What's So Great About Duct Tape

(C) iStock

"Duct tape is not a perfect solution to anything. But with a little creativity, in a pinch, it's an adequate solution to just about everything."

 —Jamie Hyneman 

The lists are extensive when you search the Internet and inquire about the possible uses of duct tape, a product originally developed for the military. 

Applying duct tape to the bottom of furniture with the adhesive side facing up creates temporary sliders, protecting floors from scratches.

That same material offers a creative and temporary bug trap to keep pests away from your home. What about taping a small hole in a shed roof to keep water out?  

Or covering an accessible splinter with duct tape and then gently pulling it out to remove the wood or fiberglass. Fixing a cracked plastic or a split in your office chair. Even keeping the cover on a worn leather Bible. 

Duct tape can be used just about anywhere, except on air ducts, since these need to withstand temperature fluctuations, according to HVAC contractors.

A successful failure

One of the more ingenious uses of duct tape occurred during the Apollo 13 moon-landing mission, which ultimately failed to reach the lunar surface. 

Apollo 13, made famous by the Oscar-winning movie of the same name, starring Tom Hanks, launched on April 11, 1970. The Apollo spacecraft consisted of two independent spacecraft joined by a tunnel: the Orbiter Odyssey and the Lander Aquarius. That design would prove pivotal for Commander James Lovell (March 25, 1928-August 27, 2025), Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise (November 14, 1933-), and Command Module Pilot John "Jack" Swigert (August 30, 1931-December 27, 1982). 

In documenting the Apollo 13 flight, Dr. Elizabeth Howell reports that a fire ripped through one of Odyssey's oxygen tanks and damaged another. "Oxygen fed the fuel cells in the spacecraft, so power was also reduced," Dr. Howell notes. "Fortunately, the spacecraft Aquarius — designed to land on the Moon — was still in working order."

But Aquarius didn't have a heat shield, so it wouldn't survive re-entry back to Earth. The crew crammed themselves into Aquarius — designed for two people, not three — and began the long, cold journey home.

"Without a source of heat, cabin temperatures quickly dropped to near freezing. Food became inedible. Water was rationed to cool the hardware down," says Kimberly Hickcock, a free-lance science writer. "In the hours before splashdown, the exhausted crew scrambled back over to the Odyssey and powered it up." 

The astronauts are saved — by duct tape

The New York Times reported that the day after astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert returned to Earth on April 17, 1970, near Samoa, President Richard Nixon awarded NASA's mission operations team the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

In his remarks, President Nixon singled out Ed Smylie and his deputy, James Correale. 

Why these two engineers among the 60-member team?

Smylie was at home on the evening of April 13 when Jack Swigert, not James Lovell (as in the movie), radioed mission control with this famous (and frequently misquoted) line: "Uh, Houston, we've had a problem."

The engineer responsible for safety was aware of the issue with the astronauts' retreat to the Lunar Excursion Module. Designed for two astronauts, three humans would generate lethal levels of carbon dioxide, Smylie thought.

To survive, the astronauts would have to refresh the canisters of lithium hydroxide that absorb the poisonous gases in Aquarius. 

Smylie and the other engineers have less than two days to invent a solution using materials already onboard the spacecraft, a crisis depicted in Ron Howard's 1995 blockbuster film.

A printout of supplies included two lithium hydroxide canisters, plastic bags used for garments, cardboard from the cover of the flight plan, and a roll of gray duct tape, according to the Times.

"That's where we were. We had duct tape, and we had to tape it in a way that could hook the environmental control system hose to the command module canister," Smylie said in an Apollo 13 documentary, XIII, produced in 2001. "Command module canisters were square, and lunar modules were round. You can't put a square peg in a round hole, and that's what we had."

The astronauts followed the mission control instructions, and the adapter, using duct tape, worked. They could breathe safely in the lunar module for two days as they awaited the appropriate trajectory to fly the hobbled command module home.

A simple product and a humble man

The proverb "Tools require someone who knows how to use them" is apt here. The value is not in the tool but in the knowledge and skill of the user.

The same was true for Ed Smylie, who passed away in May of this year at the age of 95.

A graduate of Mississippi State University with bachelor's and master's degrees, Smylie applied for a job at the space agency in Houston, Texas, upon hearing President John F. Kennedy announce plans to send astronauts to the Moon. Smylie eventually became chief of the crew systems division, which was responsible for the life-sustaining equipment used by Apollo astronauts in space. 

As to his quick response with lives at stake, "If you're a Southern boy, if it moves and it's not supposed to, you use duct tape," he said during the documentary, always playing down his ingenuity and role in saving the Apollo 13 crew.

"We would have died had their solution not worked," Fred Haise said in an interview. "I don't know what more you can say about that."

Sometimes complex problems are solved with simple solutions and the tools at our disposal. Such was the case with Apollo 13.

