Being an Engineer
Being an Engineer
S1E27 Flat Org Structures, Communicating with Engineers & Philanthropic Design | Reade Harpham
Reade learned early on in his career how to communicate with engineers (hint: use numbers). This skill has allowed him to earn the respect of engineering teams owing to his ability to communicate in a way that allows engineering teams to fully understand and appreciate the value his human factors team brings to the table. He has also helped develop and foster an incredible work environment at Priority Designs (check out their website – it’s an impressive firm) where a flat organizational structure has led to supreme efficiency and empowering team members to get stuff done without the bureaucracy of traditional organizations.
Pipeline Design & Engineering partners with medical device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, or automation equipment but don’t have the bandwidth or resources internally to develop that equipment. You can find us on the web at www.testfixturedesign.com and www.designtheproduct.com .
About Being An Engineer
The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us
Welcome to the Being An Engineer Podcast. Our guest today is Reade Harpham. Reade is a product designer who has spent much of his career working in the healthcare and medical device space, but has also been deeply involved in consumer and industrial markets as well. Prior to his role, his current role he held titles from Industrial Designer to Director of Human Centered Design, and currently serves as a Senior Medical Device Specialist at Priority Design. Reade, welcome to the show.
Reade Harpham:Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.
Aaron Moncur:You're very welcome. So one of our former podcast guests introduced us and I've been going through your LinkedIn profile and looking at the comp of priority designs, the company in which you work, and super excited to talk to you I've got all kinds of questions that I just wanted to pick your brain about. To start with, I'm going to ask what, what made you decide to get into the product design space, what made you decide to become a product designer?
Reade Harpham:Actually it's kind of a cool story. So when I was a kid, I built models model cars all the time. And I can remember when I was a sophomore in high school, there was some, some assignment that was like what you want to do when you grew up. And so I looked around for jobs that I could do that would let me build models, and it was with an age myself, but it was right when Star Wars came out, I think it was Empire Strikes Back came out. And I was so enamored with the models and stuff that they use that I thought I want to build models for, for movie sets. My father who was an architect said, 'You know, you should you should look into industrial design, because it's a little bit of both, you can, you can use some art, you can use some engineering, and you can use some, you can do model building, it's all sort of encompasses that.' And so I looked into it. Ohio State at the time happened to be a really great school, when I was when I was able to go and so yeah, it just sort of I mean, I literally stumbled into it. But as soon as I got into it, so as I did some research and got into the, into the school and some of the preliminary classes, I thought this is, this is amazing. You get to get to see things and come up with ideas, and watch them go come to fruition, and it's just, it was mind blowing, and I've loved it ever since.
Aaron Moncur:Tell me, tell me a little bit more about your experience with Star Wars. I want to hear about this. I was born in '79. And I think it maybe that's the years, the first Star Wars came out. So I didn't have the experience of watching this just being blown away, because it was so drastically different and innovative. As far as special effects, visual effects. What was that like when you watched it?
Reade Harpham:It was probably too young to pay attention to all of the stuff that was going on. But it was just everything about, everything about the story. You know, at the time, the visuals were, there's a giant wookie, there's this giant furry animal talking
Aaron Moncur:Okay, so you said that you're, you're passionate about integrating end user insights into the product development process? Can you share maybe a few examples of when and how you've been able to do this effectively?
Reade Harpham:Early in my career winnings, I worked in a large R&D company, and and it was, it was a lot of technology push. So we were developing some pretty amazing new to the world technologies. And I can remember, watching those technologies, in some cases fall short, because the people who were intended to be using those technologies, they weren't really designed for those people. So I can remember on a number of occasions from surgical tools to things like clinical analyzers, being able to be the voice of the user in the process. And for example, you had a system that comes to mind is one that the technology allowed throughput of slides to be like triple the technology itself triple what it could do today. But the way the system was designed, the users couldn't even put enough slides.
Aaron Moncur:What kind of slides are you're referring to?
Reade Harpham:These were pre-made microscope slides.
Aaron Moncur:Okay. So they're putting these slides under under a microscope and analyzing it. And then moving on to the next slide?
Reade Harpham:Well, that's the way they used to do it. This system actually, you took the what was so groundbreaking about the system is it was an imaging system and the, the user would pipette out a sample, put it in a little vial and then put the vial in a rack into the system. So it was expediting the reading of these things in the system could do some ridiculous amount of of readings per minute or per hour. But while the technology was amazing, the actual Achilles heel of this system was that the user was unable to put enough or unable to make enough samples prep enough samples in time to fill the system. So, to me, that was one of the biggest in earliest moments where I was like, 'You know, this is, technology is great. But if you have to have a user involved in the process, then you need to give equal opportunity to the user to have inputs to the system.' And that's sort of the foundation of where I started with this passion about making sure users are involved, and their voices are heard and they're being thought about throughout the process.
Aaron Moncur:And how do you go about doing that? How do you decide at the beginning of a project, 'Okay, we're going to do XY and Z to make sure that the users voice is heard, and we don't end up with a fantastic technology that no one can use.'
Reade Harpham:So at the time, it was just being loud, obnoxious about it, it was back before the FDA really came down on on human factors and incorporating human factors in the process, like you do other, as a risk assessment, risk mitigation. So prior to that, it was just like getting invited to the table. And being a champion for the users to let the teams know that this technology is great. But with the users can't use it, then it's pretty much useless. And so the role is to, to allow the users to have input, but also let this technology live up to its expectation. So just from the very beginning, and letting people have a voice and going in and making the assumption, I don't know what a user needs and going out and talking to them, interviewing them, watching what they do, getting that knowledge and then communicating that knowledge back to the team or having having those insights and inputs as part of the early development process. Which is another benefit of being invited to table earlier is you get to have impact before things are to set in stone. Before people are already so far down the path of development that that a, a, what seems to be a minor change actually is a major change because you're so far down the path.
