On Eran Gefen and “half an hour of inspiration”
Eran Gefen is the founder of G^Team, a strategic consulting company that helps managements and CEOs develop new growth engines. Has experience working with leading companies in Israel and around the world, including: Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Kimberly Clark Strauss, Walt and Soda-Stream. A previous company he founded was bought on By Wix. Geffen runs the podcast “Half an Hour of Inspiration” and is the author of the book “Creating Growth – How to Turn Business Creativity into a Work Plan”. This list is based on a chapter from his book.
This list is based on a chapter from the book by Eran Gefen, founder of G^team
A Nazi war machine, a circus tent, a fighter plane, stench and innovation – it all started in the backyard of an industrial plant. They set up a huge circus tent there, but there were no clowns inside, but soldiers armed with automatic weapons at the entrance. And instead of swings, he had a huge and real jet plane hanging in the center of the tent.
These were the terrible days of World War II. The situation at the front was difficult, and the Nazis made good use of the air superiority given to them by the murderous Messerschmitt, which ruled the skies like a bird of prey. The US was still using piper planes with a normal engine at the time, these were days full of black smoke all over the world, from the chimneys in the extermination camps, from the bombings of London and over Pearl Harbor, which meant that the Americans had to find a solution – and now.
The commander of the American Air Force issued a brief order: “A new jet fighter must be produced within 180 days.” He gave this suicide mission to Lockheed Martin, who were already under a heavy load because of the war. They had no available factory space, and no available engineers to assign to the task. It seemed a lost battle beforehand.
But then one of the engineers at Lockheed, a 33-year-old named Kelly Johnson, volunteered for the task. He recruited a small team (a tenth of the usual size) and housed them all together—engineers, designers, draftsmen, and builders—in a resourcefully erected circus tent in Lockheed’s backyard.
The situation was stinking. Not as a phrase – a terrible stench was constantly lingering in the unmoving air, probably as a result of pollution caused by a nearby plastic factory. When they asked the staff who worked there what they were doing, they were not allowed to say, so one day when the phone rang, one of the staff answered as a joke of desperation “Hello, you’ve arrived at Skunk Works”, a nickname that stuck with them ever since and became a name and a concept.
Eran Gefen / Photo: Menachem Reiss
“On the spot”, together and in real time
Even though all the odds were against them, the team was able to make rapid progress. The constraints led Kelly to develop a completely new way of working, the opposite of what was customary at Lockheed. Usually when you build a plane, you do it, naturally, in a very careful way. Before each move, a lot of drawings and plans are made, working hand in hand, in a clear chain of command and control. But in this case, they had to move fast and deliver a fighter jet. The Nazi war machine waited for no one.
Kelly broke all the rules. They obtained an existing British jet engine and began building the aircraft around it, four months before there was a work order or signed contract. Kelly determined that the engineers, draftsmen, and modelers would do it “on the spot,” together and in real time, without Lockheed’s bureaucracy. They created a small and fast feedback ring between the designers, engineers and production wizards, allowing each idea to turn from a pencil sketch to a built model in a few hours. Unlike Lockheed, at Kelly you could see an engineer or draftsman going down to the production floor five times a day, to see what they were doing and go back to the drawing table for a round of corrections. At the same time, you could see simple production workers walking around among the engineers’ drawing tables spread out in the tent and even (mercifully for the foreman) speaking their minds.
Thanks to the flexibility and speed of movement, they were able to build a prototype in a record time of less than 180 days and fly at a speed of 600 miles per hour – 1.5 times faster than the propeller plane that existed up to that time. The first planes were delivered to the United States Army in 143 days. The P – 80 became the United States’ first operational jet aircraft and remained in service for over 40 years. The experience the Air Force gained with this aircraft helped it enter the jet age. Apparently it wasn’t a stinking team after all.
A new method of work
Skunk Works has become the standard approach to running secret projects in the world’s most innovative companies, with the help of special teams. The hallmarks of the Skunk Works project include high quality innovation, within a short time frame and with limited resources. It became the official name of Lockheed’s innovation division, which is still called that today. This is the division that later invented the U2 spy plane and more recently the F35. But more than that, Skunk Works has become a familiar expression, especially in the engineering and hi-tech community, a name synonymous with a secret, small and separate team, which works together in a fast cycle of planning and implementing a murderous schedule – and mainly operates in a different culture from the organization it comes from.
Skunk Works was implemented by Steve Jobs, and the first Macintosh team was housed in a secret, separate building. Jobs personally recruited daring and rebellious designers who shared his belief that “it’s better to be a pirate than join the navy.” IBM also managed such a project, which marked the beginning of its personal computer division, and Microsoft also developed Kinect and Surface tablets and computers in this way.
Skunk Works’ modus operandi is summarized in a list of rules that are fully disclosed on Lockheed Martin’s website. Some of them are suitable only for military projects, but some define a framework that can be applied to any process:
1. Appoint one responsible for all
2. Brutally reduce the staff to the bare minimum
3. Gather them all in one small place
4. Keep out anyone who doesn’t belong
5. Document the work, but not every step
6. Deliver results quickly and continuously
7. Involve the whole team in the big picture
8. Reward performance, not status
Skunk Works actually invented a new method of working. They were more like a jazz band improvising together than a team of engineers building a war machine in a giant corporation. They used all the limitations that landed on them (the lack of time, lack of resources, a small team, a technological challenge and even a lack of physical space) and turned all of these into an opportunity.
That’s why I love doing Skunk Works. This is a method that makes it possible to take organizations and very quickly create new growth engines, and from my experience it brings positive results. What’s more, I warn our customers that this is not suitable for every organization and above all requires a commitment from the CEO in giving “back” to the autonomous team.
So the next time someone tells you about something new that is impossible to do, we don’t have time, money, resources and hard times – tell them: “That’s right, innovation is a stinking thing”. And from there you will dive into the story about the tent with the smell of skunks, where they built a new fighter plane from scratch in less than six months during a world war.
Eran Gefen is the founder of G^Team, a strategic consulting company that helps companies develop new growth engines. He has experience working with CEOs and management of the leading companies in Israel and the world, including Coca Cola, Walt, Microsoft, Strauss and Kimberly Clark. A previous company he founded was purchased by WIX. Geffen runs the podcast “Half an hour of inspiration” and is the author of the book “Creating Growth” – This is how business creativity is turned into a work plan.”