Memories from being taken to work with Dad as a kid. He has tool boxes with lots of kit in, spares, nuts and bolts. You never know what you might get and you get the job done with what you got.
I also had a box, of Lego. My tool box for ideas. I always
had more fun adding lots of bits and bobs to it then creating things from my
imagination, using whatever I could find in the big pile of bricks, making do
with what there was. Not as fine looking as the actual toy from the box using
all the parts correctly. But you know, you build that once then see what else
you can do.
And now it seems that’s how I approach most things at work.
I make do with what I got and get the job done to keep the shows on the road. I
feel like I work with lots of imperfect systems but use the tool box of
workarounds accrued from years of experience to get the job done. Meanwhile
there always seems to be a new system rolled out to improve things (which
invariably has more flaws!)
I wonder if this obsession with bringing in new systems
instead of fixing things is related to consumer society – buy new and improved
(don’t fix). And does it actually work? Lots of construction sites now seem to
be pre-made bits stuck together on site. In the news seems like the modern
buildings have trouble sticking together!
Could this be due to abstraction? – plans look fine on
computer and should work if follow instructions perfectly. But on the ground
maybe you need someone who sees what’s there, what the problem is and has
enough in the tool box to get it done rather than send back ‘defective’ part
and order a new one.
