Being an Engineer
Being an Engineer
S1E49 The Critical Formula for Developing New Products | Jeff Christian
Jeff started his career as a machinist, then earned a degree in manufacturing engineering and eventually a graduate degree from the Stanford School of Business. Both in his own efforts as well as in those of his teams later in his career as a business owner (Phoenix DeVentures) he emphasized a critical methodology for developing new products successfully. In fact, this method was so important that each time he started a new company the first thing he did was buy machining equipment and teach the engineers how to use it. Join our conversation to hear the secret formula, along with numerous other best practices from a truly seasoned professional in the world of product development and manufacturing.
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
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
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.
Jeff Christian:You want satisfaction as quickly as possible that your idea is going to work. So the ability to build, what you can see them in your mind is crucial. And then test your ideas because build test build test build test is the critical way to develop.
Aaron Moncur:Hello, and welcome to the being an engineer podcast. Our guest today is Jeff Christian, who started his career in the early 80s. And I only share that timeframe because I want everyone to understand how much valuable experience just Jeff has to share with us all today. Anyway, after a brief stint in the aerospace industry, he quickly moved into medical devices where he has spent his career building teams, startups and new products for the past 40 years. Jeff, welcome to the show.
Jeff Christian:Thanks for having me.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, first question I asked everyone, this is an easy one. Why did you decide to become an engineer?
Alex Shifman:That's actually I think I think choosing one's career really is a matter of knowing what really is where your head is that. There are many things that I might have done after, after serving a mission for the LDS church. I had, I did some presentations, at some venues where people told me, 'You should be an attorney.' So I thought, 'Huh, maybe I should go be an attorney.' And so I went and spoke with some attorneys learned about their day to day life and their her the work they did, and I walked away thinking no way do I want to be an attorney.
Aaron Moncur:Too many jokes made about you, right?
Jeff Christian:But actually, you mentioned I started my career in the 80s. Actually, if we really wanted to get into it, I started back in the early 70s. So I'm even that old,
Aaron Moncur:Oh my goodness, that much more wisdom and experience.
Jeff Christian:So fresh out of high school. There was a guy that I that I knew who had a good size manufacturing company, doing aircraft, components of various kinds. And fresh out of high school, I got a job at his company. And I had been around machining, my father was a machinist. He spent his whole career after world war two as a machinist has as an r&d machinist, he can do cool projects in the space program and so on. So I was familiar with machining but then I got a job as machinist really because I just needed to have a job and start earning and saving some money. And after I came home from serving the mission, as I mentioned in Japan, for the LDS church, I am had to consider what I what I want to do. And that's when I mentioned I looked into potentially law decided No, that wasn't for me to talk to a variety of people about things. And there was a fella who came home from BYU. Right at that time, having just finished a degree in manufacturing engineering. His father was a was an old toolmaker in the aircraft industry from way back, and I knew him well. And I asked him what the curriculum was like, in his manufacturing engineering program. He told me he started out as a mechanical engineer, but he moved over into manufacturing because in his view, mechanical engineering was training people to be a scientist. He didn't want to be a scientist, he wouldn't be an engineer. And he went on to build things for the fans don't stuff.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah.
Jeff Christian:And he described to me the coursework was really materials and processing and so on. And since I had spent time machine I thought, well, I live in thinking that world so that's for me. But going back even further net when I was a kid, I remember, I used to play with stuff. He was take stuff apart, used to try to fix things and I would modify things to get them to work better or not. Sometimes they didn't. And in my head and in my gut, I just knew that that's what I needed to be doing.
Aaron Moncur:You just sound like the quintessential engineer, spent your youth building things and taking things apart and fixing things. And that's I, in fact, I have an interesting story I'll share real quickly about myself. When I went to school I, I also went to BYU, and I also know something about the mission in Japan that that you mentioned, we have something in common there, interestingly enough, but what I applied to go to BYU as well, and I actually did not get in initially. And a cousin of mine had graduated from there. And he said, you know what, don't give up just yet. I want you to contact the manufacturing engineering department there. And originally, that was not I just applied, not through any particular department, I just applied. And I got rejected. But my cousin said, try getting in touch with the manufacturing engineering department, I graduated from that department. And I think there might be an opportunity to still get in. So so we did. And I ended up getting in with a scholarship through the manufacturing engineering department. So all you college students out there are looking to go, it's worth speaking with the department that you're trying, that you think you're going to be majoring in, when trying to get into school, at least it sure worked out well for me.
Jeff Christian:So I didn't realize that you had graduated from the manufacturing program.
Aaron Moncur:I actually I didn't. While I was off in Japan for two years. I came back and they had actually eliminated that program. And so I transferred into the mechanical engineering program.