In frigid conditions nearly 240,000 miles from home, astronauts Lovell, Haise, and Swigert were thankfully reminded by NASA engineers why there's something great about duct tape.

Strategist.com

© Bredholt & Co.

 

The Last Mile Strategy

"All endeavour calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil."

--Henry David Thoreau

The term "last mile" or "kilometer," metaphorically speaking, is familiar to those in the cable television industry or supply chain management. But, for cable, it's about getting the end user's service.    

Supply chains are set up to move goods from transportation hubs to final destinations (e.g., UPS, FedEx, Amazon).

The big jab

More recently, the last mile concept is being applied to getting Covid-19 vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and now Johnson & Johnson manufacturing plants into arms. AstraZeneca is approved in the European Union, U.K., and other countries but not the U.S.

Moderna vaccine. (C) ABC News

As of this posting, more than 245 million doses have been administered across 107 countries. The latest rate is 6.79 million doses per day. In the U.S., more Americans have received at least one dose than tested positive for the virus since the pandemic began. According to the Bloomberg Tracking site, 76.9 million doses have been given. In the last week, an average of 1.82 million daily doses were administered.  

Regarding government agencies, the four stages of the vaccine process are authorization; prioritization; allocation; and distribution. Finally, after much trial and error, the last mile of the vaccine strategy, vaccination, is catching up with the first mile. 

"Complexity is the enemy of speed," someone said. However, obstacles, such as accessibility to the shots, are being unraveled with real-time experience. 

Why?

Because the learning is in the doing, even tackling variants of the original coronavirus.    

Every day, healthcare officials, private enterprises, and volunteers are figuring out how to turn this unparalleled collaborative venture into a workable solution. Of course, there's a long way to go, but progress, not a success, is the better measuring stick. 

The last part of the last mile, jabs in arms, is up to the individual with the final say in this emergency supply chain. Keep that in mind the next time your organization launches anything.

Landing on Mars

NASA successfully landed its fifth robotic rover on Mars Thursday, 18 February 2021. Perseverance touched down at 3:55 p.m. E.T.  

Launched on 30 July 2020 on an Atlas V-541 rocket from Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, Perseverance traveled 293 million miles to reach the red planet surface of Mars. The ability to explore other planets is made possible by the Ingenuity helicopter (drone), which is part of the mission.

Getting to Mars with help from a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket and interplanetary cruise stage was one thing, but slowing down from 12,100 miles per hour to a soft 1.7 mph at landing is another.

What about the last mile?

Perseverance landing on Mars. (C) NASA

The rover’s landing featured the typical “seven minutes of terror” that NASA engineers describe in any spacecraft attempt to land on Mars. That’s when it takes to enter the Martian atmosphere and descend to the surface. It’s named as such because it takes 11 minutes for any communication to travel from the rover back to Earth--meaning the time delay requires that the spacecraft and rover perform the landing autonomously.

Row, row, row your boat.

News reports confirm that Jasmine Harrison from the U.K. is now the youngest woman to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

It took 70 days, three hours, and 48 minutes to row across the Atlantic Ocean--a 3,000-mile journey from the Canary Islands of the northwest coast of Africa to the Caribbean Islands of Antigua.  

At 21, Ms. Harrison is the youngest to row solo across an ocean. Her boat is 23 feet long, weighs about a ton, and includes a small cabin and a bunker that she slept in.

She says that navigating on her iPad or phone, which broke during the trip, was easy because she was heading straight west.

Jasmine Harrison crossing the Atlantic Ocean.
(C) The Times

It wasn’t all smooth sailing: Harrison capsized twice. The first time, a rough wave hit the side of the boat, sending her overboard until another wave flung her back on deck. She says this experience didn’t shake her.

And the last mile?

Two days before she completed the journey, a more significant wave flew her into the cabin seat. Again, Harrison hurt her head, lower back, and elbow, making it challenging to bend her arm to row.

"At that point, I was kind of glad about the capsize because it made me want to actually then finish," she says. "I was ready to finish and say goodbye to the ocean." 

The end game

 When it comes to a last-mile strategy for businesses or nonprofits--

• Avoid false starts. They ripple through a system all the way to the end.

• Don't celebrate too soon. Outcomes become more apparent only as we get near that last mile.

• Identify a point person to be responsible for last-mile execution. To paraphrase, a successful launch has many sponsors, but poor results are an orphan. 

• Build flexibility into the organizational culture since it's better to bend than break.  

• Use positive and negative feedback from frontline workers and consumers to adjust the strategy. 

• What emerges is often better than what's planned. A healthy ego can live with that idea.

Strategist.com

© Bredholt & Co.

  

 

The Core Idea

"Human history is, in essence, a history of ideas."

