I went to engineering school because I was curious about how things worked. As a child, I would take things apart such as toasters, lamps and faucets and then attempt to put them back together. Sometimes I would take multiple lamps apart and create a new lamp from the parts. I felt engineering would give me the knowledge and the skills to take my curiosity to a new level. While an undergraduate at Rutgers College of Engineering, I worked on groundbreaking research topics such as 'static fatigue of fiber optic cables'. Companies like Bell Labs (now Nokia) paid for this research. I gave my full attention to the process of research, never questioning what is was for or how it would be used. The science of research was exciting and it was enough for me.
When I got out of school, I landed a position as an application engineer at an electronics company. The position combined working in the lab and working with sales. Thankfully most of the time I was in the lab, but on a few occasions, I was required to meet with sales. Meeting with sales meant I was responsible for relaying my research findings to customers. As disinterested as I was in what feedback sales had to offer, I was a young engineer with an entry level salary, and the opportunity to eat at Ruth Chris’ Steakhouse was not to be passed up.
While I waited for my dinner, I listened to the 'sales types' and customers talk about business. My initial view of the sales people in our company was that they had little technical knowledge and were always messing with my research. I thought our customers were the sales team’s responsibility and I only needed to interact with customers to explain the technical nuisances of my research findings that a salesperson was not able to convey.
It took just a few meetings for me to realize that these individuals were just as engaged as I was in solving problems. They too, wanted to know how things worked. This was humbling. It was the first time I realized I had no idea why I was doing these experiments or why they mattered to our company. I realized that I was so wrapped up in the how that I was, again,only focusing on the process and abandoning any interest or exploration of the outcomes.
Soon after, I learned that the purpose of my research was to see if the results could help us lower the cost of our product and give our products a new and/or unique feature to help solve the customer’s problem. To combat my isolated thinking, I started to proactively interact more with sales and even took opportunities to meet directly with customers. It was they who would help me understand why. And knowing the why, made me feel like a more productive member of my company.
Interaction with one customer, Delphi, helped me redevelop my why skills, but this time from a sales AND engineering perspective. My work with them introduced to me the method for the 5 Why Process for Root Cause Analysis. The concept is to develop a cause and effect relationship hierarchy until you get to the root cause of the problem. I took the concept and used it to help me determine the root cause of why my company asked me to perform specific experiments. Understanding the why made me care if my experiments were successful rather than seeing them as simply checklist items.
I started to speak up on some of the experiments that were on the list. Understanding the why or root cause, I could offer suggestions on how to improve the experiments and how to reprioritize so that the most important experiment was conducted first. This helped me become valuable to my company when the market started to slow and the company had to make hard choices. Many of the other engineers I worked with still believed in conducting experiments only for the sake of research and were unable to quantify the value of their experiments to the company as I could. Doing so not only satiated my curiosity, it provided me job security.
When the market picked up, I was asked to interact more and more with customers. I was spending less and less time in the lab and additional time capturing customers' expectations, and preferences for the development of a new product or process. I later learned this was called being the voice of the customer and is a classic function of product management. When an opportunity to be a product manager became available - I applied for it. My experience working with the customer and drawing out what is important to them gave me an edge over other candidates. I got the position.
Now I was in the front of the house 100% of the time. The work and my activities were less structured and more dynamic. Every day was new and I liked this. When I asked for changes to the experiments or asked to have new experiments interjected into an already packed development schedule, I gave the why. I also wanted the engineers who worked with and for me to understand the value of the project and their value to the company. Today, I continue to emphasize this more than ever.
Working in product management up revved my curiosity again. Now I question why we wait until a customer has a problem before we run an experiment to solve it. What if we could forecast changes happening in the market and put in place a solution that prevents problems? Predictive analytics in machinery health and maintenance is just one example of us putting this into practice. This all began when one individual asked why. I look forward to seeing what the curious minds at Emerson come up with next and how we will continue to nuture our engineers' abilities to think outside the lab.
As you've read in this blog, I'm curious. Have you changed your perspective during your career? Share your story with the Women in STEM community by replying below.