S1E44 Tools for Building Successful Team Relationships, Loyalty & Passion | Astrid McNellis

Are you passionate about your work? If not, is it possible you are not performing to your greatest extent? These are questions Astrid asked herself early in her career as a product development engineer. Her hard truth was no, she was not passionate about the detailed engineering role she held back then…but Astrid also realized what she is passionate about: marketing. Thus commenced her move to the role of marketing & project management. As she grew into these new roles she developed new strategies and best practices for building strong relationships among her teams, effective time management, and communication. Join our conversation as she shares these tools and more for our listeners.

The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical 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.testfixturedesign.com and www.designtheproduct.com 

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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

Transcript

Presenter: 0:00

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. Enjoy the show.

Aaron Moncur: 0:29

Hello, and welcome to the Being An Engineer Podcast. Our guest today is Astrid Mcnellis, who holds bachelor's and master's degrees from MIT, in mechanical engineering and new product development, started her career as a product development engineer then transitioned into marketing and program management roles. She has over 15 years of experience managing global marketing and new product development, including large multidisciplinary, international teams budgets, and deliverables, all of which is to say, she knows how to get things done. Astrid, welcome to the show.

Astrid Mcnellis: 1:05

Hello, nice to meet you.

Aaron Moncur: 1:07

Okay, well, tell me how did you initially get into engineering? What was attracted to you about that, that career path,

Astrid Mcnellis: 1:16

I will say, it starts with my entire family were engineers of some sort, civil, mechanical, chemical, you name it, they were all engineers. But on top of that, where I landed was curiosity about how things work. And that was the thing that that brought to me. And I was kind of pragmatic about it, I wanted to have flexibility and security and mechanical engineers are needed everywhere. For everything, right. And then on top of that, I wanted to have variety. So if you think about the mechanical engineering world, right, you can do dynamics, and you can do fluids and thermodynamics. And there's such a broad spectrum of things you could do with your, a mechanical engineering degree that I thought that might be a good choice for me that would allow me then to continue to explore.

Aaron Moncur: 2:21

I think that's a point that's not not well understood or fully appreciated, because with a degree in mechanical engineering, you're right, you can do so many different things, just within the field of engineering itself. There are tons of different avenues that you can go down. But even outside of that, you could you could go into a sales engineer, you could do human factors design, you could do marketing, I think an engineering degree, it gives you this base of knowledge and this ability to solve problems that really lets you go so many different places business owner, I think engineers make great business owners I'm, I'm, biased, I guess, but that's what I think.

Astrid Mcnellis: 3:06

Yeah, I think engineers, especially, I don't know, maybe especially mechanical engineers, because we're best, just

Aaron Moncur: 3:12

Of course, yeah

Astrid Mcnellis: 3:13

Yeah, I think we can be very pragmatic. I think that's one of the there's two kind of things that you do as an engineer is solving problems. And then being pragmatic about solving problems, like the best engineers are good at kick throwing their own ideas out and going, 'Oh, that's, that's that, really, I'm in love with that idea. But it's really clearly not working. Therefore, I better kick that if I'm going to be a real good engineer, I need to take that idea to the side and go and throw in a wider net and try things.' And I think that, I don't know, I would think that if I was a singer, I would have to be very passionate about whatever version of what I'm doing. Whereas as an engineer, you're like, 'Okay, that didn't those last 15 ways. I'm gonna have to try some different ways.' And we've had lots of practice failing, if you will.

Aaron Moncur: 4:10

Yeah. Which takes some humility for sure.

Astrid Mcnellis: 4:13

If you don't have it to start with, you get it.

Aaron Moncur: 4:17

That's, that's for sure. Yeah. Well, something interesting about you. There are many things but one thing that I found interesting is you speak I guess four different language English, clearly. German, French and Romanian. What, tell me about that.

Astrid Mcnellis: 4:31

Oh, it's, it's not I don't I don't find it to be so. I don't know. I don't I don't take the credit for to be honest. Because I was born in Romania. Okay, tense. I spoke Romanian and my father. There's some history there that I want to deep dive into, but there's a strong German contingent in Romania or was I think they've been migrating out over the past 100 years, but, sit's So it was an expectation that I would have German. And I spoke just German with my father and just Romanian with my mother. And then when we emigrated from communist Romania, we emigrated first to Germany. And then ultimately, I ended up at the age of nine here in the United States. And so you're looking at an immigrant while you're looking at it, people are listening to

Aaron Moncur: 5:27

That is fascinating. I feel like that could be an episodes worth of podcasting, all by itself, just everything there. So clearly, you have zero accent at all. So you picked up English pretty well, when you moved here. But was that I have to imagine that was challenging, at least at first.

Astrid Mcnellis: 5:45

Yeah. And you some people do pick up an accent? That's interesting. I saw it depends on where they are in the United States. The first thing they'll say to me, it's like, you are not from around here, are you?

Aaron Moncur: 5:58

Really?

Astrid Mcnellis: 5:58

Yeah, so they do catch it. But yeah, and I think, one of the things that, that you were talking about is, why did I go to MIT? Well, I didn't know our country in our options that well. And so once I decided I wanted to be an engineer, I was like, Okay, well, what's the best school for it? Like, be okay, how do I get in there? And especially as we're having so much conversation about immigration and all of that one common thread that I've seen in immigrants? Before I tell you think about this, you've moved, right? And how much pain is that? You may

Aaron Moncur: 6:41

It's not fun.

Astrid Mcnellis: 6:42

Not fun, right? And what is it, it's not just figuring out, if it's expensive, what of your stuff you're going to actually is important enough to take with you. But then it's actually packing it and moving. And then you have no network, and you don't have anyone, and they might do things differently, and you don't know where to get your groceries and all sorts of stuff like that. Okay, so not not great. And but you have good reasons for doing it and say...

