That Plan Won't Work

Every F16 in the world has to go to a facility at Hill Air Force Base in Utah once a year for maintenance and painting. Several years ago I went to the base to conduct a session about the facility and the painting procedure.

As we went through my sensible design process, where you look at a problem from all 5 senses, people were like, "What? Painting F16s doesn't taste or smell. This is stupid."

In spite of the crew's protests, we went through the five senses anyway, and soon discovered that one of the biggest challenges the crew was facing was thirst. The hangars are huge, 100's of yards long, and there are only a few water fountains, located at the ends of the building. The crew was stuck in their stations doing their jobs. Walking to the water fountains took too long, and people were getting thirsty.

The solution seemed obvious. I said, "Put an engineering order out and have more water fountains installed."

There was an immediate uproar.

"We can't do that! Engineering orders take forever - and we don't have the funding for more water fountains."

Unphased by their negativity, I asked, "Who's the supervisor in the room?"

When the guy raised his hand, I said, "OK, I know you have a $2,500 limit on your credit card because I know how these things work. Go buy 20 Igloo coolers, have maintenance fill them with ice water every morning, and then distribute the coolers around the facility."

My idea certainly wasn't earth-shattering, but the team probably never would have come up with a simple working solution to the problem if they hadn't used the concept of sensible design to think about their process from the perspective of each sense.

Viewing a problem specifically through each sense individually can really break new ground. And the break doesn't have to be earth shattering.

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