--H. G. Wells

Geologists estimate that 3,200 miles beneath our feet lies a "Solid Inner Core" of the Earth made up of iron whose diameter is 70% the size of the moon. (Red)     

There are three other layers of the Earth:  

-A "Liquid Outer Core" the size of Mars. (Gold)

-A "Mantle" 1,800 miles thick composed of different kinds of rock making up 84% of the Earth's total volume. (Olive)

-The layer closest to the surface is called the "Crust," also composed of rock representing 1% of the Earth's volume. (Gray)

(C) NASA

If you cut the Earth in half, like an apple, you would see the solid Inner Core, Liquid Outer Core, mantle, and Crust.  

With a surface as hot as the sun, the Solid Inner Core is a source of creativity, energy, and selective destruction. Spinning faster than the Earth itself, it leads, not follows, even though it is hidden from view.    

What's a core idea?

Big and small organizations that consistently accomplish their aims do so with a simple idea that shapes and drives the enterprise.     

Take UPS, for example.  

Founded in 1907 as American Messenger Company by two teenage boys, James Casey, and Claude Ryan, with a $100 loan, the business prospered by providing the best service at the lowest rates. Because cars were scarce, reliable and courteous teenagers were hired to deliver telegraph messages, pharmacy orders, and groceries to homes around the Seattle, Washington, area on foot and bicycles.

That was the core idea.

More than a century later, Atlanta-based UPS partnered with FEDEX in the U.S. to ship 2.9 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to mitigate against COVID-19. That may have been the most critical pharmacy delivery of all time.      

As it lives and breathes

Clarity on a business or nonprofit concept comes from a critical mass of employees making the idea come alive. Those same individuals are also stewards of the organization's spirit and aspirations. Having "culture carriers" throughout the system is an informal way of socializing new associates and advancing institutional knowledge.  

Trusted individuals who lead by example often produce better HR outcomes than formal mentoring and development programs. Healthy working relationships, clear expectations, and comprehensible goals also underpin the successful execution of strategy.  

The research also notes that the core and identity have an interdependent relationship. Combined, they are central and enduring, distinguishing the enterprise from its peers. (Albert and Whetten, 1985)  For identity to be clear, the core must be clear, especially as it is reinterpreted and reimagined for an emerging workplace and world.  

It's the serious qualities of a firm, such as wisdom and good judgment, that resist bad change and accept good change. Anything goes wrong if there is an absence of honesty and moral courage in an organization's leadership.   

Rethinking the core

"... no humanly constructed core idea or business endures forever in its original form."

The data in consulting libraries show that organizations often fail to take advantage of the full potential of their primary business. If you do not get enough of what it already makes, the next move is to abandon the core and chase after someone else's ideas.     

Eventually, someone holds up a mirror and discovers those borrowed ideas don't fit. Management only sees the error of its ways in retrospect. Unfortunately, it's too late for some, while others are fortunate to get another chance.

Writing in Scientific American, Claude J. Allgre and Stephen H. Schneider remind us that the Earth and its atmosphere are continuously altered. "Plate tectonics shift the continents, raise mountains, and move the ocean floor. Constant change has characterized Earth since its beginning some 4.5 billion years ago." 

Similarly, no humanly constructed core idea or business endures forever in its original form.  

Why?  

Over time, the assumptions on which the organization has been built (environment, mission, capabilities) and is being run no longer fit reality. ("Theory of the Business" by Peter F. Drucker)

As a management practice, UPS periodically updated its assumptions, building on a stable core with a disruptive edge. From bicycles to drones and back to bicycles. Delivering messages to managing sophisticated supply chains. Over 5,000 independently owned UPS Stores are franchised by the corporate parent in the U.S., Puerto Rico, and Canada.

The company has existed for 114 years but has resisted the aging process by maintaining its original values of reliability, high ethical standards, and close customer relationships.

Is this a good time to revisit your assumptions and where the core business should go?

Management writer Dr. Chris Zook, who studies core structures, offers strategic questions--

1. How do you know when your core needs to change in some fundamental way?

2. How do you determine what the new core should be?

3. How do you measure the vitality that remains--is the energy exhausted, or does it still have legs?

4. How profitable are your customers, and how loyal are you?  

Remaking commerce

Makeovers have a high failure rate —some say as high as 70% (McKinsey & Company)—because businesses tend to travel great distances seeking success in unfamiliar territory (Microsoft and Nokia). Those in the 30% who succeed stay close to home (Disney and Pixar).  

What do they discover?

Hidden assets.

"The real question," says Dr. Zook, "is how to open management's eyes to the hidden assets in its market. How to mine the treasure that's within their reach."    

Planning ahead

Coronavirus is doing something to your employees and customers. The full impact remains to be seen. In the meantime, here are additional questions to consider as you think about the future--

o     What's your core idea and business?

o     What's worth keeping in the core?
o     What needs changing or remaking?

o     Are current customers aging out?

o     Where will you find new customers? 

Strategist.com 

© Bredholt & Co.

·