Aaron Moncur:I really liked that example be loud and obnoxious. That's a great way to put it and, and that every team needs a champion, right? A champion for this stuff. Otherwise, it's just not going to get done. I'm curious, when you were, your teammates were the champions for these human factors items. Did you ever get pushback from other members on the team members? Maybe they're like the project manager or some some dance mechanical engineer who needs those guys? Are they were like, 'Yeah, Reade, that's cool. I mean, I get it. But that's kind of touchy feely stuff, I don't really need to worry too much about that.'
Reade Harpham:All the time. All the time.
Aaron Moncur:All the time, really? I didn't think that was gonna be the answer.
Reade Harpham:So I mean, this this is this was a while ago. When I first started in this business, it was, it was '95. So, at the time, yeah, there was a lot of pushback. And, and, people, what I realized, while working with engineers, and this was, this is a really important learning for me, was to know, know your audience. So at the time, I was a obnoxious designer, and I was on a project. And I was like, no, no, this is what you guys need to do, because the users needed, the users want to feel empowered to use it. And, and they're like, what do you know, the information you're giving me is useless. You know, the sector, the feeling that I got was they didn't appreciate the insights, or they didn't think that research was, that we were doing was important, valuable. What I learned, after working with engineers for a while, is that engineers just wanted to know what the constraints were. So they could solve these problems. And so as soon as I recognize that, and I recognized that the engineering team was actually my user set and not the patients, once I realized the engineers were the users of my outputs, the story changed. And so rather than say to them, 'Hey, this product needs to empower the user,' I was able to say, 'This device needs to have a textured handle, to allow the user to grab it with wet hands and not have it slip out.' That gave them a framework and a target. And once once I changed my frame of mind, and how I presented these things, and the the way I presented to the development teams, the user needs, it completely changed the game with how we approached it.
Aaron Moncur:That's that's a huge insight right there. So the information, the research that you and your team was doing was super important and valuable. But the engineers didn't recognize that because it wasn't being presented in terms that they understood it. It wasn't being presented in like an engineering requirement form. That's what you're saying, right?
Reade Harpham:That was correct. And what was so what's so ironic about that, and I still see it happening sometimes is that you get design teams, industry design teams, or research teams who are so adamant that they understand the users, but they don't understand their audience, which in essence, are their users. So you get these notions of unusable requirements. And so once you recognize that the people who have to use your outputs are engineers, and they want requirements that you just change, you change the way you present it.
Aaron Moncur:And speaking as an engineer, I can see how like, if, if a designer told me,'Okay, this device has to feel good to the user to hold.' I'd be like, what is good? I don't know what that is. And it's going to be more trouble to try and figure out what good means than it is to just kind of sweep it under the rug and do my thing. But if I hear, 'Okay, this, the handle has to be a dramaturg, between this, and that short a, and it needs to have bumps of this size space to it this spacing,' then I'm like,'Oh, I get that, sure. I can do it. No problem.' And that that makes it really easy for me as, as an engineer to implement that. So that's, that's a huge insight. I made it comes down to communication, right? Like, like so many things?
Reade Harpham:Absolutely. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's just recognizing your audience and knowing how to communicate. And the other thing is not, in the early days, when, when I would get the feedback of 'Okay, thanks. But no, thanks, we're great, this, this is not very helpful.' I always thought it was that they didn't appreciate what we were doing. And what I realized was that they just, we weren't communicated on the same level in the same in the things that they needed to hear. So, once I did that, their, their expectation and their desire to do these things was right there. They just needed the target. And my job was to give it to him.
Aaron Moncur:Well, that's great. I love that. Okay, something else you've said is that you, you strive to help healthcare clients find balance between technology, and humanity. And this might come down to kind of the same thing that we're just talking about. But I thought that was a really interesting statement. And wondered, can you tell me a little bit more about that? Like, what do you mean, specifically, when you say humanity?
Reade Harpham:Basically, it's people's ability to do what you want the technology to do for them. You know, there's nothing more disappointing than, and I, we talked about this a little earlier on an amazing technology that, that falls flat, because the user, or the the end, or the end user of that technology, the end recipient, that technology either doesn't need it, or know how to use it, or wants to use it, but it's too hard to use. So in my past, in working in environments, where you're developing new to the world technology, understanding the end user and making sure that what we were providing to them was relevant was it was key. And also, going the other direction, making sure that everything is an equal. So the users, I would argue that some types of pumps should not be easy to use. Because if it's easy to use that a child can use it, they might hurt themselves. So the whole notion of oh, I've got to be easy to use. It's actually not true, you have to find this balance between what who are the users? What's the technology enables them to do? What do you want the technology to do? And find that balance between allowing users to, to, to use the technology to its full potential, but also allowing the technology to not sort of bend to users to its will
Aaron Moncur:I get it, I get it that makes a lot of sense. Matching the technology to the user, as opposed to just always needs to be easy to use. That's an interesting point. I don't think of can't recall hearing it put quite that way. But like a pill bottle, right? Same thing. You don't want a pill bottle, but the super easy to open, or else little kids can open it and get themselves sick. Great insight. Yeah. Okay. So you're working at priority designs right now, which is a really cool product design product development company, we're going to get into that in a little bit. We're going to travel back in time, just a little. And you spent about I think it was about 16 years working at a company called Matell, which is I hadn't heard of them before. But they seemed like a pretty big company. And now I'm kind of embarrassed for not knowing who they were but apparently the world's largest nonprofit independent R&D organization. So I'd love to hear a little bit about Matell and like, who are their customers and and what is unique about about the experience of working at a company that a engineering or R&D company that is in nonprofit, like what about that nonprofitness makes it interesting or unique?
