BPM: Frankly my dear

Prologue
Those of you, like me, that follow Gary Comerford, know that he has a couple of blogs:
His professional articles on BPM appear in his Business Process Consultant blog called Process Cafe.
But some of his more fascinating posts appear in his personal blog called Musing Cafe.

A BPM Consultant that is also a blogger, author and an actor. Heaven forbid!
Anyway, the idea for my post this week came from reading Gary’s latest work as an actor in a World War I film

Lights please!

The Story
I’m all for proper process design. Slowly, methodologically, thoroughly.
That said, some of my best work has been done under pressure.
It might be the adrenaline, the excitement or maybe just the fear of failing, but I find it easier to concentrate and focus when under pressure.
I’m not the only one.

“Gone With The Wind” is considered one of the most popular motion pictures ever to grace the silver screen.
Not many know that Producer David O. Selznick replaced the film’s director three weeks into filming and then had the script rewritten.
He sought out director Victor Fleming, who was directing “The Wizard of Oz”.
Fleming was dissatisfied with the script, so Selznick brought in famed writer, Ben Hecht to rewrite the entire screenplay within five days.

Selznick locked himself, Victor Fleming and writer Ben Hecht in his office in order to come up with a shooting script for “Gone With The Wind”.
This “imprisonment” nearly drove Ben Hecht nuts because he had to produce a script from a novel he’d never read.
Believing that food slowed up the creative process, Selznick limited their lunches to a snack of bananas and salted peanuts.
On the fifth day, in the act of eating a banana, Selznick collapsed and had to be revived by a doctor

The Epilogue
The end result, as we all know, was fantastic.
So in the future, if one of your project managers starts putting the pressure on – Just look them in the eye and say:
Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn