Lego Tool Box

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.