Reade Harpham:Yeah, well, Patel, it's the biggest company that nobody knows about.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, thanks for making me feel better.
Reade Harpham:No, really. It's, everybody had that same reaction. What's unique about Matell is it's it's a it's a non charitable trust. So it was started in 1920, something '20 I think, by the will of Gordon Mattel and his mother, and it was founded to advance technology and civilization through technology advancement and technology discovery. So its fundamental purpose in life is to develop technologies and advanced them for the greater good and it worked in all kinds. It works in every area you can imagine. You know, I was in the medical device group and was there for my entire career at Mattel, but they have to do a lot of government work. They do a lot of health care work. How you might have heard of them lately is they recently developed a container system that that cleanse and 95 masks, and they got approval for it from the FDA and like really record time, I'm not sure the current status of it, but it was these, these big containers that basically dropship to these hospitals and were able to recycle and reuse and clean and 95 masks. So, for me, what was amazing about that company and working for that company was a the story. The people behind it, what, what it meant to the community, part of being a nonprofit is you take some of the profits that you make, and you give it to the communities that in which you serve, which is part of the trust part of the will. And so that was sort of the driving force. The other thing was the people who work there, and the technologies that we worked on, were, were so far ahead of their time. I mean, it's hard to remember, it's hard to realize when you're there in the moment. The things that you are looking at are 5-10 years away from being in the market sometimes. And you're just there, because it's just normal. It's like, oh, this is everybody gets to deal with this kind of technology. And then you step out of it, I, I left, I left Mattel, like, almost five years ago, you step out of it, you look back, and you're like, oh, man, that stuff was amazing. Sort of the big our research and where we're not Battel manage the national labs. And so there's a lot of fundamental technology thinking going on, and the group that I was in the product development, and then then medical device group, we helped translate the big R to the R&D. And we worked with commercial clients, mostly to help them develop, either create technologies for new medical devices or develop their own medical devices. But yeah, for me, it was as a as a freshly minted graduate in design, thinking I was the best thing ever and on top of the world, and I knew all the answers to go into such a storied engineering company, and get schooled pretty quickly on the fundamentals of engineering and physics, and all the things that you really can't change. It gave me an incredible appreciation for that technology, field R&D, and sort of the give and take you have to have, but also gave me a chance to, to, as we talked earlier, communicate to people the value of the human insight the human input into this system.
Aaron Moncur:Was Matell is Matell, kind of like a university and that there's a lot of R&D going on, but maybe not much commercialization, or are they doing the commercialization as well.
Reade Harpham:It's a little bit of both. So it's, it's, it has elements of university where there's some fundamental research going on and has elements of commercialization where they're, they're sometimes developing their own internal technologies, and either licensing them or developing products that have that embedded in it. And then they're doing a lot of commercial work. So it really, it exposed me personally to a lot of different different areas. For the most part, it's probably, they probably do some more research and development than actual commercialization of their own of their own products. I mean, when I say development, it's product development for outside commercial partners.
Aaron Moncur:So I've heard of course, nonprofits that are focused on I don't know, for lack of a better word, charities, But, but R&D, I would never put r&d into that bucket of a charity. I mean, this is like this is business. We're developing technologies that are going to be commercialized and pushed out into all these different markets. What What was the culture like there at Battelle, did you get a sense that like people weren't? I don't know, it sounds bad to say it this way. But as driven, because it was a not for profit? Or was that just not an issue at all? And maybe people were more driven because they were there because more of a sense of purpose than than of economic value?
Reade Harpham:Well, it's all the above. So what we, what the financial people at Mattel would tell you is that we are, we Mattel is a not for loss.
Aaron Moncur:Okay
Reade Harpham:How does it make a profit, they can distribute those profits to the community. Yeah. And there is incentive to not financial incentive, but there is incentive to make a profit so you can give back to the communities that they serve. And that was the motivation for the people who work there. Not only was it amazing, super deep technical work, and challenging technical work, it was also that the benefits of that work to humanity and the people who you know, to the world at large and that the, the outputs that people worked on, not only from a technology standpoint to help people, but the profits that Patel made would go out to the communities. There's some people who are live in Columbus who will hear this, there's a number of Matell Park and Matell Hall, there's a lot of places where Patel donates their, their their dollars and their time, volunteer time in the communities and that yeah, that was a motivation for people over and above just the amazing technologies that people get to work on.
Aaron Moncur:Wow, how interesting. That's fascinating. You traveled for work apparently doing speaking engagements?
Reade Harpham:Yes.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, a resounding yes. A lot All over the world. A couple places I read about were the Arctic Circle of Finland and the shores of Lake Victoria in Uganda, I mean, just reading those names, that conjures up images of granddaughter. How has traveling the world and experiencing some of these different, like societies and cultures affected the way that you think about the world and your role within it as a designer?
