Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed

by Ben R. Rich

He just couldn’t see the logic. So I told him the story of the kid who proudly tells his father that he saved a quarter by running alongside a bus rather than taking it. The father slapped the kid on the head for not running next to a taxi and saving a buck fifty.

We trusted our people and gave them the kind of authority that was unique in aerospace manufacturing. Above all, I didn’t second-guess them.

The bottom line is that most managements don’t trust the idea of an independent operation, where they hardly know what in hell is going on and are kept in the dark because of security. Don’t kid yourself, a few among our own people resent the hell out of me and our independence. And even those in aerospace who respect our work know damned well that the fewer people working on a project, the less profit from big government contracts and cost overruns. And keeping things small cuts down on raises and promotions. Hell, in the main plant they give raises on the basis of the more people being supervised; I give raises to the guy who supervises least. That means he’s doing more and taking more responsibility. But most executives don’t think like that at all.