Awesomeness

I feel like I have metamorphosed into a meeting moth. Each of the major initiatives debated last week has had a blue-ribbon, follow-up committee chartered with coming up for a presentation on Monday. The scope: things we’ll do all of next year. We’re lean, except we’re waterfall: let’s have 100% certainty before we take a risk.

There are three initiatives of interest:

1) Retooling El Jefe’s organization. I get to present this one. While I’ve managed to have steam coming out my ears, I still need to come up with an eloquent proposal. I won’t talk about it right now.

2) Determine what we want to do with our existing rental property. The McMansion has been a nice revenue source, but it needs constant maintenance. We put on a new roof last year. This year was earthquake retrofitting and a security system. There’s a bunch of other major stuff we could do, but frankly, I’m fucking tired of big ticket items. I’m hoping to get away with just installing a new dishwasher. And a bright red beanbag chair.

I’m unsure about the future of the property because the neighborhood’s growth has slowed as the population has aged. With Cliff’s retirement looming, and a possibility he might sell, I am having a hard time justifying further major renovations.

3) Getting serious about being in the plumbing business. It’s generally agreed that this could be a large thing. It’s also the biggest unknown. I think a lot of people have not realized that there will be volumes of custom work done unique to each job. Sales says customers are leery of replacing their subsystem without some assurance the new one will work much better. Makes sense. It’s thus been suggested that we “eat our own dog food” by building a working demo model.El Jefe, the guy who can’t keep his attention focused for more than two nanoseconds, seems giddy about undertaking the largest, highest risk projects without a sense of return. In El Jefe’s mind, that would be building an entire McMansion right next door to our existing one.

I think we ought to look at building a modest home in another neighborhood. Because I work 50+ hours a week being a meeting moth, I have some idea where to build, but I don’t have enough information on what kind of facility that should be. It seems reasonable to do enough to show people, get feedback, then finish it out. Or I may be making crazy talk.

Here’s the assumptions I am working with:

• We think plumbing is a growth opportunity.
• Customers want proof our plumbing works.
• We don’t want to spend much more in the existing neighborhood.

El Jefe seems to have these additional goals:

• If we build plumbing with copper pipe, we need to add stainless steel and glass, because some people have asked for this. Instead, I recommend we finish learning how to work with copper.
• If we’re going to build a demo, let’s build the biggest, fucking complex one possible to maximally test all permutations of plumbing. Instead, I recommend working minimally. Why build a push-pull evacuation system when a gravity drain works fine?
• Since we know what our rental property looks like now, let’s build one exactly like it. Right next door! Instead, I recommend we build a small prototype, then shop it around, letting prospects tell us what else and where they want it.

El Jefe sends me a PowerPoint deck outlining the (his) goals. Knowing he was going to have his guys spend time estimating how long and how much it would cost to build the Taj Mahal, I spent a quick burst of time counter-proposing a more pragmatic “Little House on the Prairie.” Since he doesn’t really know what a house is, I made up a completely different name (”raptor”) for it. I don’t like the name, but I have finally gotten that awful earworm, “Chocolate Rain,” out of my system.

I know he received it, because he apparently liked the name. I was drawn to a series of other meetings for my initiative. When I finally finished, I am getting all sorts of wild-assed estimates from his crew for the Taj. The estimated damage is 14 - 16 man years, or about two million dollars in actual construction time, plus nine months doing absolutely nothing else. When we’re done, we’d get to compete with ourselves with a building equally sized, but with better paint.

Now here’s where his Awesomeness Comes In. El Jefe told his crew he needed all of these data by 3pm. He did not mention until people had already left, that he himself was going home at 1:45. Not only that, he never communicated what his actual plan was. I think it’s equivalent to a burlap tent, but he’s likely thinking Taj. When I left the office at 5:30 today, there were still people running around worried that El Jefe would be pissed off they were late.

He ain’t fucking going to notice. No one would take me up on my $10 bet that he won’t even bother to read his mail over the weekend.

Monday’s going to be an awesomely interesting meeting. Speaking of awesome…