How a Space Odyssey Becomes a Simple Odyssey

Imagine if a famous movie director asked you to do what you do for a living on camera.  Instead of (for example) ensuring that important contracts are finalized or that an important sales quote is approved, you’d be doing that on an expensive set surrounded by bright lights, a camera crew, a director, other actors and more.

For a majority of us with no professional acting experience, it might take you completely out of your element and bring on a serious case of nerves.

That’s exactly what happened when Stanley Kubrick asked Frank Miller to voice mission control for 2001: A Space Odyssey. The military man and real-life mission controller manifested his nervousness by constantly tapping his foot while reading his lines. That’s not an unreasonable reaction. However, the sound of the shoe’s sole hitting the floor bled through into the sound track like the sound of water dripping from a faucet.

How did Kubrick solve this dilemma? He took a simple course of action and placed a towel under Miller’s feet.

Oftentimes, it is the simplest solution that solves problems. Consider, for example, the tasks you face at work. Getting dozens of contracts approved worth millions of dollars is a time-consuming, arduous process often taxed with multiple reviewers and even more edits.

Sure, there are options.

You could handle the whole process manually with spreadsheets, emails and documents. But that can lead to long hours, multiple versions of important information and documents being capture across multiple, disparate silos.

You could also rely on enterprise software to help shepherd the process to completion. But that means you’re typically working with an expensive solution that is hard to customize and use.

So what’s the simple solution? Smart Process Apps from Onit. You can create and deploy them in hours. They are extremely user friendly and offer a unified repository for information. And they can significantly reduce the time and effort expended by professionals to complete standard processes necessary to a business’ health.

With this in mind, we created our own tribute to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Take a look at it here and let us know what you think.