Being an Engineer
Being an Engineer
S6E21 Ron Higgs | Systems Thinking, People Skills, & Executive Leadership
Ron Higgs shares insights on transforming engineers into effective executive leaders, drawing from his extensive experience in military aviation, aerospace, and consulting. He discusses the critical skills engineers need to advance into leadership roles, emphasizing people skills, systems thinking, and continuous improvement.
Main Topics:
- Journey from Naval Flight Officer to Executive Coach
- Developing People Skills in Technical Professions
- Systems Thinking in Leadership
- Overcoming Communication and Leadership Challenges
- Strategies for Engineers Transitioning to Leadership Roles
About the guest: Ron Higgs is an experienced executive coach and operational strategist with a strong background in both military and corporate leadership. A U.S. Naval Academy and Naval Postgraduate School graduate, he began his career as a Naval Flight Officer, developing key leadership skills in adaptability and mission execution. With over 20 years in engineering and operations roles at companies like Boeing and L3 Technologies, Ron has successfully led initiatives that enhanced performance and increased company valuations.
He now leads Wolf Management Solutions and serves as a Scale Architect using the Predictable Success model, helping technical leaders grow into visionary executives. Ron also acts as a Fractional COO and board member, emphasizing emotional intelligence, systems thinking, and sustainable team development. His human-centered approach to leadership is rooted in the belief that great leaders are made and that engineers have the potential to become exceptional leaders.
Links:
Wolf Management Solutions Website
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And the first thing she said to be she says, I've never seen anyone in your position being able to take such complex ideals and simplify them the way you do. Remember, those of us that are really, really good at certain things sometimes don't realize it because they come naturally to us. Ron,
Aaron Moncur:hello and welcome to another exciting episode of The being an engineer podcast. Today's guest is Ron Higgs, a US Navy veteran systems thinker and former engineer who specializes in transforming engineers into effective executive leaders. With over two decades of leadership experience spanning military, aerospace startups and consulting, Ron is the principal of wolf management solutions, where he serves as an executive coach and strategic business advisor. He's the kind of leader who doesn't just manage systems. He builds the leaders who run them. Ron, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank
Ron Higgs:you for having me. Aaron. I appreciate it, and I've been looking forward to our
Aaron Moncur:conversation. Excellent, excellent. I am especially excited today, not just because you're a fascinating person and have so much wisdom and insight to share with all of us engineers, but because you're also going to be one of our speakers at the upcoming PDX event in October, so we'll get a sneak peek, maybe, of a little bit about your background and a little more of what you're going to talk about at PDX, and this will just be a great segue into into your talk at PDX as well.
Ron Higgs:Yeah, I'm really looking forward to that, and hopefully some interaction here with the audience. So help me shape what we're going to talk about in October.
Aaron Moncur:Absolutely. Yes. Okay, great. Well, let's start with the same question I always start with, which is, what made you decide to become an engineer? Oh, man,
Ron Higgs:I can track this back to being a kid, just being excited about learning about how things work, I took a couple of things apart that I probably wasn't supposed to take apart when I was kid, and my dad gave me this book called The Way Things Work. And it's probably, you know, it's like just a black book, and inside the book with just some explanations about, you know, how things work, which was great, and that's how it started. And I have a love of, you know, aircraft, science fiction. And I was a big Star Trek fan, you know, looking at all that stuff and wondering, like, how, how could that work? How could somebody build something like that? You know, that I watched the Apollo missions, watched the space shuttle missions and things like that. And I just fell in love with engineering aircraft, aircraft carriers, still modern marvels of engineering to this day, and I wanted to become an astronaut. So how am I going to become an astronaut? So really is how, how I fell in love with the engineering discipline.
