Book: Skunk Works

The other day I got my hands on the copy of "Skunk Works" by Ben R. Rich and Leo Janos (thanks, Lauri!) that describes the internals of a unit of Lockheed that was (and still is) focused on developing high-tech weaponry for various parts of US military. Just breathed it in and have probably already bored everybody to death with quotes from it. This is because the book is just fantastic not only because it describes how some people get to build their own hundred-million-dollar gadgets and send them flying over remote parts of Russia but because it shows how to set up, maintain and sell a extremely efficient team of highly skilled people that spit out a constant flow of staggering innovation. Let's take a look at some of the main points the book makes:

Get isolated, concentrated and focused
Kelly Johnson, the legendary leader and founder of Skunk Works, was an engineer. He was also an autocratic and charismatic leader. The former gave him a very pragmatic mind and the latter the ability to enforce his vision of a perfect engineering environment. In addition, the unit was forced to work under heavy secrecy which lead to physical separation from the rest of the Lockheed organization and a very high clearance overhead for every person added to the team. Also, the premises allocated for the team were spartan to say the least as they were yet to prove its worth. All of this combined led to a very small intimately integrated team following a clear vision in a complete isolation from corporate inertia. Which, in my mind, is the receipt for a perfect task force. I think most of the Skype core functionality is written this way (of course, the guys did not have a large organization to separate from in the beginning but that has all changed now)

Get down and dirty
Designers of the aircraft worked as close as possible to the people actually assembling them. Which meant that any part not fitting, any design flaw and any change could be implemented immediately and both parties got instant feedback from each other. This is the way a system architect should work.

2/3HBS=BS
The author describes how he went to his boss, Kelly, to ask for a recommendation for the Harvard Business School. Kelly says:

... You don't need Harvard to teach you that it is more important to listen than to talk. You can get straight A's from all you Harvard profs, but you'll never make the grade unless you are decisive: even a timely wrong decision is better than no decision. The final thing you'll need to know is don't halfheartedly wound problems - kill them dead. That's all there is to it.

After graduating, Kelly asks Ben for his appraisal of the study and Ben writes down the above equation. Until now I thought that I was the only one finding that my MBA studies did little but confirm what I already had learned from experience and it is good to know much smarter people have got a similar impression from much better schools.

The rules.
The fourteen basic rules Kelly wrote down for the cooperation between Skunk Works and the military. They are too long to quote here but they encapsulate a perfect relationship between a technology contractor and its customer.

Always take two steps
After the U2 had flown over the USSR unscratched for about a year it was clear to Kelly Johnson that eventually the soviets will find a way to shoot it down (it eventually happened three years later) and that whatever improvements were made to it, the hostiles would, again, in a couple of years figure out countermeasures. Ergo, the only sensible thing to do is to take _two_ steps at a time and not one. So he went on and initiated what eventually became the Blackbird. That was 2030s technology in the 1960s. The point is, that you should really think big and not let yourself be hindered what is thought to be impossible.

All in all, the book was a true revelation: I have seen too many management books that are just full of crap. This one says it all on a couple of pages and fills the rest with examples of how it all was applied to create technology that some 40 years later is still to be surpassed. Read it.