Jeff Christian:Oh, interesting. Because BYU is manufacturing engineering program was renowned around the world.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, I don't know why they canceled I did. It still doesn't make sense to me. But they did. And when I came back, I switched into me, which turned out to be a great fit. Anyway, I'm very happy with the me route. Now. You talked about being a machinist. And I have my numbers, right? You spent about eight years doing that, which is quite a while towards the beginning of one's career. How did all that time as a machinist help you as an engineer when you started getting into designing products?
Jeff Christian:Well, I earned my way through college machine. I mean, I was never a full time student and not working. In fact, I was never a part time student, I was always working and going to school, I did take the two years off to go serve a mission. But I also took a year, year and a half off to go to Germany, a company I was working for where I first started out as machinist. They sent me to their facility in Germany, where I worked for over a year. And and that was a great experience. So seeing how things are really made, is crucial to I think, knowing what to design, how to design it, how it's to be made. We do at my company here we do. We do projects all the time for people who frankly haven't a clue, they design things that they think are ready to be manufacturing go to market, they're going to be a wild success. And they really don't have that.
Aaron Moncur:Oh, no, it sounds like a bunch of industrial designers over there, geez.
Jeff Christian:And essentially you say that, because there's a there's really a big difference between design and engineerin.
Aaron Moncur:For sure.
Jeff Christian:And most people don't realize that so what some people think of my firm is a design, design shops, I was thinking as a as a development shop something was as a manufacturing company, we actually do it all. Anyway, well. What was the question?
Aaron Moncur:Actually, I want to ask another question. Tell me about your time in Germany. And were the German manufacturers and engineers, did you experience any real differences between how they did things and how we do things here in the States or or was all pretty much the same process?
Jeff Christian:Actually, no, they they do some things in in a really fascinating way. When a student is coming up through the process of education, by the time you're 14 years old, you must have already qualified for a path that will take you to university. And if you don't make the grade there, you have to select a trade that you will go be trained in at the age of 14.
Aaron Moncur:That's young.
Jeff Christian:Can you imagine any americans knowing what he wants to do when he's working?
Aaron Moncur:No, I can't.
Jeff Christian:So if... Now, that's not to denigrate those that don't make the grade for the university pathway. Because not everyone is well suited to higher education. You can have very, very smart people who just aren't suited to to the academic pathway, right?
Aaron Moncur:Sure, yeah.
Jeff Christian:Over there, people decide what pathway they're going to they're going to follow. By the time they're 14. If they are more academically inclined, they can go to game nauseum, which is their high school program. And onto university. If not, you can enter a trade program. So machinists, for example, which I just know better. But all the trades are this way, you go into a training program. For machinists, you have four years of training with a significant amount of coursework along with the shop, time you spend, as an apprentice, and they advanced you, from the very, the most fundamental skills up through advanced skills. And at the end of four years, at the age of 18, they have the skills that that most American machinists really don't develop for, for several years, because they've been through an exceptionally rigorous training program. And then, after a couple of years of working, they can go back for what they call the Meister proof of their their master papers. And they go back for another year of education after having education in excuse me to experience in a shop, where they learn to, to do things even more sophisticated as well as supervising, and so on, so forth. And they are very, very, very good. They ever talks about German engineering. Well
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yeah.
Jeff Christian:It's because of the quality, their standard of quality in machining and manufacturing in Germany is amazing.
Aaron Moncur:So when people talk about the prestige associated with something that was German manufactured, right, you hear that a lot, almost as a marketing bullet sometimes. But there's something to that it's not just a marketing bullet, it's because they actually will they get a lot better and more training than most of the rest of the world in that area, it sounds like?
Jeff Christian:Correct, and even in the engineering, the engineers that I work with, they, they go through, frankly, a more rigorous training in their bachelor's level education. Now, in America, or I should say the American education program is actually more renowned for for postgraduate work Master's and PhD work. Whereas in in Europe, I think the quality of the education at the undergrad level is frankly, superior to ours.
Aaron Moncur:How interesting, huh? All right, I'm gonna jump around a little bit here. One of your skills is motivating teams to accomplish large bodies of work in short periods. What are some tools and some strategies that you have used to do this? And do you think that this is this ability to motivate teams to accomplish great deals of work? Is that is that a learnable skill? Or is that just something that you're born with?
Jeff Christian:Some people will be a natural in their ability to, excuse me their ability to work with and motivate. Some people will learn the skill, and frankly, some people never will learn the skill. So we'll just haven't the talent, the innate ability, I believe, to do that natural, a lot of people will get promoted into management. And they really don't have that ability. And then they get promoted into management, because they have other talents and skills. But motivating people is a, frankly, it's a more rare talent. Again, you really have to understand people and you have to like people, people have to respond to your liking them in a way that makes them want to do what it is you're trying to motivate them to do.
