. It was Training, preparation, relationship building, teamwork and Prevention.

Make it Look Easy: Bullets

Study the Game / Know the Playbook / Train and Practice

Deming: Institute Training on the Job. Training never stops. Training isn’t just sitting through webinars or live lectures. Training includes practice. Training includes case studies or exercise. Training makes you ready to execute and more ready to course correct. Training requires a buddy system; new guy needs a ‘swim buddy’. A great team has strengths that are distributed. A great team helps each other by complementing weaker areas.

The first step is transformation of the individual. This transformation is discontinuous. It comes from understanding of the system of profound knowledge. The individual, transformed, will perceive new meaning to his life, to events, to numbers, to interactions between people.”

Once the individual understands the system of profound knowledge, he will apply its principles in every kind of relationship with other people.

Deming / The New Economics

Practice makes perfect, or rather “Perfect Practice Makes Perfect” (Lombardi).

I shall punish thy bodies because the more thou sweatest in training, the less thou bleedest in combat. (Marcinko)

Plan-Anticipate-Prevent

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, Chief of Staff, Prussian army, World War 1

So, there is always a plan, it is usually from a template, your job is to modify the plan to be efficient, to conform to reality of time and budget (resources) and to allow recovery from Adversity.

You need to Anticipate what can go wrong based on risk. Risk can arise from technical difficulty, logistics, relationships, past experience with a supplier or a manufacturing location. Anticipation means that you know what to do / how to react when the plan goes off course. Jocko Willink calls it “Preemptive Ownership” (Leadership Strategy and Tactics, 1st Ed., P 103.)

Prevent is continuous. Anticipate is followed by prevention. What is supposed to happen next week? Are we Ready? Have we talked through what can go wrong with the next activity? Do we have backup? It won’t look easy if we have to scramble every day. Be a point guard in basketball. Be a catcher in baseball. Stay ahead of the play, what is the opposition going to do, how can we counter it?

On Time Start

Easy. Don’t monitor event finish times, obsessively protect starts. What is starting this week? Are we ready? Do we have tools / parts / equipment / requirements / technicians / lab space? Can I come see while we have time to recover missing parts of the plan?

Execute / React / Get After It (TN1)

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Execute means, you’ve prepared, checked, double checked, been to visit, saw the start and NOW have to keep your eye on the ball as the play moves ahead.

React means that you are able to solve issues on the fly and keep the plan on track.

Get After it / TN1 is you being patiently aggressive, projecting the urgency of not letting things slip.

We used to talk of a ‘call tree‘ which means: Test Stand Stops at 11PM on Superbowl Sunday. Who knows? Who will they call at the lab? Who will the lab call at the Tier 1? Who at the Tier 1 will call the OE? What is the OE plan? Validation Calls Release, Leadership is Notified of new risk, parts and solutions are carried forward, test restarts the next morning?

Note about TN1: TN1 (Trust No-One) seems very anti-team, anti-collaboration and (by definition) anti trust. TN1 is a meme that says, make sure you are on point with data, that all are comfortable with. The Tier 1 is comfortable with requirements and timing, the OE has excellent line of site and communication about progress, timing and results.

Finish

Celebrate

On-time with Excellence is a good feeling, it’s a win. Don’t forget to give credit, take credit and celebrate the team. Celebrate on the run means that the next battle is coming. There is no rest. The easy day was yesterday.

Document

Report the results, could be pro-forma reports for archive, could be reports of results for regulations / compliance.

After Action

Stop, take a breath and document: All of the reaction / recovery / actions need to be reconciled. Why did they happen? What could have been done to make it look easie(r)?

Start Over

PDCA. IDDOV. DMAIC. All of the acronyms say, start over, from a better place than before, and Make it Look Easy (again).

Feedback Needed: How did I do?

Not sure if this hit the mark? If I slapped you on the shoulder and sent you on a mission and said “Make it Look Easy?”, would you know what I meant? Would you know how to act?