Aaron Moncur: 7:10

Sure

Astrid Mcnellis: 7:11

Okay, well take that. And an immigrant makes all those same sorts of decisions. Some of them may not, may not ever be able to go home ever again. They they're making some fairly big sacrifices. And now they're learning a new language, and talk about culture difference, right, then the culture that they're going into. And I mean, any culture, right, if I moved from here to England, it's actually a epic culture change as well. So even if I speak, the language is still big, I still have no network. So I find that immigrants have real grit and very, very laser focus on what it is that they're trying to do. And maybe humility in terms of, you can't even buy a piece of cheese, let alone, whatever it is that you were good at. So you have to learn humility super quick again. As you can if you can't communicate.

Aaron Moncur: 8:12

That's that's a very insightful point, not to be flippant, you almost make it sound like something that should be sought after, right? Because you naturally develop these these skill sets. As a result, I interviewed a gentleman named Tuan Tranpham recently on the podcast, and he was that his family fled from Vietnam 30 years ago or something, he ended up living in Denmark for 15 or 20 years. And then and then coming here to the United States. But his story echoed everything you just said, just this laser focus and his grit determination to get to the places that he wanted to get to, and he has. So I think there's definitely something to be said, for what you're sharing here with the grit determination that immigrants just naturally have.

Astrid Mcnellis: 9:00

And I say the other thing is, I really, if I was queen of our country, I would make it a requirement for every high school kid, once they graduate, that they are required to go live somewhere else in the world, whether it's Paris, or Vietnam, or Africa, whatever they whatever they want to do with third world country, first of all, country, anything. Because of that, it gives you that understanding and appreciation for having to do things differently and learning that it's different. It's not better or worse. It might, you might like some things and you might like some things more and less. But it's still it's just a different way of doing it. And that opens your mind in life in general and being able to collaborate and work with other people knowing that, okay, I wildly disagree with what you're saying, but I'm going to take a moment and at least understand where you're coming. From because I know at least three different words for different words for the word water, and none of them are better or worse. So maybe your way is worthy for a retake least explore and understand before I make a decision on whether or not I line up with what you're doing. So I think there's that plus I'm, I love our country. And so whoever goes out, they will come back and really appreciate how amazing the United States is.

Aaron Moncur: 10:32

That's a terrific mindset. I love that. Well, let me let me dive into a few not technical questions. But engineering related. Here's one of your early roles was at Timken, where they primarily manufacturer bearings, I'm sure they do other things as well. You lead the development of a process and software application to automate new product price estimations. Estimating is something that I think all engineers deal with at least to some extent, and something for which very few of us probably receive any formal training. Can you tell us a little bit about that that quoting software project and also what tools that you currently use to to estimate new projects?

Astrid Mcnellis: 11:16

So you're going to be a little disappointed about was this we'd have our master engineers on here. The other piece that you might I, Timken makes bearings and steel, steel. But there, they were 100 years old when I was working for them. And what was cool about them is they had really worked through some, they just like lightyears ahead in terms of business practices, and understanding just how to create strong teams with things like that. So I learned a lot of what I use today, actually was foundational there. So anyway, this particular project, oh, and the other thing I was going to tell you that was cool, is they just hired engineers, period. You want to be in marketing, an engineer.

Aaron Moncur: 12:10

Oh, interesting.

Astrid Mcnellis: 12:11

We're engineer, everyone.

Aaron Moncur: 12:13

Yeah, because engineers make the best, best this team members. Yeah.

Astrid Mcnellis: 12:17

Well, you were a little bias. I'm not necessarily by No, what was cool is what and especially their sales guys, were all mechanical engineers, and they would hire the engineers who had leanings, and were maybe more outgoing and things like that. And then they would teach them how to be sales guys. And then the salesman go in and could engineer the product right into customers? application. So that was very cool. So anyway, so then they would but so we would create a bearings and what have you for the explicit customer application, rather than making them use one of our off the shelf products, and it would be exactly whatever they needed, or whatever power and so on. And some of the changes were pretty minor, like, change the OD by two millimeters or something super, like non, not worthy of really a lot of thinking about it, right? I mean, it's, it's fill real work, but it's not, like, completely changed the power profile and all of that. And we had the same engineers that, like our master engineers, doing these very simple things as well is a super complicated things. And so our customers would sit and wait, because it would, it was just this pile of work that the engineers needed to do to review. So what we did is, is we just went through and made a path and said, Okay, how do you estimate the costs and the changes in the whatever's for what are this kind of weak, categorize the type of changes and then just set it for the very simple changes? How do you go about it, and then create a process map for that? And got them to the what ifs and stuff like that and make decisions like that? And then we automated it.

Aaron Moncur: 14:23

I'm not disappointed at all in that.

Astrid Mcnellis: 14:25

Oh you're not? Okay.

Aaron Moncur: 14:26

No, I think that's terrific. Right? It seems? I don't know. It seems maybe like a simple answer. But really, when you're evaluating any process, it's so valuable to just take a step back and break the process down into all its different individual compartments. And then think specifically about each compartment. Is this the best way to do this piece of the process? Yes. Okay, great. We'll move on to the next one. Is this the best piece best way to do this piece? I think we can make some improvements here and just breaking it down into all the end. visual elements, I think itself is so, so useful. And it seems basic. But how often do we do we really do that? Right?

Astrid Mcnellis: 15:07

Yeah, I'm, it's awesome that you can capture that because that's one of the secrets to my general successes. I'm actually doing that right now. And my job is going everybody's hand waving around, like, How hard can it be? Yeah. Okay, we get it. But then when I actually go, Okay, well, here's step one. Here's step two. And then a miracle happens. And we got the results. And they're like, Well, okay, yeah.

Aaron Moncur: 15:37

There's something, someone will come in and do something. It'll be fine. Don't worry.

Astrid Mcnellis: 15:42

Yeah. And then that person wins the lottery. And we're right, yeah. All right. But when you create that process, you then also have an opportunity to go, Well, wait a minute, why don't we do that little loop de loop? Like, why are we off in that Eddy doing that thing? Is that actually value add? And it's just basic green belt, black belt sort of activity, but it's like, well, is that actually, is it necessary? Is it adding value?