Aaron Moncur:What are some of the the tools and the strategies that you use? You mentioned, you really have to like people? What else? I mean, I don't mean to frame this, as some tactic to manipulate people. That's not what I'm asking. But what are some of these genuine methods of motivating people that you've learned and used over the years?
Jeff Christian:Well, I suppose when I when I talked about just liking people, I think you have to care about the people. When people sense that you care for their well being, their advancement in their career, and so on, and so forth, they will be far more apt to respond to what it is you want them to do. If you have to beat people into doing what has to be done, that's that's not a good tactic. It may work for some people, but I think in the long haul, it's not a it's not a good approach.
Aaron Moncur:Counterproductive.
Jeff Christian:Yeah. And so in part, I have to say that I really came to, to my care for people probably pick that up from my mother and my father to my father, they were both depression, children, and during The Depression. You were always part of the community pulling together to help everyone survive, because things were so tough. And then my father fought in World War II. And he told me stories. You are there fighting for yourself and your buddy. Yeah, you pledge allegiance to the flag, and you take an oath to the to the service you're in, and so on, but then to the country. But when you're when you're in the heat of the battle, you're there trying to defeat the enemy, so that you can live and some of the buddy next to you can live.
Aaron Moncur:And that's a scalper I get that, but it makes total sense.
Jeff Christian:Yeah. So those, that's the parents that I grew up under, and, and then serving a mission, I just learned a lot about people and caring for people. And I think that to this day, translates to the way, the way I work with people.
Aaron Moncur:You've mentioned the mission a couple times. Now tell us a little bit about that. What is the mission? What did you do there? And what what lessons did you walk away with that have been beneficial to your life?
Jeff Christian:Well, as a young man or young woman, you have the opportunity to go serve. And that's what it's really about. you're serving your serving the people, wherever you're called to serve. And as a as a missionary in the church, of course, you're there to teach, in our case, the gospel of Jesus Christ. But in addition to that, you're there to serve in whatever capacity you're assigned to, or you have the opportunity to serve it. And you just learned to give yourself to people for four, solid two years with, with no interruptions, you're not worrying about your education or your career or dating at that time, because you're there to serve. And you walk away with all the all the great experience you had in working with people in serving. And in my case, and in your case, walking away with language skills. I mean, I walked away, I left Japan, frankly, fluent in Japan, in Japanese.
Aaron Moncur:Do you still use Japanese?
Jeff Christian:I do from time to time, I think going to conferences in Japan the last five years. And, and people I, I've lost focus of vocabulary. But I still have the skills. In fact, funny story. I was in a taxi cab with a couple of my employees in the back, and I'm writing in front with this with this cabbie, this taxi driver. And I was talking to him. And after, after a couple minutes, he turned to me and said, 'Are you Japanese?' I said no. Japanese. So I took from that, that I still have some level of skill.
Aaron Moncur:That's very impressive after all these years. Yeah. All right. Well, let's see you. you began your career in medical devices in the 80s and have continued in that industry through present day? What are what are some of the advances that you've seen during that time that that have made big impacts on our ability to care for patients in things that that maybe you maybe didn't think were possible back in the 80s, but that now are just common place.
Jeff Christian:It is remarkable to think of what's what's happened. In fact, for for your listeners, if you want to, if you want to read something that will give you a really great sense of the history of this period of time, for the last 50 years. There's a book called The heart healers. It's the history of cardiac care, development, technical development and medical development. And tells the stories of the the pioneers and the Mavericks, the the doctors who really were sticking their necks out and taking risks, career risks, risks with the patients, frankly, and made breakthroughs that have made things as you say, commonplace today. In fact, I now I'm 67. Now, this year, I found I had 290 percent blockages in my corners, oh my goodness, I had two stents placed in my corners. Those didn't exist. When I started in the medical field. Balloon angioplasty was only getting a start when I when I started in medical devices. And I worked in those fields, I worked for the company that became the premier company and balloon angioplasty and then went on to develop this stents and so on and, and, and now at my age to go into the hospital and come out the same day, the same day, not having had an open heart surgery. But having them put a little tube up my wrist, an artery in my wrist, to navigate to my coronaries and place a metal scaffold, if you will, to hold that artery open. is remarkable. Amazing. Now, on top of that, a couple years ago, I had a atrial fibrillation problem. We're in one of the four chambers of the heart has, let's call it a spasm attack it it goes it's out of sync with the other chambers of the heart. And think of think of a four cylinder engine. And one of the cylinders is firing out of sync with the other three, that engine just can't run right with the hearts. Same way, one of the chambers, all four chambers are synchronized in a specific way to get the the efficient pumping action the heart performs. And when in this case, the left atrium is is in this fibrillation, that it's it's just out of sync think of the drummer not playing in sync with the guitarists, right?