Reade Harpham:So yeah, I have traveled throughout, but had the opportunity to travel a lot. In my career, even before I had a job I went to, I spent some time in studying in Finland, and working at a small design consultancy in Germany. And the first thing it taught me I think, is anybody who travels a lot, he knows that the world is small, and people are a lot of like, all over the world. So that was sort of, for the, for somebody who's never traveled outside the United States as a, as a kid, it was really important for me to learn that lesson, that we are all similar, in a lot of ways just happen to be living in different parts of the world. But I remember specifically a moment when I was in Finland with one of my roommates that, you know, somebody made a joke, and that we laughed at the joke. And it was this in what what became so acutely aware, to me is that humor, and that scenario, humor was universal. You know, we come from different cultures have different backgrounds, and different ways of thinking. But we all thought the same thing was funny. So that was an eye opener for me, and how common in some cases, we all are fast forward from those experiences. And after living there and traveling around fast forward in my career, my ability to travel overseas and have overseas clients and do it with confidence, because I've been there and I understand just the simple things of how to get around, but also the more nuanced things of how potentially interact with different cultures and those types of things. It's, it was incredibly important to me as a person, but also in a career. And from a designer, sort of all stemming back to there's, there's a common theme in things that people want and need. And there are nuances to different cultures, but for the most part, you can find probably a trace of similarities across many things. You know, the, I had an opportunity to do some work with the Gates Foundation in my past, and that's what took me to Uganda. To me, that was just that was mind blowing, because the, the the opportunity and the ability to affect so many lives that the project would have, would allow, but just getting to know different cultures and the different amounts of need, that Sub Saharan Africa has, when it comes to health care, and prevention of disease. To me, it was a complete shift in how I thought about my role in my ability to give back to the world as a designer and a developer. You know, it's what part of the reason why I shifted all into medical and away from consumer, because medical to me has a fundamental good about it, you're you're doing the work because you want people to help people get healthier or better. So that's really that was part of my all in when it comes to medical focus on medical work. You
Aaron Moncur:Had mentioned earlier or not during this podcast, but you have mentioned philanthropic design. Does, oes does that philanthropic design tie into some of the experiences like you had at Uganda, but just realizing that not everyone has the same very high level of health care that that we have here in the United States and many other places in the world. But how does that philanthropic design tie into some of these experiences?
Reade Harpham:It made me think about, some, some entities give their money. And some entities give their skills, and it really made me start thinking about the notion of skills, volunteerism, and that if I were to write somebody a check for $100, it would go so far. But I could give some I could potentially give a lot more value, if I could help somebody who's developing a product for Sub Saharan Africa or Africa, or even in the US, if I could donate my time and my knowledge, to me, that was much more valuable than just writing checks or donating money. And so that's when I kind of that's the sort of philanthropic design of the notion of skills, volunteerism, where you're really donating your unique capabilities and your unique perspective to people who can't necessarily afford it or know they need it. You know, some companies that we worked with, in the past, they couldn't afford to use a large r&d company, but they still needed our help nonetheless. And so that's where it's where you start to think about it maybe maybe we should start to donate our our skills and our capabilities more than just are dollars.
Aaron Moncur:It sounds like you've had the opportunity to do that. Was that at Matekk? Or has this been PD as well? Or where have you been able to exercise that philanthropic design?
Reade Harpham:So it was, it was while I was at Mattel, and it was inspired by Mattel, but at the time, it was not endorsed by Mattel. And that's a whole nother that's a whole snother podcast. But so so it was inspired by the the notion to do to do good things. And so the work that we that we were doing was engineering. The specific project that we worked on was grain thresher, that helped people get higher yields out of small farms in Mali was the specific case that we were working on. And that just was from, that was a random meeting chance being had with somebody who was a volunteer group who came out of General Mills, when I was at some tradeshow Minneapolis, it was one of those ridiculous moments in life where all these things come together, and everything just sort of happens. So, so we created a little small, I mean, it was a nonprofit, it was called one lab. And we, we the goal was for us to donate our skills and capabilities to help these major problems across the world. And so myself and a couple other guys from Matell got together and we went to a local Fab Lab and hammered out a portable grain thresher that one of my colleagues pack in a suitcase and took with him to Mali and twice and did some testing, it inspired a couple of other nonprofit little spinouts to do their own thing. It was really fun for me to see that happen. And that's where of got my first taste of the power of being able to donate your skills to these kinds of problems. So yeah, that's really where I've sort of got the eyes on
Aaron Moncur:That's fantastic. Thinking about putting a prototype in a suitcase and taking it halfway across the world, that's not an opportunity that most of us get to have. How rewarding? Yes. Alright, so next question. Reading you work now at priority designs, PD. And to be honest, I have a little bit of a crush on priority designs. I mean, I looked at the website, and PD, you guys are legit. I mean, this what I see on the website anyway, this is what I think of when, like when I was a college student, and I thought, yeah, I'm going to work for a product development company. I'm going to design new products, what I see on the PD website, that's what I thought of, I mean, you guys are like vertically integrated, you get design and engineering and soft goods and research and software. And it looks like you do it all. And I kind of have a crush on PD. So Nutter it is fair, thank you. Not many product development firms get to kind of the scale and the level of capability that PD has. Maybe can you share a little bit about why do you think that that priority has enjoyed the success that it has? Like what are you guys doing so well?
