The Four Hour House

I have this random memory from my childhood of my Father coming home one day with this VHS tape (remember, those things you had to rewind before returning them to Blockbuster?) that he was just contagiously ecstatic about. At the time, my dad was a Software Engineer for Nationwide Insurance. I don't know the reason for his having the video - maybe Nationwide was a sponsor of the thing, or maybe it was something that was used as an object lesson. Either way, he had a copy of this 25 minute video called "The Four Hour House" and that night we all sat around the TV and watched it.

Thankfully, due to the magic of the internet, somebody digitized it and uploaded it on YouTube in all of it's late-80s glory. They even gave it a more compelling title: The 4 Hour House: Execution Excellence.

Now grab a beer, sit back, and give this thing 25 minutes of your time and reflect on what you see. Then come back and keep reading...

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Here's what I see:

• some epic hairdos, wardrobe choices, commentary and banter
• a BUNCH of hardworking folks, like an army of people; hustling on every single task, just a veritable swarm of bees
• absolutely heaps of planning, and practicing; in case you cheated and didn't watch, the teams competing each built several practice houses ahead of the day; the PREPARATION required to execute this is incalculable
• vendors - so many vendors - that were fully committed to the effort; you can see this throughout the video, along with the credits at the end - mind you, these guys built fully code-compliant move-in-ready houses, with both teams (spoiler alert) finishing well under the four-hour goal
• more on the vendors - these companies were COMMITTED to the effort; this isn't like when you see some company on a TLC show arrive and drop off some free stuff for a name drop, these vendors were in it for the win and working right alongside the craftsman
• on that note, lots and lots of craftsmanship - hundreds of people who viewed their work as a craft, even as an art form - being given an opportunity to express that in an incredible way
• a high tolerance for calculated risk and pushing things to their working limit; no, in all fairness, even though this was in California, it was the 80s and many of the things you saw happen simply couldn't in today's world (look no further than the cover image of 8 guys catching a ride on a roof as it's being hoisted in to place); but if you look past what we see today as overt risk, what I see is calculated risk; I see experts knowing their equipment and materials and the environment they are in and doing dangerous things carefully and taking calculated risks
• finally, I see EXPERIENCE - especially in the site leadership; it just oozes out of these guys when they are being filmed and interviewed; they are calm, cool, collected - they know what they're doing; and despite the fact that they have never done this task this fast in their entire career, that career has prepared them for this moment and they are just in a state of flow

Last month, Maven Circular had the opportunity to demonstrate what is possible in the world of rapid site startup for one of our clients. Our client asked us to help them open a #recommerce fulfillment site right here in our own backyard, just outside of Columbus, Ohio. This site was to be in service of a new client for them, and was a big step forward in their operational footprint. Exciting, but risky - and because of that risk - we were in a holding pattern until ink was put to paper (well, to be clear, it was a DocuSign - slightly less climactic in the digital age). The point being, we picked a site, we selected vendors, we negotiated a lease - but no contracts would be signed until the primary partner in the deal gave their "John Hancock".

Our client took possession of the site on a Wednesday, and had warehouse staff show-up to work on Monday - as in FOUR DAYS LATER. By noon on that first Monday, that staff was receiving and sorting product - systemically. We performed a thorough scrubbing of the warehouse floor, a deep cleaning of the office, deployed a 5G WAN, built work tables, deployed and charged devices, setup computers, printed labels, even cleaned up the landscaping - all in 96 hours. But beyond that, we brought to bear the full power of our network, a Rolodex of names and numbers and relationships that we have built or acquired, curated, developed and maintained over two decades of working in this industry.

And to be clear, we're not talking about a storage unit or "flex space". We're talking about a 50k square foot warehouse plus office complex, with employees receiving product into a WMS instance, four days after our client got the keys to the building. Pallet jacks, work tables, WiFi network, mobile devices, computers and workstations, even a break area - 96 hours start to finish. How did we do it? The same way that those legends in the aforementioned video built a house in less than 4 hours:

• a BUNCH of help, even beyond just professional relationships; we're talking baby sitters and dog sitters people!
• two months of intense PREPARATION; we had a plan but more than that we had a vision - the key difference is that a vision is flexible, we didn't start with a space, so we needed to have a vision-led plan that could easily be adapted to any facility that met our requirements - and we were simultaneously negotiating multiple sites that were all different
• vendors who were COMMITTED to the effort; vendors who were willing to have some skin in the game and invest some effort up front on a handshake and the promise of a contract - not something you see very often these days
• a finally...EXPERIENCE; it's more than just knowing how to do something, it's the ability to look out beyond the chaos and be still, to just permeate confidence in the face of overwhelming odds, it's knowing when and how hard to push and knowing right where the "edge" is and just exactly how many times you can approach it, stand on it, and push beyond it if needed

Four days boys and girls. From exchange of keys to exchange of high-fives as a brand new staff walks in the door; fully naive to what took place during the preceding 96 hours. The moral of this story? We know how to make shit happen. This is OUR craft. We are helping brands, technologists and operators build the next iteration of the #circulareconomy and sometimes you need a fixer in your corner - that's where #mavencircular comes in.