Aaron Moncur:Got it.
Jeff Christian:It just doesn't work.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah.
Jeff Christian:So I went in and had a procedure and they go in there and they use a catheter with with electrical sensors on it since the nervous pattern so that the nerve communications in the heart in order to understand where the defect is occurring, which is the nerves are misfiring. Let's just simplify it that way. And they're going and burned ablate tissue where those nerves are misfiring in order to cause it to assume the proper synchrony with rest the heart. And I came out of the hospital, I think me overnight. I came out of the hospital. And I've been carrying that condition for probably 25 years. I have not had an episode, since I am probably healthier now than I was when I was 40.
Aaron Moncur:That's amazing. So you are living, walking, breathing proof of the incredible advancements that we've seen over the past 30-40 years in medicine.
Jeff Christian:Yep. And earlier this this year, my wife had cancer. She's in remission now. But she went through the chemotherapy and, and with good, good effect. And so now in remission, she'll be tracking this for the rest of her life. But 30 years ago, she would have been she would have been dead by middle of the year.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, wow. Well, I'm happy to hear that she's in remission. That's, that's wonderful. My dad actually had open heart surgery back when I was oh, I was 14 I think so that was 27 years ago. I don't think they had the technology back then to put a catheter in an artery or in your in your wrist and slide it up to place a stent. I remember he he was full open heart surgery. And he was in the hospital for five, six days. It was a rough recovery. So that's that's pretty amazing. What what medical technology has been able to advance through the years.
Jeff Christian:Yeah, it is. It is amazing.
Aaron Moncur:Well, when you started Phoenix DeVentures, was it mainly focused on design and engineering, or was it was the manufacturing always a significant part of the business?
Jeff Christian:Actually, I'm moving from, it's not a direct answer, so I moved from manufacturing into research and development fairly quickly. Because I'm creative. And I'm not, in fact, I'm really more of an inventor that I am an engineer, an engineer, I think by definition is very linear thinking and very thorough and detail oriented. Right. And sure, I'm more of an inventor.
Aaron Moncur:Okay.
Jeff Christian:And so my thought process is scattered, scattered is what that means. And, and so I moved into R&D fairly early. So, when I started, Phoenix DeVentures 20 years ago, it was really to help startups here in Northern California to help startups develop their technologies. And so every time I've helped start a company, the first thing I do is put in a machine shop, and hire a machinist. And train the engineers to machine also because if you have an idea, you want satisfaction as quickly as possible that your idea is going to work. So the ability to build what you can see them in your mind is crucial. And then test your ideas, because build tests, build tests, build tests, is is the the critical way to develop. So when I started things to ventures, I started up in my garage, and I put into machine shop and I had clients that needed products developed and, and I worked out of my out of my home for five years and then finally decided to grow up. I moved out of the garage and and rented space and and started hiring people. And here we are today. So it was about 10 to 12 years ago that we started moving more towards manufacturer because I realized that that once developing something my clients needed the manufacturing capabilities. So we just evolved into that, and then have continued to grow. Today, about 50% of the business is development, and 50% is manufacturing.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, I'm going to take just a really quick break here and share with the listeners that the testfixturedesign.com is where you can learn more about my company pipeline and how we help predominantly medical device engineering teams who need turnkey custom test fixtures or automated equipment to assemble, inspect, characterize or perform verification or validation testing on their devices. We're speaking with Jeff Christian today, Founder and CEO of Phoenix DeVentures in California, where they're both engineer and manufacturer medical devices. And I want to jump back into that question about engineering and manufacturing in the same facility. It seems like a lot of companies in our industry are either product development services or manufacturing, but usually not both. Why do you suppose that is and what have been some of the challenges that you've faced incorporating both the product development, the engineering and the manufacturing into a single company?
Jeff Christian:Well, that's an excellent question. And it had it's been a challenge. How's it been a challenge? Most companies are indeed either development firms or, or manufacturing. In some cases, you'll have manufacturing in the long haul, business is all about either meant manufacturing a good goods or providing a service right. Think of the development side is as more of a service to develop what is going to be manufacturing because if you're not manufacturing and selling something, you don't have a long term sustainable business. And so, the development side really is to get a business started in in in the startup world of medical technology. A doctor or an engineer or a businessman with a doctor friend or engineer friend and have an idea for a product to to that they want to get to market and then they spend intensive effort in the earth today is getting developed and then it moves into manufacturing. Well, in in the startup world of medical tech technology, you only have a few options in those first critical years, you either get profitable and therefore sustainable, or get acquired. Or get debt. You run out of money before your product gets to market, then you get dead, right?
