The coach, played by Walter Matthau, is named "Buttermaker."
I've referred to "the bad news bears" about a hundred times here at
wheaton labs, and maybe a hundred times in my corporate whore career. It is always when talking to people about managing others. Nearly every manager for all time brings up the fact that the people they have to work with are terrible "If you want me to get this done, you need to give me good people." And my response is that if we had good people to begin with, we would not need a manager.
The function of the manager (or, in the case of the bad news bears, a coach) is to create something awesome with the rather rough materials.
In
another thread, I talked about the idea that:
A Justin does the work of 3 wwoofers
An Andy does the work of 12 wwoofers (4 Justins)
A Beckman does the work of 36 wwoofers (12 Justins)
A Tim does the work of 108 wwoofers (36 Justins)
Suppose we have
gapper named "Ferd". And, left to his own devices, Ferd does the same amount of work as Justin. But then we have a Coach Buttermaker that is running point on projects and now Ferd does the work of 4 Justins. But even more than that: without Coach Buttermaker, Ferd is despondent and isn't really getting much out of being here. But with Coach Buttermaker, life here is awesome.
In
another thread I point out that if the next kickstarter does really well, I would like to hire somebody to run point on our food systems. Somebody that could teach PDCs and workshops and create great video/dvd fodder.
So I created this
thread in a feeble attempt to express this point of how, at this point, the coach-buttermaker-factor may be the most important factor of all. By writing about it, I think this issue/thought/need becomes a little more tangible.