Aaron Moncur: 16:13

Yeah

Astrid Mcnellis: 16:14

All that sort of stuff is pretty critical in any kind of process.

Aaron Moncur: 17:20

Which brings up another great point is asking why, especially for existing processes. Okay, we do it this way. Why do we do it that way? Is it because the last three engineers only had this skill set. And so that's how they did it, maybe there's a better way. So asking why for each of those steps is also a critical component.

Astrid Mcnellis: 17:38

And it takes some serious, I think, discipline to pause. I was listening to you putting that in your calendar. And I don't think a lot of people do it. And in fact, I was like, oops, I even I'm not, process girls. Still, I'm not doing that. Because it's a it's a important, but not urgent activity. To stop and take stock. Why are we doing this? How are we doing it? Is this the right way? We're usually too busy running around doing to say is it Are we doing the right thing? Are we doing it the right way? Why? Why are we doing it all that sort of thing?

Aaron Moncur: 18:21

Have you ever heard the name Earl Nightingale

Astrid Mcnellis: 18:24

No, tell me more?

Aaron Moncur: 18:26

Yeah, he's he's passed on, I believe. But he was one of the the first personal development gurus and he put together some, some courses, and one of them is called Lead the Field, which to this day is one of my favorite. I have the audio version. So I listened to it. But it's just, it's timeless, classic advice for being a successful person, managing time understanding money, all these things, he has this just wonderful course, it's like four hours, it's not even that long. But one of the things he talks about is the importance of of not reacting to everything but thinking and he talks about how it's so hard for humans to think. And we have to intentionally turn on our thinking apparatus he calls it, which is just such a great name, our thinking apparatus, because it's so easy to just react, right? We all have our schedules and our habits and our routines. And it's easy to just go through those and react. Okay, this is happening. I know, I've done it 20 times, so I'm just going to react and do the same thing. But he says no, you need to intentionally turn on your thinking apparatus. And I think that's really hard for us to do as humans, right, because there's this like mental inertia to just continue doing. And it takes some some real brain power to stop and discipline, discipline. Absolutely.

Astrid Mcnellis: 19:51

Yeah. Tony Robbins, I follow Tony Robbins, his work too. And he talks a lot about how we evolved, our brain evolved to keep us safe. Fabulous, 10,000 years ago, and even today, there's a lot of what, what our brain is focused on is making sure we're safe.

Aaron Moncur: 20:12

Yeah

Astrid Mcnellis: 20:13

But that doesn't allow us to evolve. survival is not evolution, survival is not necessarily joy. You're alive. And so that reaction that you're talking about is the brain is immediately thinking through. Okay, how is this a threat? How am I gonna protect against this? How do I keep myself safe versus, you know what I'm saying? I'm good, I will survive today. It'll be okay. Now, I want to know how do I take some of the the higher elements of Maslow's pyramid and have purpose and joy, and all that sort of thing?

Aaron Moncur: 20:47

Let's do some self actualization here.

Astrid Mcnellis: 20:49

Yeah, exactly.

Aaron Moncur: 20:51

Quick tangency. Our engineering manager Michael, was Tony Robbins' business manager for several years. That's my second degree of claim to fame.

Astrid Mcnellis: 21:01

It's very cool. I want to talk about that when I heard that particular podcast, I'm like, Oh my gosh, there's another podcast, you could go down and spend a whole hour

Aaron Moncur: 21:12

Oh, he's got all kinds of stories from that era. Very interesting stuff. You mentioned that that Timken was probably is lightyears ahead in terms of business practices. Are there any in particular that you could share that are just interesting or insightful? Or that could be applied to our our businesses?

Astrid Mcnellis: 21:33

I'm probably, but I don't know which ones are there is because I have been collecting best practices. And so it's, I will, I can tell you my approaches to things. But I think that one of the things is continuity. So there's a few things. But it's not what I use in my day to day, but I think it's a thing that companies and again, I haven't been with Timken in a long time, so I don't know what they do today. But loyalty was huge. So they were public company. But more than 50% was friends and family. So really, they were really yeah, that's incredible. Yes. which allowed them to not care what the stock market had to say to them, they were just like, yeah, okay, so don't buy our stock, whatever. And, and it was still led by someone from the family, with passion, and that's not always a good thing that like getting passed down from generation to generation is not always a good thing. But there is a certain I think level of pride and, and commitment to doing it, like it's your, Aaron, your, your company, it's, it's your name, it's your reputation, your explicit reputation, if your company is doing well, and doing the right thing is a much different scenario than if the CEO of some company who's, is a serial CEO, and they go into various companies, and they spike up the stock price. And then they take their thought, money, and, who knows what happened to the people there, and there's, I think, in the society right now, there's so much so little trust in, am I gonna have a job tomorrow? Because they keep coming through and they reorganize, and you're, you're done. And you've given your life and soul to this company for 5-10 whatever years that that's now quaint, right? We don't do that anymore. But, um, and so there's a lack of trust. And so it's a it's a negative perpetuating perpetuating circumstance where, because they care about the stock market and all that sort of thing. And they're working on that rather than going with a long vision, which may be ugly in the short term that causes employees to not be as trustful that they will have a job no matter how well they've done. Right, they'll get laid off no matter what possibly. And, and then they're not doing quite as good a job. They're not quite as committed. So it's just this negative cycle back to Timken. One thing I really appreciated about them is when they had I know it happened before I joined but when they had a really rough time, what they said is we don't want to lay anyone off. But the way to do that the way to survive right now is for everyone to take a 20% pay cut, can you? And I think they had the management team agreed to do that. And said okay, we're just going to take a pay cut, nobody loses their job. And we're just gonna we're going to ride this out from try and everybody's protected. So that was one thing the other one was really working and truly, like I fill in all these like, job goals and blahdy blah but no with Timken, they really wanted to know which gets into how I did I end up in marketing but they really want to know what is it that's going to spark you and give you joy and if you I could go to any executive and say, you know what, I don't love what I'm doing what I want to do is X and they would look for a way to make X possible. For your underperforming and they would coach you and work with you until you are performing that level. Can you imagine the level of commitment that those employees had for that company?

