Alright, so this 'group of four nudes' thing landed on my plate a while back. And no, it's not what you're probably picturing. Wasn't some high-concept art installation or anything like that, though maybe it should've been, given the drama.
Truth is, 'group of four nudes' was just the nickname we ended up giving to these four absolutely bare, right-in-your-face, stubborn issues at the core of a project I was wrestling with. These problems were stripped down to their ugly basics, no hiding them, no dressing them up. They were just… there. Naked and causing trouble.
First thing I did, or tried to do, was to actually identify these four characters properly. The whole project was a bit of a mess, inherited, you know how it is. So, I started digging. Lots of going through old documents, if you could call them that, and talking to anyone who was still around and remembered anything. It felt like archaeology, but for bad decisions.
The First Nude: The Shaky Groundwork
This one was a real piece of work. The original plan, the very foundation of the thing, was more like quicksand. Vague, incomplete, and the folks who cooked it up? Long gone. So, I spent a good chunk of time just trying to figure out what it was supposed to be, reverse-engineering intentions. Felt like groping in the dark for a light switch that wasn't there.
The Second Nude: The Silent Treatment
Then we had the communication problem. Or rather, the distinct lack of it. Different teams, different goals, nobody really talking to each other, or if they were, it was in different languages. Trying to get a straight answer or a cohesive plan was like pulling teeth from a very unwilling patient. I’d get one story from this side, a completely contradictory one from another.
The Third Nude: The Shape-Shifter
Just when I thought I was getting a handle on things, BAM! The goalposts would move. What we thought we were building on Monday was old news by Wednesday. It was maddening. Like trying to hit a target that just kept dancing around. Made planning next to impossible, you can imagine.
The Fourth Nude: The 'Not My Circus' Syndrome
This one was subtle but maybe the most corrosive. A lot of people just didn’t want to own any part of these core problems. Always someone else’s fault, someone else’s job to fix. Getting anyone to step up and say, "Okay, I'll take this bit," was a daily battle. Lots of pointing fingers, not a lot of rolling up sleeves.
So, what was my grand strategy? Ha! No grand strategy. It was more like stumbling through a dark room. I started by just trying to shine a light on these four 'nudes.' Documenting them. Making them visible. No more pretending they weren't there.
- For the shaky groundwork, I basically had to patch together a 'good enough' version of what we were aiming for. Scrappy, but it was something to point at.
- For the silent treatment, I just started forcing conversations. Regular check-ins, sometimes uncomfortable, but we had to get people in the same room, looking at the same ugly picture.
- With the shape-shifter, I pushed hard for some stability. "Can we please just agree on this for a week?" It wasn't perfect, but it slowed down the chaos a bit.
- And the 'not my circus' problem? That was about finding the few who actually cared and building from there. Small wins, trying to create a bit of momentum.
It was a grind. No elegant solutions, no sudden breakthroughs. Just a lot of chipping away, day after day. We never really managed to fully 'clothe' those four nudes, to make them pretty. They were always there, these fundamental, raw challenges. But we did manage to build something workable around them, something that actually functioned, despite their difficult nature.
And that's my practice record for the 'group of four nudes.' It wasn't about art; it was about confronting the raw, unvarnished truth of a messy situation. Sometimes you don't get to fix the core, you just have to acknowledge it, wrestle with it, and find a way to move forward anyway. It reminds me of this one place I used to be at, everything was a patchwork of different systems, looked like a big impressive company from afar, but up close, it was just a bunch of small teams desperately trying to keep their bit from falling apart and hoping it all somehow connected. This felt a lot like that, just with these four stark problems instead of old tech.