Aaron Moncur:Sure, yeah.
Jeff Christian:And so and so once you have your product on the market, most companies don't spend prodigious amounts of money in development anymore. And frankly, the big companies, they may spend a lot of money in development, but most of their new technologies come through acquisition. So keeping development alive in a manufacturing environment is tough. Because quite often, you're struggling for the same resources. But the the mindset and the talents necessary and the organizational systems, the documentation systems are just different between R&D and, and manufacturing. And so the challenge that we have run into is when a client comes in, and wants us to develop, and because we have everything under one roof, they think they think that having everything under one roof, that they can just step in and use whatever resources are there. But when when we we've had clients try to manufacture their product before it was ready. So it's really an R&D. So then we have R&D engineers infiltrating into the manufacturing environment. And a manufacturing environment has to be total buttoned down control documented, you just don't allow for any deviation from what you validated as a process and a material and a design, right. But in R&D, you have to be thinking on the fringes a lot. And those two run into collision a lot.
Aaron Moncur:So you almost have to run them as two separate businesses, even though it's under one roof.
Jeff Christian:Right. And that's what makes it difficult, because we quite often are drawing on the same resources. And so sometimes engineers, we have to smack smack down our engineer sometimes because they're trying to be R&D while working with manufacturing and then in manufacturing, at our dangers go in and ask the manufacturing staff to do things that are not yet validated and totally buttoned down. It's like they're trying to have them do things that they that they're not trained to do. And it can create confusion.
Aaron Moncur:Sure. Okay. So I understand the challenge between having both of those disciplines under the same roof. But you you do have both of those disciplines. So clearly, there are some strong advantages as well to doing so that outweigh apparently the challenges of doing.
Jeff Christian:Yes. And in fact, coming from a manufacturing environment really enhances r&d, because if you know how things have to get built?
Aaron Moncur:Yeah.
Jeff Christian:From the very beginning, when you have an idea, you're always thinking in parallel, how am I going to make this if you if you graduate from school with advanced degrees, and so on to move right into r&d without any manufacturing experience, you design stuff that can't be made the way you can see that. And a lot of our clients are in exactly that. That state, in fact, I have a mildly derisive joke that said that they design something and the project is done, just got their PhD.
Aaron Moncur:I remember seeing it was like a comic strip that someone had sent me was an engineering comic strip. And there's an engineering in one slide that said, 'Okay, this is this is our final design review and, and then the next one. Okay, this is our final final design review. And then the next this is our final final final design review.' That's that's how it seems to go right. You keep thinking you're done and you find something else. It's like okay, I guess that that last final wasn't really final. But so do you have your manufacturing engineers work with your your design engineers, so that for the beginning, there is that emphasis on manufacturability
Jeff Christian:Actually, in our organization where we are so big as to have the luxury of for being so hard to compartmentalize and so the R&D engineers quite often evolve into the manufacturing engineers.
Aaron Moncur:In a way, that's better, right?
Jeff Christian:And that way they stay with it in order to get rid of stabilized and so on. And if they, if they made some, if they took any shortcuts during the development, they're going to suffer the consequences when they're storing that product two years later
Aaron Moncur:That's great. That's great. Yeah, hold people accountable. And they get to learn from their mistakes. And then they have all of the knowledge, the manufacturing knowledge, and the mechanical the design knowledge all in one person. That's terrific, interesting. Okay.
Jeff Christian:Multi talented people, when I, when I go looking for engineers, I look for people who, who already show the knack for being multi talented. And that's not the same thing as multitasking, multi talented means someone who has learned to be a good theoretical designer, who can also crunch the numbers, who can who can drive a CAD program, but also can get out in the shop, and build stuff when necessary. Or can work well with, with vendors to get stuff built, having having extremely isolated thought process in in my world really doesn't work. So highly specialized individuals, really, usually don't fit in my organization.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, so the jack of all trades, as opposed to the highly specialized expert?
Jeff Christian:Correct.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. Which the highly specialized expert also typically in my mind goes along with PhDs and I don't see a whole lot of PhDs designing products, typically, right, it's
Jeff Christian:Right, they're trained to research and eat been and and I've got a few friends, PhDs who I call on when I need deep knowledge on on specific topics. And our technology would not be where it is today without them. But they're usually not the ones who will advance a product concept to market.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. Yeah. Your teams have been heavily involved in the the testing and validation of medical devices, which is something that I'm personally very interested in, since that's what my company does primarily. What are some of the shortcomings that you have seen in that area in terms of tools that engineers have or still need to more efficiently test and validate new products? What tools are missing?