Aaron Moncur: 26:40

I can't imagine. I have thought a lot about this. And I love that you're bringing it up and that Timken have that culture. That's phenomenal. I wonder if it makes it easier that everyone was uncles and cousins. But even outside of that, I recently had one on ones with with every team member on my team. Granted, we're a small team. So it didn't take that long. But I asked them to think about in advance the answer to the question, what is it that you want from your role at that pipeline at our company? And I really wanted to hear it. I wanted to hear what is it that's gonna bring you joy? Why do you want to work here? Do you want to work here? And I don't know that, that we yet have the level of trust that is required for team members to really, really be honest about that. Because what if they're honest answer? And maybe that's not just honest with me, but honest with themselves? What if they're honest answers? I don't know that I love engineering anymore. Maybe I want to do something else. But who's gonna say that to their boss? Right? That that requires quite a bit of, of trust. But anyway, I really liked that. That mentality. And I love that you brought it up.

Astrid Mcnellis: 27:53

Yeah. But hang on. What if

Aaron Moncur: 27:56

Wait, there's more,

Astrid Mcnellis: 27:57

There's more. What did they say? I don't know that I want to do engineering, I'm tired of engineering. Well, I'm guessing you have marketing that needs to be done in your company and sales.

Aaron Moncur: 28:08

Sure, yeah.

Astrid Mcnellis: 28:09

And there's like, in your company, there are all these other things that can be done. So maybe they become the best damn marketing person you could ever hope to have.

Aaron Moncur: 28:21

And we know that engineers make the best marketers. So we're all ready for success. All right, well, let me take just a very short break here and share with the listeners that testfixturedesign.com is where you can learn more about how our company pipeline helps medical device engineering teams, and other product companies who need turnkey custom test fixtures or automated equipment to assemble, inspect, characterize or perform verification or validation testing on their devices. Today, we're speaking with Astrid Mcnellis, who currently works as a Program Manager at Terumo BCT. Astrid, you have expertise and it feels like just so many different areas, and I feel like I could just pepper you with questions all day. One of them is managing teams, both domestically and overseas. What are some of the challenges that that you've encountered in solutions that you've developed for doing so successfully?

Astrid Mcnellis: 29:24

Oh, boy, am I glad you asked. Because I'm very passionate about this.

Aaron Moncur: 29:27

Good.

Astrid Mcnellis: 29:28

So the thing, there's a couple things. So let's start with how do you how do you have a successful team? The successful team is you got to get the right butts in the right seats. And that's not my quote. It's one of my CEOs used to say that, which goes back to, if you ask a question, and then the person can answer, right? Honestly, they might say, I'm not passionate, which, by the way, is why I'm not doing pure engineering anymore, is, I'm not passionate about this anymore. I could get passionate, I'm finding that I'm passionate about this other stuff. And so making sure that the people are feeling passionate about whatever it is that they're doing, and they're they have the expertise or can get the expertise to do that. So right, that's right. Also, I got I've gotten very, through my career, I've tried multiple times, but I call it eliminate the cancer. So if there's somebody on the team that just isn't a fit, or doesn't have the right motivation, or whatever, just whatever, I've gotten really, very unapologetic about heaving them out. But

Aaron Moncur: 30:50

Oh, tell me more about this. How do you know that you've reached that point where, okay, this this person has to go?

Astrid Mcnellis: 30:57

Honestly, if I know that that person and I try and keep them off my team to start with, so I go by reputation.

Aaron Moncur: 31:04

Okay.

Astrid Mcnellis: 31:05

And how do you, you know what, it's at some point when you get that exasperated, you've tried it once, two, three times, and you're like, just, it's just not half scale working. And that's, if they're a good human being, and they're trying and they're just the wrong like they're not qualified to do that role, well then find a different role for them to do, but I'm talking about the folks who are just not writing correctly motivated, and that tends to there's no sense simple answer, unfortunately, you just have to be vigilant and see that it's pretty, I think, I think you too have a good sense for that. And there, it's pretty, if you're actually paying attention, you can see when somebody is not really not committed to the common goal, and they're more committed to their own goals, whatever that might be. And so again, Keepo, wish you luck somewhere else. I mean, there's even a person I need toad who had extensive, epic knowledge that we really needed on our team. But was you needed to know what question to ask, in order to pull that data out of him? Which is not useful, then I have to already know what he knows to know, to ask the question, get him to raise his hand, and say, I need you to hear, here's what you guys are missing. Here's the pothole you're about to go through. And so after a few of those, I was like, and we're done. And we're out. I'm unapologetic, what can I tell you? Um, the other thing that's super important is provide a compelling why. So I was thinking about your business, I don't know what you tell your team. But if you're doing test fixtures for medical device, companies, okay. So if you get that wrong, then either they get false positives or false negatives, meaning either they pass something that shouldn't have passed, or they fail, something that should have passed. Or if you're too slow, then they're slow getting their life saving product to market. That's important work you guys are doing, right. That's huge. Like, that's not just the freaking textbook, it test fixture, it's not just a bit of engineering, it's kind of fun. It's changing the world in a in your own way. So that needs to be clear. That's where the passion and I'm, that's, I'm big on passion, you need to be passionate about what you're doing. And if you're not then find, find the passion, because if unless you're passionate, you're always going to be okay. You'll do just fine, I guess, yeah.

Aaron Moncur: 33:51

But you're not going to be great.

Astrid Mcnellis: 33:53

You're not going to be great. And you're not going to be having fun.