Reade Harpham:So let me first start by saying I shared and share your crush and here's why. So I when I was in college, PD was actually I was I was priorities first intern, they had back when they were a small, you know, as company of four people in a garage. And I stayed there for a bit of that left and had a career, went to Mattel and had a career there and, and and always admired the way PD operated and the way they just their personality and their presence and just the things they did they did cool design and they seemed like a good time. So, five years ago when I left Mattel to go to PD to go back to PD to to help them focus on and build up their med device capabilities. You know, from the outside, it looks one way and when you get inside, it's like it's exactly as you would have expected it to be it is it is probably the most authentic place I've ever worked. Wow. One of the things that to me, really allows us and again, coming from a large organization where there was a lot of hierarchy and a lot of structure. And there was a lot of layers you had to go through. PD and I am now convinced there after being there for five years, pays a flat org or flat structure. We have four principles. And then there's everybody else and everybody is equal and to build on that it's now last two years it is an ESOP. So it is an employee owned flat structure. And what that does is it gives everybody the autonomy to make the right decisions for the client and make the best decisions for the client in mind. It helps us being nimble and quick. And how we react, it helps us think differently about the way we want to approach something, it gives everybody from a junior designer all the way up to a senior, senior engineer, everybody has equal say, at the table. So you have, and I've heard this a number of times from new staff that come in, and they're like junior designers, and they are on the first phone call with the client. And when we ask them the question, they're chiming in, and they never would have been able to do that at another company. Because you have to go to the, the account manager, or the senior designer, the design director, and it just doesn't allow for this open and organic communication. The other thing that we, that we do so well, that I've seen over my time there, because of that flat structure, and because of that motivation to just do do cool work and have a place for people to go that they enjoy, we've been able to grow into new places organically. You know, there is no, 'You're going to have 50% year over year growth, and we're going to get into this space, and we're going to make this much money in the space, it doesn't, we don't work like that.' You know, we grow organically into, it started as a design firm, with designers. And then it grew in engineering because our clients needed engineering. And then we started doing some soft goods work for sporting goods and in soft goods work turned into wearable medical devices and medical devices expanded as you could imagine. And then when I asked, when I joined, coming from Mattel, and working in a place that had these multidisciplinary teams, but still had the, the bureaucracy of a large behemoth organization, and I came to priority. And it was like somebody gave me the keys to a to a race car, I mean, all of this capability all of this interest, all of this knowledge and, and capabilities in the building the machines we have. And then we could move, let me ask you
Aaron Moncur:A little bit about the flat, the the flat hierarchy or structure at a Prio because I love that that set up that's like, that's my preferred way to work. And I've talked to other design firms that they started out, they're kind of small, maybe 5, 10, 15 people and they did the that, the flat structure and that worked great. But as they grew as they got 20,30,40, 50 people, it was really hard to maintain that flat structure. What I think priority, you guys are what, 5060 people something like that?
Reade Harpham:Yeah, we're 65 pushes, maybe almost 70.
Aaron Moncur:Okay. Okay, so how have you been able to maintain that, that flat structure with so many people?
Reade Harpham:So it's interesting, we've just gone through when we became an ESOP. You know, in the company, we all became employee owners. One of the things that was one of the reasons for that was the, the founders of the company, Paul Kolada, they're ready to, they're ready to move on. So the next five years, they're probably going to retire and they wanted to, they wanted to sell the company, but they didn't want to. You know, at the time, a lot of design firms were being snapped up by large companies, like, I think lunar was purchased by McKinsey, you know, you had these huge companies who knew design was a relevant thing. And they, they knew there was value, and they wanted to buy versus build. So they went on, they stepped up these companies. And then there was a, there was a period of time when there was like, in the news, every couple of weeks, there was a large design firm that was, was being purchased. You know, Paul most recognized that that probably wasn't because of our culture, that wasn't going to be a good fit. They didn't think in order to hear any feedback from those companies who had been purchased, that it was good to their culture to be stepped up by large companies. And you as you would have never became, people started watching you a little more closely. And there were some rules you put in and, and the other option was to shut it down. And that didn't make any sense. So as part of the ESOP, where you sell, you basically sell the company to the employees. Part of what's happening is that we're putting in a structured and unstructured structure. Now, that sounds stupid, but it's, it's loosely based on the notion of a holacracy. Where we have now and we've just, we just did this the beginning a year and the pandemic hasn't messed with us at all, whatever, it's kind of wreak havoc with it. But we have, we have, in essence, what our circles, it's not circles in the Zappos way, it's not that defined, but it's like we have capability areas. So we have a UX team and a research team and an engineering team and soft goods team. And within that group are people who spend 60-70% of the time in that space, a lot of people cross over we have designers who are in UX, you have HF who do, who do UX work, and so on, so forth. But in these circles, each circle has what we call category leads or category points. And those are two three people in the circle, who have been chosen by their peers to represent their capability to the larger group. And it's not it's not a managerial position. You don't have any manager or responsibilities like you don't get to judge somebody whether they're doing this or doing that. You are you in essence, facilitating that making sure that that things are going as, as they should, and that the voice of those team members are being heard. And that's a rotating, that's a rotating role. So, so there isn't anybody who's going to be in that role for more than a year at a time.
Aaron Moncur:Oh, Okay, okay.
Reade Harpham:So what that does is it gets rid of anybody who might be me, not everybody is a good manager, and everybody's a good communicator, and that's fine. Got to play to people's strengths, some people might not be comfortable at role, because the, in some cases, you have to have challenging conversations with staff and with clients. And sometimes, you're, you're responsible for making the ultimate decision on something, and some people don't like that, that accountability.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah.
Reade Harpham:So, but what we're, what we're hoping is that we'll give people a chance to be in this role, it'll give people a chance to learn how to communicate with them, with others and their team. And it sort of builds to this notion that we all are part of the same entity, and we all have equal input. You know, and I mean, there's a managerial team, there's a serious set of principles for four of us who oversee kind of a day to day operations of the company, but we don't really have any kind of heavy hand in that we just sort of, 'I'm, yes, I'm a principal, but I also do a lot of research and project management. So it's not like I'm sitting there in my office, running numbers on a spreadsheet.' So everybody's actively involved in all of the all of the way the business runs.
Aaron Moncur:So there's still traditional project managers. It's not likevteams are managing themselves there is a project manager for a project. Is that accurate?