Jeff Christian:Oh, boy, specific to testing and validation. One thing that's very difficult in our specific space, namely, in the medical space, is having a, I call it a proxy, something that will allow you to test your product in a way that is meaningful to the patient experience. For example, back in the 80s, when we were learning to take catheters and put them up into the coronaries, how do you test that? How do you know that it's going to that it's going to be there's a term of use called steerable? Can you take a catheter and put it in the femoral artery down and down in the groin and feed it up over the aortic arch into the coronaries or even harder into the into the brain where the the arterial system is this seemingly convoluted network of arteries and veins that you have to get these little tiny catheters up into? How do you know it's going to perform? What proxy do you have to test it in to know that it's going to perform the way you need it to test?
Aaron Moncur:You're talking about like, like a surrogate, what's the word I'm looking for? A phantom or a simulated environment in which to test your device?
Jeff Christian:Correct. So what in your world of test fixtures and and so on? We've learned to quantify certain mechanical characteristics in specifically in catheters, but I mean, it's true of anything. I mean, we've done worked from literally head to toe, and and everywhere in between catheters, implants, spine implants, bone implants, all sorts stuff in in every case, you have to To test them to know that they're going to perform as as intended. And in the early days, we didn't have good models, we would, we would take plastic tubes and glue them together to try to take a catheter and see if we can navigate the way it's going to be in the heart. Well, these days, it's better. You can make polymeric, you can 3D print some models to to give you the torturous path. But the torturous path to get into the coronaries or up into the brain is not the only matter. You also have pulsating blood flow, you have the viscosity of the blood, you have sometimes very sharp terms that the product has to get through sometimes it's a gradual curve. So a good testing model is still a challenge. In fact, I one of the first things I always ask doctors, when they say they have a product that they want to develop, I will ask them, 'What is a good model?' Is the anatomy of a pig similar enough to the anatomy of the human for that part of the anatomy that we can test this product in pigs? Or does need to be tested in dogs? Or in some other animal whose anatomy for that part of the body is going to be similar enough to the human anatomy to be able to test it.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah.
Jeff Christian:If not, then how are we going to test this product. So we've derived all sorts of mechanical characteristics that you can quantify, measuring stiffness over a given radius of bend and torquability. Torquability is the ability to take something that is very, very small, sometimes half a millimeter in diameter, and navigate it. To navigate it, you have to be able to turn it, torque it, push it, steer it.
Aaron Moncur:It's wonderful listening to you talk about these, because we've actually done quite a few fixtures that are specifically for torque ability and steerability in catheters. But let's let's talk a little bit about engineering team. So you have a ton of experience developing not just new medical devices, but the teams that engineer those devices. How do you go about building an effective engineering team?
Jeff Christian:Like I mentioned, I look for multi talented people. And I don't necessarily look for just experience. In fact, I prefer to get people right out of college, so that I can train them to think and work the way we want them to be. People who've been with a bigger company, they usually have a certain way of doing things that as they were trained at that big company, which doesn't fit a small company environment. So I look for people who are able to learn arrogance just doesn't cut it in my organization, anyone who has a hint of arrogance and not prepared to realize that the education is only the foundation that you have to build on. And and sometimes you're gonna get, you're gonna make mistakes, and live with it that just stop trying to excuse your way out of it. We all make mistakes, realize it, learn from it, move on, and so on. And so we look for attitude as as much as as aptitude.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. How about can you share a few habits or rituals that you've either experienced or established over the years that you found to be beneficial to the success of engineering teams?