Aaron Moncur: 33:56

So this is a good a good point to transition to your your role as a marketing manager, as a marketer in general. You just you just brought up this great point of asking why and then you immediately with probably very little or no advanced thought were able to pivot and say, Okay, let's look at your business. Why is it important for your employees to do what they do? And you came up with this? Well, it's life saving equipment, it's going to help these medical device companies get their products to people that need them, patients that need that care sooner. Tell me about your transition into marketing. How did you discover that you were passionate about it? And what what kind of things have you done as a marketer? Well, so let me back up back to passion, because I'm passionate about passion always goes back to passion.

Astrid Mcnellis: 34:47

Alright? Yeah. So so why did I stop doing engineering is probably I mean, if you can, if you can safely assume my work pretty damn hard for those degrees, right?

Aaron Moncur: 34:57

Right.

Astrid Mcnellis: 34:58

Now I've got them.

Aaron Moncur: 34:58

MIT doesn't just have to mount like a cold factory.

Astrid Mcnellis: 35:01

No, no, no. It's damn hard to get in. And it's even harder to get out. So but then I was working at the target company, and I was blessed to have Professor Flowers as my mentor, Professor Woody Flowers. look him up, he's amazing. So I realized that these venerable engineers had passion, and I realized I did not and what is passion, you do it for fun, you're grateful that somebody is willing to do it to give you money to do the thing you love? There's so many things about that, in my passion ended up being solving problems. And I feel like so many in the form of products at the time, but now it's gotten bigger, but too many times, product companies ask, what product would you like us to create for you? It's like, well, the customer doesn't know what products are capable. You are capable of creating they they're not engineers. They're not product developers. They're doing whatever they're doing so in a medical device industry, like why would we go ask the doctor what kind of product we should develop for them. They'll do their best for us because they're nice people. But that's not the question to ask. The question asked is, what are the biggest problems? What are the things keeping you up at night? What is keeping you from being as successful as you could be in that world? Right?

Aaron Moncur: 36:33

Those are much more interesting questions than what product should we develop?

Astrid Mcnellis: 36:36

Yes, yes. And it's like even the post that is super old example. But I don't think any one of us would have said, I need these little pieces of paper that I have everywhere. Like, nobody would have come up with that.

Aaron Moncur: 36:49

Right?

Astrid Mcnellis: 36:51

So, so that's, that is the important and so marketing, that's their job. If they do it well. So there's marketing, there's two months. Okay? So backing up, Timken allowed me. I said, I wanted to do new product development. My father is a mechanical engineer. He taught me about all these managers that would come in and say, How hard could it be? And they didn't understand they weren't engineers. And so he'd be able to like, be like, well, grab a chair. And they didn't know that he was blowing smoke up their skirts, because he was he there, there wasn't that mutual respect. And he was like, or vice versa. He get lambasted for trying to do the right thing. The manager didn't understand. So anyway, so back to so what I wanted to do is if I'm going to do new product development, I wanted to be able to do every step along the way. So how does it start? It starts with marketing and understanding, what is the customer problem? Where's the market going? If I make the best VHS product right now? Is that really going to do the job for us. So understanding that, then it goes to engineering to create the best product, then it goes to manufacturing to actually be able to create it and do it in a costly, cost effective way. And then it gets flung back to marketing, whose job it is to show how the product that you created solves the problem that the customer has. So that's how I ended up in marketing is to understand what is that problem that we're trying to solve?

Aaron Moncur: 38:34

Well, I feel like you're selling me on marketing. I'm listening to talk about asking interesting questions. That sounds phenomenal. I'd love to do that. Yeah, that's fun.

Astrid Mcnellis: 38:45

Sorry, but I

Aaron Moncur: 38:46

Go ahead, no, go ahead.

Astrid Mcnellis: 38:48

So the other thing that one of I feel like my success factors is I demand my entire core team. So core teams, right? It's the engineers, manufacturers quality, regulatory, clinical whatever. Right? That's our that's our team. That's our core team to develop the product. So what we would do is at the beginning of our development cycle, we would go and do exactly what I said is we'd sit with, we we'd have a bit more focused question rather than what are all the problems you have? My anesthesiologist, friend, but back to, something that Nellcor and we were in Oximetry could do while we, you would, we'd be in those rooms were with a mirror on the one side, and I demand that my team spend at least one day on the backside of that mirror, actually physically watching the end, a customer answer those questions. And like, there was no summary. There's no like, PowerPoints are only interesting when you know the background behind the one liners, right? Yeah. So my team, I forced them in a kind way. They needed to go spend at least the day and then once they got they would like just kick and scream, why do I need to do this? I'm in regulatory, for God's sakes. I don't get this. I this is not helpful to my day to day job. And I'm like, No, no, you need to understand your why. Why are we doing this? Why is this important? There's the person you need to have in mind as you're trying to make decisions going forward.

Aaron Moncur: 40:33

And even if they were kicking and screaming, going to that that meeting, I bet they came back. grateful that they had been there.

Astrid Mcnellis: 40:40

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Aaron Moncur: 40:42

That was the trick. You had up your sleeve. You knew it was gonna turn out that way the whole time.

Astrid Mcnellis: 40:47

Exactly.

Aaron Moncur: 40:48

Okay. So I am not a marketer, but I've had to do at least some my feeble attempts at marketing to promote my own company. But I've always felt like marketing is this black box. And I think engineers in general probably feel that way. Because a lot of the direction that we get as far as we're going to develop this new product or that new product comes from the marketing team. And can you just explain a little bit, draw the curtain back and let us behind the scenes? What what happens in marketing? How does marketing work? Why is it important?