Aaron Moncur:So let's talk a little bit about that. You wanted to become an astronaut. You thought, well, engineering, maybe that's my path to becoming an astronaut. And then you, you ended up in the Navy, right? Yes, as a let's see you were a pilot. I think I saw a picture of you, maybe on your LinkedIn profile, where you're in a fighter jet, I think, and there's a little arrow pointing and saying, That's me, or something like that. Yeah,
Ron Higgs:it is. And I was a naval flight officer, so if you saw the Top Gun Maverick and goose, I was goose guy and wow. And all the work while the pilots taking the credit for kidding. Navigation, weapon systems operation, all sorts, weapon and sensor systems operations, things like that. But I loved it. Where I grew up. I didn't have any exposure to didn't have any exposure to anyone who had walked that path. It's like you want to be I want to be an astronaut. It's like you want to be a what? So there was no one who can help me, really. So I had to find my own path through the library system. Was one of those things. I had to go to. There was no Google. I had to go to the library to figure this out. And through all of that research, you know, I found out that, hey, a lot of astronauts went to the Naval Academy. A lot of astronauts were test pilots, first things like that. So here's what I want to do. I want to fly airplanes. I want to go in the Navy, because aircraft carriers, I thought were cool, and anybody could land a plane on the ground. That's landing a plane on an aircraft carrier would be, would be really cool. So I found my way. Ended up at the Naval Academy, selected naval aviation as a naval flight officer, ended up being accepted and going and graduating from US Naval Test Pilot School. So I followed, followed the path, and I was one of the people that the Navy introduced as a candidate, an astronaut candidate, to NASA, because I had to apply to the astronaut program through the Navy. And then when I was evaluated by NASA, I got disqualified for a medical reason. So I got as close as I possibly could from starting with that dream for literally, from starting watching science fiction to making it to to that point, and I still, I have friends that are in the astronaut program. In fact, the local news, the astronauts that just came back from the space station that was stuck there for a few days, we were all in test pilot school together. So a lot of my friends were successful in their dreams and become an astronaut.
Aaron Moncur:Now, a person could look at this as the glass is half empty or half full. You got so close to being an astronaut. You You could look at it as I was almost there, I almost made it. Or you could look at it as man, I got so far. I really got very far here, further than most people ever get what was your your mindset like at that time? Well, I
Ron Higgs:mean, if you what is that? I think I'm gonna get it wrong, but if you shoot for the moon, if you fail, you'll still end up in the stars or something, you know, something like that. So I am thankful for everything that I have, everything that I was exposed to, everything that I was able to do, and from where I started, I am proud of the fact that I got as far as I did, and the things that I learned from it, and the things that that stuck with me, that shaped the way I think today, I wouldn't give any of that up. So it was great experience. I never looked back negatively on any of it.
Aaron Moncur:Absolutely, that's wonderful. How so you're doing executive coaching right now, specifically with engineers and technical professionals. How did your experience as a naval flight officer shape your approach to executive coaching
Ron Higgs:well, so military aviation in general instills a combination of discipline you have to be adaptable and continuous improvement, and a lot of things like that kind of stayed with me. And the military environment in general focuses on mentoring, training, coaching. Now, everyone in the military goes into a unit for a finite amount of time, for a specific amount of time, let's say two, three or four years during your time in that unit, you are being trained as a replacement as you are training others to replace you as you come along, because nobody stays anywhere, you know, sort of like a real, you know, a corporate job. So that mindset in trying to coach there are a lot, there's a lot of coaching of the people coming behind me as I'm being coached. So I learned how to be a good coachee, and then I learned how to coach people, because I want to make those people the best that they can be. So let's say I'm being trained as a wingman as I come in, and then when I able to take the lead, then I want to train the wingman to be the best wingman that they can be. So that whole that whole mentality of coaching was just part of what we did in the military. Now we didn't call it that, but when I discovered executive coaching, it's like, wow, this is this is great. This is just a natural extension of where the things that I've always been doing throughout my career, yeah,
Aaron Moncur:at what point did you know that you wanted to extrapolate the coaching you are already doing in the military into more of a private practice or a profession for yourself in the future, the product development expo or PDX is your chance to learn from subject matter experts providing practical, hands on training for dozens of different engineering topics, Gd and T advanced surface modeling, DFM, plating and finishing techniques, programming robots, adhesive, dispensing, prototyping, tips and tricks and lots more. PDX happens October, 21 and 22nd in Phoenix, Arizona, Learn more at PD Expo. Dot engineer. That's P, D, E, x, p, O, dot engineer.