Reade Harpham:In some cases? Yeah, no, not in all cases. So we do programs that range anywhere from $5,000, to a couple million dollars. And we can be profitable with $5,000 project because of our structure, because we don't have a lot of overhead. And we don't have we, we have people who can manage projects, we don't have PMPs, we don't have professional project managers, but we don't necessarily need them, because our programs and our clients don't require them. So some programs are self managed, if you're a senior person on a small program, you can manage yourself, you don't need somebody pushing you to do something. A couple of the larger programs we've had in, we've just brought in, in the last couple months, honestly, they require by necessity, a full time project manager, one of the programs I'm on for the next 12 months, and I'm the full time pm, but it's because there's like, it's a full, it's a full scale product development, medical device development activity, that's 12 months long, and there's a lot of things going on, and you just, I'm there to provide cover fire to allow the teams to do what they do, without having to deal with the minutiae of making sure we're on budget and making sure, we got scheduled with the other PM, and we were trying to find times, for me, it just mechanics of a large program. So it depends on the program. But a lot of the time, I think for most probably 75% of the projects, you have a project manager, but it's not. It's not a formal, sort of formal role. It's like a senior designer who's overseeing the program, running the numbers and doing the books and you know, in building but also provided inputs and guidance to some of the junior members who might be on the team. And working on the program themselves, we don't have we don't have the structure, and we want to keep our overhead low. So we don't have a bunch of PMs, who all they do is is project manage.
Aaron Moncur:Okay. Okay. And in the cases where there's more this, like senior design lead, is that individual also the one who's assigning tasks to the team and making sure that, this task got done. Okay, what's next? Let's move on to this part.
Reade Harpham:Yeah, so, so right now, for example, we have on the on one of our programs, we have a human factors tech lead, mechanical engineering, tech lead. And design tech lead, and pretty soon we're gonna, we're gonna add the UX UI technically, and those people are, you look at the RACI chart, those people are accountable for the quality of the deliverables that are on that program. Okay, and they are working with their the team, it's not their team, they're not, they don't have anybody who reports to them, but they're working with their design team that they have, that they and we all have assembled. And they're making sure that everybody, they're getting inputs and saying, what do we know, what if we did this, and they're, they're assigning in some cases, assigning tasks, but it's not a it's playing to people's strengths. It's not you're going to do this, and you're going to do that it's basically, 'Okay, we have, we have these three prototypes to build a mechanical one here.' And this is more of a user interface, who wants to work on what things and helps people play to their strengths. So it's a lot more facilitation than it is direction. Again, I think that goes to our ability to be a flat structure and to be a very efficient flat structure.
Aaron Moncur:Do you think that works for most any engineer, designer, team member or have has PD had to find the right people that are able to work in an environment like that?
Reade Harpham:It's absolutely had to find the right people. I can't tell you the number of people we've interviewed who have left saying, 'I don't know how you guys got any done.' Any of it honestly by myself when I started, it was like, this is a, this is like a free range. This is a bunch of free range designers, how does anything get accomplished?
Aaron Moncur:The wild west out there, right?
Reade Harpham:Right, so it's wild west, because doing, but you just have to you have to be comfortable in that. And it's not like we're just a bunch of people bumping into walls, we, we get stuff done, and we get it done well, and and after a while you just you, you understand the heartbeat in the pulse of the company. Some people absolutely thrive in it, they come in and are like, 'Oh my god, this is what I've been looking for.' I find that happens when people who have been somewhere else first. And they come in and they recognize, 'Wow, this is this place allows you to do amazing things, and you get to do them the way you want to do them with support from this incredible network of people.' And people who are more junior, they don't know any different. So they're like, 'Yhis is cool. This place is great.' What I find, and this is just about every time somebody who comes in who places value on climbing a ladder, or a title, or reaching a certain dollar value dollar amount that they don't if they even make it in, they don't last long, because that's a big point. Yeah, that's a huge point. And PD is not a place that you go to become director of anything. You know, PD is a place to go to do really cool stuff with great people in, you know, for a company that you believe in. And sound like a cheerleader, we all kind of are but I coming from an environment that was different than that, that was hierarchical, there were management levels, and I was on the track and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, you see kind of get further and further away from the work and you start to having ladders to climb and things to do, tends to things like that to do tends to drive bad behavior in some people were motivations could be less about authenticity in the work, and more in need to achieve a certain goal. So that in itself, that whole notion of achievement of a structure or label or title that's gone. And that really is acts as a filter, in some cases to people who, who want that who seek that don't, don't really don't ever don't think it's a good fit. And they're probably right, it's not.
Aaron Moncur:I love that this is a place that you come to do cool design. If you're looking for climbing the ladder, if your goal is to be director of something this is not this isn't the place for you. I love that the attitude that resonates with me so much. Tell me how, how do you keep people motivated? Or maybe that's not the right way to ask it? What is there for for someone at PD to look forward to like, what's what's the next step? How do they grow into a new role? Or how do people progress there? Or is that not even the right you know, paradigm in which to think about PD's culture?