Astrid Mcnellis: 41:27

Yeah, okay, well, there's so like I said, there's two sides of it right at the beginning of a development project. marketing needs to be out there ahead and look into the, into the future. And see where is the market going? Again, if we make the best VHS product, or at this point, the best CD in the world, not really that gonna gonna, that's not where the markets going. So they need and that's a really obvious one because we're in the throes of it but I'm upstream when they're called upstream marketing. They're out there trying to really understand way out into the future and say, okay, where is the market going? In general, what kind of problems do I see is like, the information, being able to manage information? Well, that that's something that even someone who's doing pulse oximetry needs to be aware of, we may choose to pursue it or not. But we need to at least understand, where's pulse oximetry going? How is it becoming a commodity? Every, we're losing patents, blah, dee blah. Or what is what is that as far as what does the market need? And then explicitly, oh, and beyond that is what is our company good at doing, we're not going to be good at everything. So let's have clarity about what we can do and what we can do well, and what we can do better? And can we create something there that others cannot do? It's called a competitive advantage, right? And then you go a little closer to now we're actually doing a real product that we're talking about. And it's the actually asking the right sorts of questions of your potential customers, so that you understand what it is that their problems are. So as you're making a decision of, it's going to be this big, or that big, we're going to use that material or this material, you have a little bit of an inkling into what is that world like. So that, I spent so it's I've been blessed, I spend so much time in the OR where I know, I noticed things that an anesthesiologist is paying attention to and doing that they don't even know to tell me about because it's just motherhood and apple pie. Well, everybody knows that. Right? So you sit and you observe, and you so then you making good decisions. So that's all to me, that's all marketing, understanding that there's lots of different people. And people don't send me hate mail, because I know there's like, I just want a bunch of other professions in there. So don't I get it, but that's, in a tiny company. That's what your marketing person does, is trying to figure out, represent, translate the customer, back to the design team. And then on the far end, sorry, go ahead.

Aaron Moncur: 44:20

I hear a lot of almost human factors design in what you're saying. Right? It's observing the users and taking that information back to the design team.

Astrid Mcnellis: 44:30

Yes. And those were the professionals, I was hoping you weren't gonna send me hate. But yeah, exactly. And understanding all of that, and putting it together. And then and then synthesizing it so that they can tell that story to the design team. Again, the design team should have their own but they become the de facto customer is like we would go to our marketing person and go, Okay, we're going this way or that way, what's more important, we were not going to be able to do both, and the tiny one is to get it done. Which one do you what what's the trade off here and that marketing person is the person that gives you that, that understanding? So okay, so they that's the that's the that side, and then at the end of it, we now have our shiny, new, gorgeous, beautiful product that, is the best thing since sliced bread. And now, we need to do a good job of describing it or translating back from here's a set of features and a price point and whatever. And Mr./Mrs. Customer, here's how it translates back to solving your problem. It's not because what that's another thing that we make mistakes on is check out our cool features. Well, that's fine. But what the real story is, is understanding I'm pausing to think of whether it's worthy to tell you a story. So let me know if you want me to give you an example, but but they go back to translating it saying you said your problem was x. And so our product, the features that we just have put in here are designed to solve that problem x. And oh, by the way, if any market are worth their salt will do take that product and do what I just said but take it about all through the design process and put it in the hands of the customer with as minimal a explanation or interference as possible. And they go, Here. You said you had this problem, here's a product that we think will solve it. Play with it. What do you think? stream of consciousness? This sucks. This is cool. Oh, I didn't expect this. Oh, wait, how do I? Oh my gosh, having the engineers actually watch. And I have no idea all sit there and go, Oh, come on. Really? We'd be like, just press that button, isn't it obvious? Yeah.

Aaron Moncur: 47:03

I can see why an engineer would become such a valuable marketer, because they both understand the design side, the technical side of things. And if they can get into that mindset of watching the customer use it and well, that would be hugely beneficial.

Astrid Mcnellis: 47:19

Yes. And that's been what I do a lot of is I'll do translations between, literally, that's where the power of being an engineering was a marketer, his exact algo. Okay, engineer, I get that, this, this adding Wi Fi just freaking complicated the heck out of your product, and I meant it's medical Wi Fi. So it's not just like any

Aaron Moncur: 47:44

Oh, yeah.

Astrid Mcnellis: 47:45

So I get that, that just complicated your life and your EMS just went out the door. I like I get it. Yeah. But let me explain to you in some terms of why cuz the marketing like, how can you even question me, you know what I said, and I'm like, take it easy. Oh, engineer, the reason they're asking for the WiFi is because, look at the pieces of paper they have to write down and this device

Aaron Moncur: 48:15

All these sticky notes that they don't want to use,

Astrid Mcnellis: 48:17

Let's walk through with them in the ICU and, and then they go, Oh, they got to carry this big honkin device and then plug it back in and it doesn't connect and thought, Oh, Okay, I get it. All right, now you've enrolled me in wanting to solve your problem. Done.

Aaron Moncur: 48:36

Excellent. That's, that's a great summary. Thank you for that. Alright, I have just a couple more questions for you. The first one is you were for a few years at a company called SGI. And it seems like a lot of what you did there was help strengthen relationships, whether they were between sales teams or executive teams, one of our core values here at Pipeline is treat our customers well treat our team members better. And I was hoping that you could share some tools with us that you found to be effective, as you were strengthening relations, relationships between those groups.

Astrid Mcnellis: 49:13

Yeah. First, first thing that I think we tend to forget, as we get excited about whatever we're doing is in the end, we're all humans. And we have good reasons for doing what we're doing whatever our motivation is, whether or not we agree, that that as long as you start with empathy, and humility, and a genuine curiosity of like, and every person that you meet is understanding, trying to understand them, why are you, why are you, why do you think the things you think, so that and what do we all fundamentally want we want, to love and be loved, we want to feel safe and all that sort of thing. So start there. And as soon as you understand, we want to take care of our children, make sure they're safe, that sort of thing. Right. So there's under once you start I think it's an approach a human male, human humble approach and a curious approach with each other. I think that's an important element and I think one of the ways to do that is is actually just model it and then facilitate the heck out of it if you seeing in your own team that they're not doing that they're getting caught into whatever remember we talked about the brains job is to protect yeah getting caught in fear and whatever there it might not show up as fear it might show up as anger it may show up is I'm stuck I'm not listening I'm the whatever the job to me have you in mind My job is to facilitate through that and help help those and it's again very subtle understand and one of my big big big big tools that I love is the disc

Aaron Moncur: 51:05

Is this disc profiling?

