Leadership

Here is a look at where leadership can take you. This features Pat Gelsinger, new CEO of Intel. He recently left VMware to return to Intel to lead the company. Intel definitely needed new leadership. It has been dropped by Apple in favor of ARM system-on-a-chip. It has been unable to get its 10 nM manufacturing process ironed out, let alone 7 nM. It has fallen behind in the chip race.

Obviously, many things Gelsinger talks about in this message started before he got there. But a good leader brings things and people together, focuses on the essential, and can articulate the company, its mission, and its vision. The meat of the talk is about 25 minutes.

Collaboration and Access to Experts

Yesterday, I sat in on a Webinar from Honeywell about a plant optimization project with Woodside. Here are a few takeaways.

Supplier/Customer Collaboration–from the earliest phase of the project, the customer brought in experts from the supplier to assist planning, specifying, scheduling, and the like.

Planning–not a surprise to any of us who have done any project in manufacturing (or around the house) that success was correlated with good planning.

Access to remote experts–we now have good tools for bringing in experts from wherever they are to consult with the project. Video tools mean they can see and be seen. This saves time, money, headaches.

Basecamp Policy Changes Rattle Tech Industry

Jason Fried, co-founder/CEO of Basecamp a projects software company, released a blog post (the hyperlink on his name) that dumped a number of new policies on employees. He and co-founder CTO David Heinemeier Hansen (@DHH) have decided that employees at Basecamp are too worried about things other than work.

Following the lead of Bitcoin, they have banned all political and social communication on company communication tools. Employees are free to do that on their own time on their own social media platforms. But not employee-to-employee.

I have to back up a second to some of my past experience. I served eight years on a public school board. I learned that school administrators hate any public discussion and questioning of their decisions. They hate any feedback from teachers. Since principals are “part of the club”, it becomes career-limiting for a principal to question anything. I mentioned one time to the superintendent that I was advising a bunch of students on how to protest (thanks to my civil rights/hippie days). He blanched.

Similarly, Fried wrote that decisions wouldn’t be discussed. Live with it and go back to work.

They also did away with “paternalistic” policies. They had over time instituted policies and payments for wellness programs and the like. They will give employees a payment this year in lieu of the benefit, then it’s cut out. Maybe in future years a profit sharing plan will make up the difference. The rationale is that they don’t think the company should tell people what’s good for them–even if it is.

And, no more advisory committees. The person in charge makes the decision. Period. If they want feedback and information from anyone, they will ask for it.

Basecamp has been an employee-friendly company. These new policies require trust. They blew the trust by the way they rolled it out. Bitcoin lost a number of employees with its new policies. We’ll see how many Basecamp loses. And what the culture will evolve to. And whether Fried and DHH will write any more books about the right way to work.

NI Corporate Impact Strategy and Practice

ICYMI, NI (the company formerly known as National Instruments) has staked out some bold new directions. It is now called simply NI. The corporate identity also includes new logo and bold new colors.

That can be mere cosmetics. It has also just announced its 10-year corporate impact strategy, aimed at addressing some of our most pressing environmental, societal, and economic issues. The goals cover three pillars:

  • Changing the faces of engineering
  • Building a thriving and equitable society
  • Engineering a healthy planet

That could also be mere words written for a corporate annual report only to be forgotten in the quest for sales, profits, survival.

To probe more deeply, I was able to connect with Tabitha Upshaw, NI’s Head of Corporate Impact, to discuss more on these goals and what NI is actually doing. She took some time out of a busy day to brief me on the details of the goals and directions. I acknowledged that this sounds great and also within the history and culture of NI—a company I’ve followed since 1998 when it was an upstart entrepreneurial company. The refreshing part is in the details. She (and the team) has organized governance teams, working groups, reporting—all the tools of good management. I think they are actually going to follow through to make an impact.

NI Launches 10-Year Strategy and Goals for Advancing Diversity, Equity and Sustainability 

Company also makes $3.4 million commitment to advancing diversity in STEM education

February 03, 2021 09:00 AM Eastern Standard Time

NI released Engineering Hope, its 2030 Corporate Impact Strategy, outlining the company’s vision and aspirational goals for making a measurable, positive impact on society and the environment by 2030. The long-term plan to advance diversity, equity and sustainability furthers NI’s promise to Engineer Ambitiously, connecting people, ideas and technology to take on the world’s greatest challenges.

“The world is facing pressing challenges, from climate change to inequality. Engineering will play a pivotal role in confronting these issues, which is why we must collectively lead the change we hope to see in society,” said NI President and CEO Eric Starkloff. “We are focusing our efforts in areas like sustainability, diversity and equity – areas in which we can drive important, meaningful impact at NI, in the engineering field and in society at large.”

Over the next decade, NI is dedicated to creating impact in three areas by working toward a set of 15 goals and commitments, including two “moonshot” diversity goals. The strategy reflects a yearlong process to assess NI’s environmental impact and the priorities of employees, customers and other stakeholders. See the full strategy and goal list at ni.com/engineeringhope2030.