Reade Harpham:That's a great question. Because we get that a lot. People with PD are obviously motivated to do really good things. And people want to achieve things. And they you know, some a lot of people find value and worth through achievement. And so let me give you a specific example of a guy who I work with who he's an industrial designer, very talented industrial designer. And, and he's also a musician. When they were he was working on a medical device program, and the notion of alarms came up. And I helped him understand that there's a pretty specific guidance on what alarms needed to sound like. And he was like,'Okay, cool, but I don't like these sounds, as a musician, these sounds don't, they don't do what I think they're supposed to do.' And obviously, not non-critical alarms, and we're not gonna change like that. But you start to get into the notion of sound design. And so this guy at again, when is his name, he just started on his own time to mess around with sound design. And he's he, it is inspired by a passion he has outside of work, which is music, and we let him bring that into work and, and see if there's a connection to be made with that in the work that he does. And because of our notion of organic growth, we let him run with it. Or he let himself run with it. I guess that's a fair way to say we didn't let him do anything. He just did it. And because he was motivated and passionate about it, he came up with a really amazing, compelling examples of how this worked, I submitted to I think, was MDI, and they loved it, and they published it. And then people started to call and talk about what is this that you're doing? Then we started to be able to talk to people about our possibility to do sound design or somebody in one of the Human Factors people call it your cons or way ways to help people understand meaning through the sound versus the icon. And because we are able to sort of follow these passions, we have had a number of really amazing projects that do deal with sound design and continue to deal with sound design for the automotive industry for the medical device industry, where people are coming to us because they are thinking about tones, non critical tones and alarms, but sounds integrated sounds into a system, when you need when somebody doesn't isn't able to actually look at the product they're using. They have to look somewhere else, augmented reality potentially, or some other looking through a visor or some kind of camera. And so they can't see the screen or can't see the system they own, the only information they have is audible. And so how do you make tones and sounds mean something to them in a way that hasn't been done before. And, and Eddie just, I mean, Eddie grew this thing from a guy in a room who was having some fun to a legit business line. And it stood still going. And we have a sound lab now and we're doing sound design for companies. And then we're testing, doing Human Factors testing on the sounds of the design. And so it's and that that's, there's a number of stories we softgoods is the same way digital media and that's the beauty of not having this sort of corporate structure where you have to ask for permission. You just you're like, 'Hey, I think this would be cool. And we you are allowed to go follow that.' You know, it's it's reminds me a little bit of Google's whether the frames 20% time when you got 20% of your time
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yeah
Reade Harpham:Something, you know, it's not that it's not that formal, some people love to come in, and they go to their desk, and they sit and they crank out amazing work, and they leave at five o'clock. And that's, that's fine. Some people come in, and they just stay there and work and work and work because they love it. And everybody is content, and we don't, we don't have any specific way you have to be or have to act to be valued at PD, it's about you, it's about how you contribute to the to the company.
Aaron Moncur:That's fantastic. I just I love everything that you're saying we this is this is so great. It almost sounds like it's a company of entrepreneurs might not be quite the right word. But me personally, I love creating something new. And I get bored, when I have to do the same thing over and over. In fact, oftentimes, maybe not always to, to my benefit or to my team's benefit, but there's something that I really should be working on. But I've been working on it for a while and it becomes stale. And I just I want to start something new, I want to I want to start a new process or a new endeavor, a new effort, a new something. And it to me, that's what entrepreneur, entrepreneurship is. And and and I love that in it sounds like FPD there's there's this internal, if not focus at least support or culture that fosters people being their own entrepreneurs almost within the society of PDE. does. I mean, does that explain it a little bit? Or am I just way off here?
Reade Harpham:No, you're right on, its I've heard people describe it, describe it as intrapreneur Yeah, where you are, you're inside an organization and you're but you're, you're following kind of your own your own thought and your own idea. You know, people, people who leave PD, actually, a lot of them leave to start their own to start their own companies a lot, a lot of side hustles going on, people can go home at night, and they, they make art or they print this thing or, and, and we've had, one of our one of the designers we had a couple years ago, right when I started, he would make maps, you know, he was a graphic designer and designer, very talented. And he would make maps at night, come up with cool designs for maps. And it turned out to be it was a hobby, and it kind of grew a little bit more. And now he left and started his company called conquest maps. And it's, it's this nationally recognized map company where you buy the map, and you put pins where you've been and where you want to go. I mean, he's just, he's killing it. And, and he, he started a PD and he did it in his own time. And we let him you know, he I keep saying we let him fall. It's like we didn't let him do anything. He just he just did it.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah.
Reade Harpham:And you know, he got he this particular design got to the point where he's like, I think I can make a business out of this. And we know sorry to see him go. But it was really cool to see him how to launch this and that. It's interesting that a number of people who have moved on from priority have done so to start a company that they say incubated for lack of better term while they were in PD. So yeah, and then another there are people who just like Eddie, he is able to connect his passion of music with his job, which is credibly rare in today's world.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yeah.
Reade Harpham:And that we find, we want to make sure that people have that opportunity to do that. You know, a recent example we had of obviously, well, the COVID stuff going around. We have a digital digital knitting machine in our office and two of the, you know, one of the mechanical engineering designers and the digital knit expert got together and the team cranked out some mass designs and we we've knitted we've knit 10,000 masks and distributed 10,000 masks to the community. Because it was harnesses passion was philanthropy. And we were able to make that connection between this. You know, talking about skills, volunteering, we have this machine and not a lot of companies like us have a digital digital anymore. And we were able to make these masks distributed to the to the communities around around PDX. Because it was a passion of honest and Wolfgang to do this. And we were able to as a company, allow them and let them and give them the environment to do that.
Aaron Moncur:That's phenomenal. I love it. All right. Well, we're I feel like I could just ask you question after question for days on end without break this, this has been such a great conversation.
Reade Harpham:I had fun. I love it.
Aaron Moncur:I have just two more questions for you. Hopefully not tot, not too long. But this is one that I ask everyone. And I think it's super useful for other engineering teams out there. So I asked it to everyone, what are a couple of your favorite vendors, who are the suppliers that that you really have found to be super valuable over the years?
Reade Harpham:From my perspective, it's been... Well, because my background, and recently, the team does a lot of research for me, the vendors we use, specifically as the research group, or the or the other recruiters. I mean, the recruiters are incredibly important to find the right people for the right job. For the right test, we do a lot, because we do a lot of medical finding the right nurses and doctors, has been invaluable to us. I'm sure that's not the kind of vendor you're you're asking for. But from my perspective, that was the first one.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, maybe if this is like proprietary stuff, then that's, that's fine, and totally understandable. But I like to hear some names, like, what's a name that we can give the engineering community that they can go out and find on the internet and say, 'Oh, cool, yeah, we could use these guys.' Anything like that, that you can share?