Astrid Mcnellis: 51:07

And I had and not only do I do I have everyone get tested but then we put all of our results on one page.

Aaron Moncur: 51:17

Oh interesting.

Astrid Mcnellis: 51:18

And and I literally had it and when it when I first was done for me, I was like oh, no, now they know all about me. And I was like, don't do that. What are you doing but, but but what ended up happening? So I'm sure my team feels the same when I do it to them. But what ends up happening is like, oh, you're an engineer, you're gonna need details, I better maybe you're gonna want to know how I got from A to B, which I think is how I'm approaching today's interview, you're gonna want to know how I got from A to B, and to C, and Z. If you're a D, which is kind of a classic leader, decide and move on, well, you just that person just wants the highlights. And wants it will trust that you've got that detail. But if you get them, if you go from A to Z, they you will have lost them right around B.

Aaron Moncur: 52:17

I can I can already see how useful this would be to implement into my own team. Yeah. Sometimes people trap me and they're like, Hey, this is what we're doing. We're doing this and we're doing that and like, I have a hard time interrupting people and saying, stop, I don't want to hear all of this. So I tend to just listen, but in my mind, I'm like, I don't need to hear all of this. Just get to the point and move on.

Astrid Mcnellis: 52:38

Right, exactly. So if I so how I talked to you, and I'm in that kind of environment would be get to the point do the desk, it'll change your team's dynamics.

Aaron Moncur: 52:51

That's great.

Astrid Mcnellis: 52:53

See, an engineer wants to know, well, how?

Aaron Moncur: 52:56

Yeah

Astrid Mcnellis: 52:57

Oh, there's been, they've done millions and millions of these. Okay, I can trust it. So I had... Go ahead.

Aaron Moncur: 53:04

Have you found that your team has been very receptive to the the disc profiles and using them?

Astrid Mcnellis: 53:10

Yeah, I've literally when I was in a in a cubicle land, I literally had a teammate. Go. And they were, they were like, I'm on my way to meet with, so and so. And they came and look that because I had it on a poster. And they were like, oh, they're a C, crap. And then they go back to their desk. They're like, I gotta get my data. Like, it's great to get started. So yeah

Aaron Moncur: 53:38

Fantastic.

Astrid Mcnellis: 53:38

A huge, huge thing.

Aaron Moncur: 53:40

That's a great tool. It's a great tool that I don't think we've talked about at all ever on the show. Thank you for bringing that up.

Astrid Mcnellis: 53:46

Yeah, you're welcome. And so I will tell you a quick story of how I had a partner very early in my career. And he was much more of a see which is data driven person, and I was more the Could you tell the person, the personable person, I want to know the story behind you. So anyway, we were driving each other nuts. Oh, absolutely. Just just, under the surface, but we were just having a rough time

Aaron Moncur: 54:15

Bunnyheads. Yeah.

Astrid Mcnellis: 54:16

And after we did the disc training, we discover that he was the details guy. I was the big picture person. Okay. And he hated doing the damn big, big picture. And I hated like, I could go into the details. But that wasn't where I naturally, you know. So what we realized is that we make a perfect team.

Aaron Moncur: 54:38

Yeah.

Astrid Mcnellis: 54:38

And all we have to do is you do the details, I'll synthesize and record it up to management.

Aaron Moncur: 54:45

Oh, now you've got this perfect complementary pairing.

Astrid Mcnellis: 54:48

Exactly. And so we would, and when, when I would come at him, and I'd be like, do you have it now? How about now? How about now? How about now? Is it ready? He would be like, you're being a D right now. Yeah. Easy. And I'm like, Oh, you need you need a couple days, don't you? He's like, yep. Like, in two days. He's like, yep. All right. I'm gonna walk away.

Aaron Moncur: 55:16

Well, that's a great roadmap. You and I think, yeah, we talked a little bit about this flow chart that my wife had made for me, right? Like, this is how to communicate with me. And that's been embarrassing, embarrassingly, but it's been useful, right. So yeah, the disc profiling is a similar tool just gives you a path for how to communicate with different people.

Astrid Mcnellis: 55:37

Yes. Huge, huge way of how do we work? So if if we are at loggerheads before, it wasn't that we had this didn't have the same goals, or we're trying to do the right thing. We were just coming at it at different ways. So this huge, the other one is to pair people up and do as as much group decisions like how, what's our goal? What does success look like? The, are you familiar with the Agile methodology, where they do a

Aaron Moncur: 56:09

Very very rudimentary level

Astrid Mcnellis: 56:11

I have actually used it. And that was one of the things that was unique is I put our team, we did an Agile board. We did it for everything. I mean, it's very set lends itself much better obviously the software because in in mechanical things, you have to build it before you can test it before and it takes time right. But yeah, we still did that in the Agile board. So basically, the short version of it is, you figure out everything you need to do and you prioritize it. And then you decide as a team, here's the stuff we need to do, we're going to do this in this sprint. And then as a team, you can see visually as those tasks get moved across. And so it would not be unusual for someone to come in and look at somebody else's task and be like, okay, they haven't started that yet. Or to go, Hey, I just discovered something I want you to know about this. And it was just a great communication. tool. And you can do that digitally to now in the time of COVID, that you absolutely communication is a big, big thing of making sure everybody knows what everyone else is working on, not to the minute detail, but just enough for someone to say I'll pick on regulatory again, as I'm going down some path and eight regulatory might go, um, hang on, did you know there's a regulation that did it, and, and, or, golly, we got a problem, we got to get around it. And that regulatory person, that collaboration becomes possible because they know what the other ones doing. So I try very hard to get and it's hard because you can go too much detail where everyone wants to poke their eyes up. And you can go high enough where it's motherhood and apple pie and nobody's paying any attention. So the in between, is, have you heard of death by meeting? Okay, so yeah, so that's what I use the live agenda at the beginning of the meeting, I'll say what are the important things we need to be talking about, because those tend to be the cross functional types of things, those are top of mind that those are going to be the hardest things to deal with. And so then you get, you get people solving problems together. And that builds a team.