Jeff Christian:Yeah, engineers, by definition, are seeking to solve problems, whatever that problem might be. And so, when wait when you're trying to solve problems, as soon as, as soon as people feel stifled or repressed or suppressed in any way. They can't think at their best, right? So the brainstorming environment is very, very important. And not everyone can brainstorm. You can have very, very smart people that don't have really the ability to brainstorm. The ability to brainstorm is is the ability to see possibilities. Be able to speak freely about them in putting one's ego aside, and just open up, open up and throw out whatever ideas may come to mind and see if they have merit. Quite often they don't, but you explore them to see if they do. So a couple things that I that I found immensely powerful, so subtle, so subtle that there that it's hard to really see until you see the dynamic in action. If I, if I have an idea where I want a thought process to go, I don't necessarily know that it's the right thing, but but I start working the process, when someone has an idea that I see has has merit, but it's but it's not quite there. And being the old guy, I, I've had so many bad ideas, I can recognize a bad idea. But a bad idea can lead you to a good idea. And so and so I, there's a couple phrases that I use routinely. In fact, my team, they laugh at me, because I've told them this, they've learned to recognize it. But it still works, even if even if you know the trick, the trick and and. And so to get the ball rolling, I will say instead of saying, 'Here's what we're going to do, or here's my idea, we're going to do this,' I will say,'What would happen if we took this component and that component in this software, and we use it in this way?' In the asking of that question, what would happen if I basically have revealed my thought process in a in a non-threatening way. And I've invited people into that process of trying to put A and B together to come up with C. What would happen if and that has worked more magic than you can even imagine. Because people sitting around that brainstorm table, they feel invited into the process. And then when people start engaging, of course, you can't smack someone down with an idea. So I deserve better than others. Some are worse than others. That's okay. When someone has an idea that I want to pursue further, I'll say, and then the second part of this magic. Ah, that's a great idea. Let's take that to the next step. The next level, what has that just done? I just accepted their idea. Even if it's not really the idea that's going to go anywhere. I've accepted it and elevated it. So that now everyone sees this, this idea is is that the is that the 1000 foot level? How do we get it to the 2000 foot level in a non threatening way? Because I've accepted the idea at face value. And let's see what we can do to build on it. Even if it's a stupid idea. That works.
Aaron Moncur:And that's a great tool to use the what would happen if and then let's take that to the next level. I love it. That's that's very actionable. Thank you for sharing that.
Jeff Christian:And this comes down to understanding people understanding people and what makes people's egos work and so on. And, and I'll tell you what, there's, there's I I read a lot. But one of the most valuable books that I read back almost 50 years ago, was Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Aaron Moncur:Got it.
Jeff Christian:How you deal with people in in, in difficult situations, is all about the team environment. Right? I reread that book every few years just to just to practice.
Aaron Moncur:Okay.
Jeff Christian:New book that that I've just started, that builds on that called Multipliers. That's people who multiply the talent of the group by building and everyone. They make everyone smarter by working that kind of a process versus diminishers people who inadvertently just making people feel like they're like you tear him down. And it's a very powerful concept that's making a lot of headway in the business environment these days.
Aaron Moncur:I've heard of that book, Multipliers, I have to pick it up. I was thinking about dealing with people communicating with people. And when you shared your tool, your tactic for what would happen if using question forms to communicate with people, and every now and then someone will make a suggestion to me, we should do this or, you should consider doing this. And, and I love getting these suggestions, right, because I don't know anything by by any stretch of the imagination. But sometimes they're just not the right idea. Like you said, not all ideas are good. And, and instead of just saying, no, we're not going to do that is not a good idea. Right? That would just put the person down, that would not be motivating to the person. I like to turn it into a question. And I would say something to the effect of, oh, that's an interesting idea. If we did that, what would happen, in this aspect and guide them down that path, but let them answer it, because eventually they'll say, oh, okay, I see. Right. If we did this, and then that happened, then that wouldn't, because it wouldn't be good, because it wouldn't work here. But they found the answer for themselves. I didn't tell them it was a bad idea. They discovered that for themselves. And the way you do that is by guiding people down that path using questions.
Jeff Christian:Yeah, yeah. And in fact, frankly, that's what a lot of the the multipliers technique is about. help people build on their understanding and capability by asking those questions and let them letting them through the process. answer those questions as one. So it sounds like your technique is, is the same as mine, just worded slightly differently.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. Well, that's great to get some validation. All right. Well, Jeff, this has been just delightful. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today. Before I let you go, how can people get a hold of you? Or if they want to learn more about Phoenix DeVentures? How can they do that?
Jeff Christian:My name again is Jeff Christian. The company is Phoenix DeVentures. We are not in Phoenix, Arizona. My first company, by the way, 40 years ago, went down in flames. And within two years, it was a failure. And the next week, I went and registered the name Phoenix Engineering, rising from the ashes. And I've always worked into the
Aaron Moncur:There's a backstory there.
Jeff Christian:DeVentures, development ventures, we're in Morgan Hill, California. My phone number is 408-710-6503. My email address is jeffchristian@phoenixdeventures.com. Phoenix, like the city, DeVentures is D-E-V-E-N-T-U-R-E-S.com. DeVentures.
Aaron Moncur:Terrific. All right, Jeff. Well, thank you again, for spending this time, this has been just wonderful.
Jeff Christian:Are you? Are you able to spend a little more time?
Aaron Moncur:I am.
Jeff Christian:because there's something that that is, I think, very important that I whenever I because I speak, I speak at various classes and whatnot, about this this issue, like freshmen engineering courses and things like that. And there's, there's something that's very important that I think people don't teach that rate.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, love to hear it.