Reade Harpham:Sure. Sure. Sure. So, yeah, sleisenger research, I think it's I say it's Schlessinger Research, Elleni. Research. We've used them three fieldwork, majors are all great recruiters that we have used. And again, I'm just talking specifically from the research standpoint, but tying this back into the conversation, we have to find the right people who are going to be using these devices in the field. And these recruiting companies help us find those people, either in Columbus or nationally, globally, help us find the right people help us orchestrate, it's not an easy task to get nurses in Tokyo to come to a recruiting, you know, research facility in their spare time and run through a series of evaluative studies. But so we rely really heavily on these recruiting partners. You know, and it's, it might be a little bit out of scope, or out not out of scope, but out of Out of Frame for what a an engineering team might be thinking. But to recognize that, yeah, these are going to be used by specific people, and you, the engineer are very likely not the end user. And so you should really consider trying to find people who are your end user, if you don't have the, you know, if you don't have the luxury of internal experts, or clinical staff, or a pool of people around that aren't part of your company that are will give you critical feedback that you're going to need to go out and find actual users. And from my perspective, the work that I do, and my team I work with does recruiters as our that's a critical vendor for us. Because we have to find the right people.
Aaron Moncur:Awesome. I love it. Okay, last question, what are a few of the biggest challenges that you encounter at work?
Reade Harpham:Lately, it's been actually been in work at work.
Aaron Moncur:Because of isolation.
Reade Harpham:Yeah
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, okay
Reade Harpham:We have. Actually, you know, we, I haven't been back in the office, I think once since since March 11. We very quickly, I think quicker than we thought we could became virtual. And with by using things like whiteboard, and teams, and in all the virtual tools we have, we are fully operational, the people who need to be in the building to run the machines are right in the machines, they're there, and people who don't need to be there are not there, because we don't want to jeopardize their health, ultimately, the health of a company. So it's been difficult, it's been a little bit of adjustment, but I think, it's been actually kind of cool to see how we are turning into a virtual company that hopefully will change soon it will be able to get back as as a team and but it's sort of forever changed, that we're gonna be able to work differently. And that's great. A lot of our a lot of our clients are in the same boat. And so we're not unique in this space. So we're all sharing the same things going through the same things at the same time. I think another thing just from a business perspective is the ever changing economy and what's you know, what's happening? And as the market goes down, our clients going to, are they going to jettison their internal R&D teams and rely more on consultants are they going to lock down and say, 'We want to keep our own people let's you know, we're gonna not use any more consultants. Understanding that you understand be able to navigate that landscape It's important and a challenge that we see. And you know, the other one that we just talked about the other day is the whole notion of now, now with this whole post COVID world, or not post COVID. But post everybody locked down for COVID? How do we, how do we engage with our clients? How do we, how do we? How do we meet new clients, trade shows, and those things are pretty much dead for the next couple of years. So what are we going to do in from a virtual standpoint, to be able to introduce ourselves and get people to know who we are, and why we do things and how we can help them. So those are some of the things that you sort of chew on as you're, as you're kind of going through your day. The other thing, another thing that we that we think about PD is is like we talked about a little earlier, how do you how do you find talent, keep them, keep them happy, allow them to do great things. And now, you overlay the notion of, we're not all in the same building at the same time, there is a cultural aspect of that, that's going to be diminished a little bit, I'm not going to say it's going to be going going away. But you know, I do have a little bit of worry about people, the social people who need that energy of others in a time when you can't, is that going to help you know that you have impacts on him. So you know, but again, the the beauty that I am seeing or have seen over the past five years of PD is that we are rather organic, and how we operate, so we can kind of roll with the punches as we go. We also maintain consumer industrial and medical business lines or business units, if you will, we focus on those three areas. So when one is up and the others down, we're okay, when one maybe recedes a little bit, we could push that energy into another one. You know, we, in the past, we, for example, have a lot of experience in a consumer product design of hand tools. Well, you know, if that, if that diminishes, then we can probably move into and we'll probably move into more industrial and medical design of hand tools, because people in those spaces, need hand tools. And we have expertise in design, development of hand tools. So just kind of a matter of staying up on the current environment where we think things are going and being able to put energy to see as this makes sense to put some people here and you know, like Eddie, it makes sense to, you know, to follow Eddie's path when it comes to sound design. And yeah, it does. And something's working, something's out.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. Well, I love it. Some some companies, I think, probably was, like you said, right, you have to have the right people, some companies are not going to be able to work in such a kind of free flowing organic matter. But I love that. I mean, that to me, that that's the kind of place where that's my happy place. Right? Well, Happy Gilmore. Right. All right. Well, Reid, how can people get ahold of you?
Reade Harpham:So probably the the easiest way, you can send an email to me directly at priority. So my email addresses rharpham @ at priority designs, comm. And or you can just go to LinkedIn, find me on LinkedIn, send me a message. I'm sitting on my computer eight hours a day. So I'm sure I will see it. It'll pop up on my screen. But yeah, anybody has any questions or wants to learn more, I'm happy to happy to talk in more detail.
Aaron Moncur:Fantastic, fantastic. Well, I, I've done about, I don't know, 25 or 30 of these podcasts so far. And there have been a couple where I felt like there was just this really good flow of energy back and forth. And for me, personally, you might feel completely differently. But this has been one of them for sure. I've really, really enjoyed hearing about your experiences and about how PD works and operates and just the whole thing was just a complete pleasure for me. So thank you so much, Reid.
Reade Harpham:Thank you appreciate I agree. It's, it's it's nice to have sort of this common common theme and have an open discussion about it. So yeah, technical issues aside on my on my end, I appreciate your patience. I appreciate the appreciate the opportunity.
Aaron Moncur:Absolutely. Well, that's it for this episode of Being An Engineer, tune in next time. I'm Aaron Moncur, Founder of Pipeline Design & Engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please leave us a positive review. It really helps other people find the show. To learn how your engineering team can leverage our team's expertise in developing turnkey custom test fixtures, automated equipment and product design, visit us at testfixturedesign.com Thanks for listening.