Aaron Moncur: 58:40

It's funny that we have all these tools, right? We have like Agile and Scrum and JIRA, and project task management, all these different tools and teams, and it all comes down to communication. We're really just trying to find effective ways to communicate with each other. We found that the daily huddle is a great way to do that we take 10 minutes at the beginning of the day, everyone virtually stands up and says I'm working on this today. And the next person says, I'm working on that today. And and it's interesting how just that those few minutes in the morning, and the beginning of the day, can spark conversations that wouldn't have happened otherwise, that are really important conversations to have

Astrid Mcnellis: 59:21

And avoid problems that you didn't even know where coming at you.

Aaron Moncur: 59:24

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Astrid Mcnellis: 59:27

And the other thing that I find is if again, it's like, it's dull moment, right? And, and it's also unless you've done it, and you're a believer, you think there's no way we could possibly do this sort of thing. The other thing that I implemented is we I don't know about you, you guys probably are more sane in corporate America. We many of us do our work outside of business hours, because we're meetings during business hours, which is ridiculous.

Aaron Moncur: 59:55

Interesting, okay

Astrid Mcnellis: 59:57

And part of that is because everybody because it's disjointed, and people are on different meeting different stuff.

Aaron Moncur: 1:00:06

Yeah.

Astrid Mcnellis: 1:00:06

What I successfully did in several organizations and several teams, is I was like, Alright, I get that you're going to be in three or four other teams, you're going to be in other meetings. But I was granted also that I was empowered by my management to do this. We agree that Tuesdays and Thursdays were our project days, and we would all today and COVID time I would get us all on a zoom meeting, we would all come come to the same room in real life, you you go to a conference room or whatever. And we would work there and we wouldn't necessarily have meetings or whatever it would be, we would all come and we're working. It's our day to work on this project. You're you might and so what would happen is somebody be like, hey, Jane, I have a bloody blog question about testing, how do you guys do? What is it that you guys have got planned? And it'd be like a five minute conversation? Or, or since we were all in there, they'd be like, and I listened and I'm like, oh, did you guys know management decided yada yada. And they're like, No, we didn't Okay, good to know. And, and then another person, the VND guy would say hey, by the way, I know we got to get ahead of getting the test house early enough for, so did you know you need to put this much in? And all of a sudden we have this mini meeting of 10 15 minutes that had everyone that needed to be in there participating, and it would be done and done. And then we would be like, okay, sorted out good boom. And we'd go back to our whatever we were working on.

Aaron Moncur: 1:01:49

And were those. I may have missed, but were those formal meetings that were scheduled? Or is that just the hallway gathering?

Astrid Mcnellis: 1:01:56

Well, the formal meeting was you had to be in the team room on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Okay, it would kick off with maybe a stand up, and maybe we'd have a team meeting during that day, at some point, there would be a meeting. And yes, maybe they would say, hey, you and I and the three of us we need to get together we'd they'd huddle over in the corner of the room, or they go out over the room or whatever. So yes, meetings would happen in addition, but it was, you sit in that same room? And you could do it today with with Zoom, right? You could go into a Zoom, little breakout room and go have a huddle. Yeah, so the team could be there. And you could pop back into the main room go, Hey, actually, jack, we need you for this call pop in. And so that they're not multitasking giving people and I don't know about you, but in a meeting usually takes the first like, 75% of the meeting, however long, you've got to figure out what is it we're trying to solve? Okay, everybody understands our roles. Everybody gets gets how we're supposed to like, what the problem is, well, who's doing what we got the history, okay, now we're ready to start solving. And it's like, Oh, I got to go to another meeting.

Aaron Moncur: 1:03:18

I have encountered that problem for sure. And we have what I think is a really terrific, it's a meeting notes template that we use, and I'd be happy to send it out to anyone that wants one. Get in touch with me. But it the first line is what's the purpose? Why are we here? Alright, let's be really clear on why we're here and what we're trying to solve. And then there's a place to with action items. And then there's some instructions for what to do with those action items to make sure that they get done. And there's a place to review action items from the previous meeting anyway, it's been really helpful for us. Anyway, just another form of effective communication.

Astrid Mcnellis: 1:03:58

Yeah, that's just, yeah, but I guess what I'm saying is, if you are in a room, virtual or otherwise, all day long, you can pick up that conversation, leave it walk away noodle noodle, the seas in the in the room, the people who need the noodle will noodle on it some more, and then they'll go back, and they'll add a little more. Yeah. And, and the magic happens when you allow it to take time. And there isn't the pressure of we got to finish and we're done. It's, you have all day.

Aaron Moncur: 1:04:34

It's interesting. So it's an all day meeting that could take the whole day or none of the day.

Astrid Mcnellis: 1:04:41

Exactly. Exactly.

Aaron Moncur: 1:04:43

That's a fresh new take on

Astrid Mcnellis: 1:04:45

Everyone in the room, just working on whatever they're working on. There's no problem you're trying to solve. You're just in the room together.

Aaron Moncur: 1:04:53

Awesome. I love it. All right. Well, Astrid, again, I think I could just ask you questions all day long. But but we should probably end now. So thank you so much for for spending some time with me. Before we go, do you do want to share how people can get a hold of you or anything about the company that you're working at right now anything like that?

Astrid Mcnellis: 1:05:15

I'm not, I can't share anything about my company, unfortunately, right now, but super secret project that I'll have to tell you some other time. But if you can get ahold of me via LinkedIn, or you can email me directly, which is my first name, astrid@alum.mit.edu. So those are two ways to reach me.

Aaron Moncur: 1:05:39

That's probably one of the big benefits of graduating from MIT. They give you a lifetime email address, right that you can flaunt around. Yeah.

Astrid Mcnellis: 1:05:46

That's kind of nice.

Aaron Moncur: 1:05:49

All right. Well, Astrid, thank you so much for spending some time with me today.

Astrid Mcnellis: 1:05:52

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Aaron Moncur: 1:05:58

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.