Jeff Christian:If you find that this works out. Then editing, and including this may be a value. But this, this gets back to the idea of build a test, build and test. Edison is, was was brilliant, but he was virtually ahead and educated. And all of the highly educated people of his day, thought that he was just a hack. Well, he was the richest man in the world, kind of a hack. And he was exceptionally well organized. But he would, when he had an idea, he would take his best thought about how that idea might unfold. He would build it and test it. And through the process of building and testing. He would teach him what to do next. And I'm a big believer in the tactility of learning. What does that mean? When you build something, you will learn something through the process of building and when you're trying to come up with something new. Your first idea is not likely to be it. The when you start building you find oh that that didn't quite work, okay. But in the wild building, it gives you another idea. You let that process teach you what to do next. And then you try it again. And you've heard the guy that built the Dyson vacuum, say we've made 20,000 prototypes before we got this product, right? That is an Addisonian approach. But I believe that that is the proper approach to to development, there are very many Einsteins of the world who can just think of the cosmos and see. Right, right. So most people really do have to work, I believe the addisonian approach is better, The Wright brothers the same thing. They were brilliant. They weren't bicycle hacks, they were uneducated, brilliant men who had an idea, they would figure way to test it, build and test, let what they learned, informed the next step that is crucial for the process of development.
Aaron Moncur:But it just goes to show you don't need that piece of paper to be a brilliant engineer, right. And I love what you say about testing, test, build, test, iterate, build, test, iterate, I think one of the worst things a design engineer can do is to spend two weeks designing something, making it just perfect, in CAD, so all the points and all the surfaces are just perfect. And then go build it and find out,'Oh, that was just the wrong approach altogether.' Much better, I think, is to make something crude. Who cares what it looks like, maybe it's not even manufacturable in that exact state, but go build it as soon as you can. And maybe you can do it same day, get some cardboard and put it together maybe a 3D print, maybe some pieces of sheet metal formed in a certain way. But build it build something that's crude, and get those iterative steps in as early as possible.
Jeff Christian:That's right, and let and let those steps teach you what to do next. Now, I don't want to, I don't want to discourage maybe young people who are listening to this, to discourage them from getting an education because education should should inform the whole process. And things are so complex today, that education is is essential. But invention is not driven simply by the education.
Aaron Moncur:What is it driven by?
Jeff Christian:The creative spark, the creative spark, and some people don't have it you can have, you can have brilliant engineers who are very highly analytical and you need those, you need people who can crunch the numbers very well. It is usually not the case that people who are highly analytical are also highly creative. So so you need you need both talents on the team.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, now that's great. I agree. 100%, you need both talents on the team.
Jeff Christian:Build, test, build, test and let the process teach you what to do.
Aaron Moncur:Perfect, wiser words, were never spoken in an engineering environment.
Alex Shifman:Since we started next session, here's another one you may want to throw at. People ask me, 'Why do you do medical?' I had a Japanese tour group here one time and and I give them the tour, like give them this up on and someone from the group asked me why did you get into medical for the money? And, and, and I tell it and I say let me let me tell you a story. This is the best day of my career. Maybe 12-ish years ago, 12 or 13 years ago, I invented a product for a company an ophthalmic product. It's a it's a micro catheter, very, very small for getting into the eye and doing doing a certain kind of work. And years later, maybe five, six years later, the founder of that company called me one day and said Jeff, I just had to call and tell you about a phone call. I just got an ophthalmologist in Marin, which is north of San Francisco, called and said that he had a patient who was going blind with macular degeneration. And her eyesight was degrading gradually, and then suddenly just fell off a cliff and she went blind suddenly, well, and he said, so I use your product off label. What does that mean? In a way that was not intended for but because of the properties of this specific product. He could use it the way he wanted.
Aaron Moncur:Okay.
Jeff Christian:And he navigated to the back of the eyeball between the layers of the eye, the eyeballs kind of like basketball, right, you got the inner layer and the outer layer, right? Between those layers, he navigated this catheter to the back of the eyeball. And looking in this woman's eye under a microscope, he could steer this catheter to precisely where he wanted it on the retina. And place microscopic volumes of fluid through this other device that that I make to pump fluid. In this case, it was a genetic drug to place it microscopically on her retina where he wanted it to be amazing. And two weeks later, she had recovered her eyesight entirely.
Aaron Moncur:Incredible. So that's, that's why you chose medical.
Jeff Christian:That's why we do this stuff.
Aaron Moncur:I mean, you can't get better satisfaction than something like that right? Giving a person back their sight. That's just, that's got to be a phenomenal so stealing.
Jeff Christian:This field is just very satisfying.
Aaron Moncur:I'm Aaron Moncure, 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