  • Changing the faces of engineering: NI is committed to increasing diversity and inclusion across its workforce and management teams and throughout the engineering industry. NI’s “moonshot” goals are based on the aspiration for its workforce to mirror society overall. With that in mind, NI has set specific 2030 goals to increase the representation of women and people of color in its workforce and in management roles, based on global and U.S. demographics.Achieving this goal, particularly in technical fields, will require focus not just within NI, but also on educational opportunities for underserved communities. NI will continue supporting the future generation of engineers by giving to and volunteering with STEM education initiatives. NI will invest $3.4 million globally over the next four years in STEM education initiatives that serve underrepresented or economically disadvantaged students. Its first grantees, Code2College and Project Lead The Way, will each receive $100,000 per year for the next four years to expand their hands-on learning programs.
  • Building a thriving and equitable society: By 2030, NI’s goal is for 16% of its suppliers to be small or diverse businesses. This is part of NI’s commitment to increasing equity and well-being among its employees and in the communities where they live and work. The company will also work toward achieving pay equity, advancing comprehensive well-being programs and supporting economic opportunity initiatives through giving and volunteering.
  • Engineering a healthy planet: By 2030, NI’s goal is to achieve Zero Waste at NI-owned buildings and reduce waste at leased facilities worldwide. The company will also work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, conserve resources and design all new buildings to LEED and WELL standards. NI will also pursue circular design improvements to its products and packaging and donate or discount NI products to organizations developing green technologies.

To further progress toward these goals, NI has issued a 2+1 Giving Pledge: By 2030, the company will increase giving from 1% to 2% of annual, pre-tax profits in the form of monetary and product donations. And NI employees will have the opportunity to spend 1% of their work hours volunteering in their communities.

“This strategy builds upon NI’s culture of caring and long legacy of corporate citizenship,” said NI Head of Corporate Impact Tabitha Upshaw. “At the same time, it goes beyond philanthropy to integrate corporate impact into most every aspect of our business, especially the way we empower our customers, educators and innovators to use NI products for good.”

The strategy is also designed to be iterative, and NI may scale its commitments and goals as its programs evolve and mature. NI will publish an annual corporate impact report that measures against its 2019 baseline data.

About NI

At NI, we bring together the people, ideas and technology so forward thinkers and creative problem solvers can take on humanity’s biggest challenges. From data and automation to research and validation, we provide the tailored, software-connected systems engineers and enterprises need to Engineer Ambitiously every day.

Book Suggestion Undaunted, Overcoming Doubts and Doubters

“I think I stopped listening at ‘Sweetie’.”

She had had an accomplished career in sales and executive positions with fast-moving companies. Then she started a company bottling flavored, unsweetened water. Curious about some aspects of the business, she took up a friend’s contact suggestion and talked with an executive at Coca-Cola. During the conversation, he said, “Listen sweetie…”

Kara Golden used that slight as the impetus to succeed with her new company, Hint. And succeed it did. After many struggles and setbacks.

Undaunted: Overcoming Doubts + Doubters reveals her story about building a company in a competitive market. They chose a perfect picture for the cover. I look at the set of her jaw and the look in her eyes and have no doubt but what she’d be a success.

Many of the dozen readers of this blog are in the food & beverage market, perhaps building bottling machines or doing custom, contract filling and capping. Integral to the story is the pursuit of contract companies that would help her get her product to market. We learn most of the factors it takes from conception to testing to production to marketing to merchandising for success in the market.

It’s a great read for all of us. I’d especially recommend getting a copy for your daughters. We still live in a society that glorifies rich, white, men (or if you’re in another country, drop the “white” part). If the other half of the population is encouraged to succeed, it lifts all of us.

Oh, yes, I recommend the water, too.

Do Standup Meetings Inhibit Innovation?

Blog Stand Ups Inhibit Innovation

Andy Wu of Harvard Business School and his doctoral student Sourobh Ghosh embedded a field experiment in a Google hackathon to investigate the impact of stand-up meetings—a core component of agile management practices—on innovation. They found that the teams that engaged in them developed less-novel products. The conclusion: Stand-up meetings inhibit innovation.

This thought was quoted in a blog post by an acquaintance in Belgium, Yves Mulkers, whom I had met on a trip to Germany several years ago. His Website/business is 7wData.

Those of us with familiarity with Lean thinking know the standup as a daily first thing information and daily goal-setting time. You “stand up” to keep the meeting a short as possible, but no shorter. The standup is conducted where the action is. When people gather in conference rooms in the morning, they have their coffee or tea, a doughnut, and settle into their chairs. A 30-minute catch up time can become a 60-minute waste of time.

I am slightly familiar with the various software development organizing hacks. But this one seems to me to be applying the wrong tool for the purpose. There is a time to sit and have an intense discussion with coffee or Hint water or whatever. There is a time to do a standup in order to maintain focus and get done. 

Innovation does not come from committees or meetings. People need time to think on their own to come up with ideas. I insist on the 20-Things method. Sit alone with your coffee and a blank pad of paper and a pen. Put your topic or question at the top. Then quickly start listing possible solutions. By item 20, you should have evolved the idea completely away from where you started and come to a satisfying conclusion.

And when you are doing research, don’t make an observation and then just jump to a broad conclusion. Step back and take a different view. Maybe additional insights will come to you.

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