Nice: Ah, FedEx founder F. Smith just booted himself out of the CEO slot and to just Chair of the BoD. At one time he was scared of the problem of scheduling

Nice: Ah, FedEx founder F. Smith just booted himself out of the CEO slot and to just Chair of the BoD. At one time he was scared of the problem of scheduling the fleet. Yup, if describe the problem in complicated terms, then the scheduling problem gets wildly complicated, e.g., in NP Complete, etc. -- could have a big team working months on just the first version. But he needed answers right away and, to satisfy concerns of some investors on the Board, needed the answers also to apply to the whole, planned company (eventually it grew to something much bigger than the initial plans). I was in a meeting looking for a solution with several people, and it was all confused. Finally I just announced that I'd solve it. I was teaching computer science at Georgetown and had 6 weeks to go to the end of the semester. So, I wanted to be done in six weeks. How'd I do that? Sure, just concentrated on what the business actually needed and threw out the rest. So, in six weeks had the software putting out nice schedules. Our two representatives of BoD member General Dynamics and major investor evaluated the schedule and announced "It's a little tight in a few places but it's flyable.". The BoD was thrilled. At one point Smith stated that my work "solved the most important problem" facing the company. The 10X, maybe 1000X, difference was essentially just in delivering what the business needed and dropping the rest.