Since great leaps and bounds were made with semiconductors
throughout the 70’s and 80’s, all facets
of the design, development, and manufacturing industries
have went from undertaking a few carefully selected
major projects to taking on thousands of different projects
varying in importance. Some may be as serious as the
construction of the next generation of jetliners or
as frivolous as an ultra-cheap DVD player. With high
volume came identifiable patterns of success and failure.
When the cost of a failed project landed somewhere in
the $10 million range you can bet some excitement was
generated. The people who provided the finances for
such a disaster were very interested in the exact why
and how behind it all. From the perspective of the entrepreneurs
and investors, knowing and fully understanding what
it takes to keep a project on track from beginning to
end was a necessity for financial survival – and
with that sense of urgency, confidence men from near
and far flocked to the call.
The technical-industrial explosion of the 80’s
and 90’s was a conman’s dream of all dreams.
Never had so much money been placed in the hands of
so many who were so dumb. Investors gave corporate executives
billions to fund thousands of companies promising to
produce one type of product or another. Many of those
executives knew nothing about the product that was being
designed or manufactured by the company they were attempting
to manage. Conmen recognized this and presented themselves
as “consultants” and “experts”
who could step in and implement a business plan which
would ensure a successful project – for a nominal
fee of course. The conmen knew nothing about project
management, of course. Usually, they just made up a
bunch of catch phrases and elaborate schemes that sounded
wise, but were pure nonsense. A good conman can stand
in front of a room full of victims and make the wackiest
idea seem brilliant. No one knows how many hundreds
of millions (or even billions) the consultant-cons walked
away with, but by the early 90’s it finally began
to dry up.
After being robbed blind for a dozen years straight,
many executives started to get wise to the all-knowing
“consultants” and “experts”.
Some companies noticed that their own engineering or
scientific staff always seemed to strongly disagree
with the “consultants”. From this, the concept
of “engineering authority” and “scientific
authority” was born. In many companies who are
in hi-tech fields, the responsibility for streamlining
and refining the process of product design and manufacturing
now falls on people who are qualified authorities on
the particular subject. This was a radical departure
from the old days of “consultants know best”
and it was the birth of real project management. The
companies who adopted this approach and stuck to it
seem to now dominate their industries. Those who didn’t,
no matter how big they were, have drastically lost market
presence.
I’m sure some of you are wondering what significance
any this has for nationalists. The significance is in
some of the concepts and operating philosophies that
came out of real project management. There are certain
guiding principles that are in no way confined to the
internal workings of a laboratory environment. Many
can be, and have been, applied to nationalist media
projects. Here are some “laws of project management”
that apply to us directly.
Plan the project at several levels of detail. As with
many of these “laws of project management”
it may sound like a no-brainer, but the fact is the
majority of people, even smart people, don’t plan
out a project well enough. Planning at several levels
of detail gives the advantage of being able to clearly
see the project at the top level as well as the small,
step by step details. With a large or sophisticated
project it is a necessity to have a simple block diagram,
then a more detailed diagram for each block, then exact
details for each component of that diagram. If this
isn’t done, the project is almost always late,
over budget, and lacking in quality do to last-minute
fixes.
Create a realistic schedule with step by step goals
and stick to it. How many times have you seen something
miss its deadline by a long shot? It isn’t uncommon
for a project to have a deadline but no internal schedule.
Without an internal schedule you can fall behind without
realizing how far behind you really are. Meeting step
by step goals allows you to break a large task up into
smaller pieces, which makes it easier to achieve the
end result you’re looking for. By knowing what
you need to get done on a particular day, by the end
of a week, and by the end of a month, a massive project
won’t seem so overwhelming and you’ll be
able to clearly see your own progress.
Adopt the concept of constant improvement. This one
is important to a degree far beyond what I’ll
discuss here. The idea here is to improve the quality
of your work with each project you undertake by examining
the previous project. It is a mode of thought that must
be acquired for rapid progress in any technical field
– it is a mode of constant self-evaluation. After
the completion of project, put the whole thing out of
your mind for a few months, then go back and look at
it again. Be brutally honest with yourself and scrutinize
every detail. Note as many things as you can that could
be improved that are within your ability. The next time
you do a similar project, consciously incorporate those
improvements.
Experiment with new concepts, techniques, and strategies.
Take on small projects solely for the purpose of acquiring
the experience. Try doing things you’ve never
done before. Experiments are frequently the birthplace
of new skills, new ideas, and new tactics.
Plan for advancement and carry out that plan. Look
for ways to improve your ability to improve. By that
I mean keep an eye open for new tools, whether hardware
or software, that will broaden your capability to produce
both quality and quantity. Always be on the lookout
for new things you can use and if you aren’t using
the best equipment available then make a plan to upgrade
or acquire something on a regular basis. In turn, make
it a point to utilize that new equipment in a way in
which it will have a direct effect on your end product.
Never allow conventional wisdom to stand in the way
of progress. Conventional wisdom is an idea, concept,
or method that is accepted by the majority without question.
There are times when the originator of a particular
piece of conventional wisdom was absolutely brilliant,
and the idea used to be correct, but had been rendered
obsolete with changing circumstances. There are times
when obsolete methods are very hard to overcome, especially
when a great deal of time and money had been spent on
them. The approach may fail miserably, but few will
have the nerve to come out and say it is the strategy
that is in flaw, not the implementation. Sometimes ideas
that are feared and revered by your peers will need
to be directly challenged in order to move forward on
a languishing project. This doesn’t mean conventional
wisdom is always wrong, there are many times when it
is correct. Knowing when to leave it behind and take
a new approach takes competence in the particular subject
at hand, good analytical skills, experience, and a willingness
to accept risks.
Those are a several key “laws of the land”
in the world of serious project management. They sound
pretty simple, and they are, but their implications
are profound. They are a philosophy toward effective
operation for situations in which a highly complicated
task needs to be accomplished. The most difficult thing
about them is maintaining the discipline needed to keep
such good practices in place over time.
In nationalism, these laws can be applied to most of
our efforts, but nowhere are they more relevant than
in the field of media building. Applying them there
and taking the first assessment and self-evaluation
will bring up some basic questions. Where were we when
we started? Where are we now? How far have we really
progressed? Why haven’t we progressed further?
What has and has not worked? Serious questions with
possibly unpleasant answers – but unless we ask
these questions to ourselves and answer them honestly,
we’ll never get far beyond where we are now.
With the incredible amount of change that has swept
across all areas of media production over the past 15
years, methods and strategies for media production and
media building developed in the early 80’s, or
even the early 90’s, have little relevance now.
The types of medium, tools used, and the kind of people
needed to produce good media projects are radically
different from the not-so-distant past. This really
is the age of digital media; an age of rapid technological
evolution. Today, to be truly effective, the ability
to master multiple disciplines is a necessity. The days
of a graphics studio, a video production company, a
sound studio, and an animation studio all being separate
entities, are fading away. Those who can wield all of
these tools in the most effective, professional, and
tightly streamlined manner will replace those who can’t
– the age of the multimedia studio is well within
sight.
From a perspective of White activism, a multimedia
studio must be largely independent in the way it operates.
Given the amount of specialized technical knowledge
needed to make good decisions and the speed at which
many decisions will need to be made, trying to integrate
the studio into an administrative or political organization
will be very detrimental. A good multimedia studio must
be aggressively competitive. Not with other nationalists,
but with mainstream media, and it will need to enter
a real marketplace and take on real business projects.
This idea is not in line with previous White-owned media
attempts, but only by competing directly with real mainstream
media outlets will an independent multimedia studio
be able to progress quickly enough to challenge the
establishment. Then there are matters of finances. To
acquire enough equipment in a realistic amount of time,
a multimedia studio cannot rely on donations –
it must be funded by those who have direct involvement.
To become good enough to be truly competitive and effective,
a multimedia studio will need to grow to a point where
those involved can devote themselves to it full time.
It must be a sleek, self-contained, aggressive, and
an extremely intelligent operation. It must have the
discipline to follow excellent business practices and
have the guts to be bold. This is not the vision of
conventional wisdom. In fact, it is in stark contrast
with traditional nationalist media strategy, but after
seeing so much time spent on strategies that have progressed
so little, I am compelled to use other methods. At this
point, with so little time left, the only smart course
of action I can see is to adopt strategies that have
proven successful in similar environments, tailor them
to our needs, and implement them immediately.