Ron Higgs:So it took me a while to settle on some of these things, because I spent a. Career in the military, got out, did several jobs with the defense contractors, and then decided to go off on my own a little while after that, during that there are a lot of coaches out there, right? So I'm trying to separate myself as a coach. You know? You have to reflect back and go, What do I have to offer that's unique that nobody else does, and so my engineering background, I go, Wait, I've seen like I've seen a lot of engineers struggle with their transition in their leadership roles, especially executive leadership roles. I struggled with it. I know what I struggled with, and I know how I was able to overcome it. And I go, Wait, this is a great niche for me to be able to help others. As you mentioned, I did a few other jobs. I was a COO, a fractional COO, and what I learned from that is, while I was the COO of these companies, I really enjoyed coaching the individual members of the executive team. I also enjoyed the coaching of the team as a whole, and I found eventually that I that resonated with me a lot more than the COO stuff. So I switched into coaching full time. Interesting
Aaron Moncur:you. You mentioned earlier that not only did the military teach you how to be a good coach, but how to be a good coachee, what? What are some things that engineers, looking to be coached, looking for mentors, can do to be a good coachee,
Ron Higgs:I think you have to have an attitude of continuous improvement. So for us, here's the thing that stuck with me. In the military, every flight has three elements. You have a brief, you go out and execute the flight, and you have a debrief. Every flight gets a debrief, where you get debriefed on your performance. You get feedback. Feedback seems to be a four letter word in some of these circles, but if feedback really is the key, because how else are we going to get better, right? I think people who only people who care about you and want you to be better will give you feedback. So it's not all negative. You become better because of that feedback. Then you start to seek it. So I seek feedback in everything that I do, and some things are hard to hear, but ultimately it helps me become better. So the feedback, the desire for continuous improvement driven by that feedback. Because a big, a big deal to separate, you know, average engineers from the above average leaders that we're looking to create.
Aaron Moncur:It's interesting that you say that just several weeks ago, Jake Kennington was on the show. He's also an engineering coach, a little bit different than your focus, and actually you'll meet him at PDX, because he is also speaking there. But something he said that I thought was really insightful was that we don't grow based on our experiences. We grow based on reflecting on our experiences, which is effectively what you're saying now with the feedback loop,
Ron Higgs:absolutely. And one of the things is one of the things, and one of the traits, I believe, of coming a good leader, is self awareness. If you're self aware, especially with your with your actions, with your emotions and things like that. If you know what you're good at and you know how others are perceiving your emotions, not just how you perceive them, that's really powerful. And if you can reflect back on that and exercise some critical self awareness, I believe that's key. And so what? Whatever his name was, I think that that's great advice.
Aaron Moncur:I think one area that a lot of engineers in particular struggle with is the people skills, right? We're all good at math. We're good at physics. We know the equations thermodynamics, statics and fluid dynamics and all this fun stuff, but we sometimes struggle when it comes to having just a conversation with people and relating well, how is that an area, especially in the executive leadership that you've coached, is that an area you've seen to be a stumbling block? And what are some ways that you have helped engineers get past that stumbling block?
Ron Higgs:Well, that's absolutely a stumbling block, probably one of the bigger ones, but just like you headed towards what are the things that separate technical experts from effective executive leaders? Right? Because it's not just technical skills or experience, right? It's the people skills. It's the people focused traits. So you have people focused traits that you need to develop, like self awareness, which we talked about, and empathy, it's a big thing. There's organizationally focused traits like systems thinking and strategic vision, but I believe. Believe the biggest thing that you can do is understand that different people are motivated by different things. Think we all know that, right? How do you know what motivates a specific individual? You have to create some kind of relationship with them. So those of us in art, those of us engineers who think logically will start off going, well, I have to treat everyone the same. Well, not really, right? And so again, you have to know what important to people, what motivates them, and you won't know that unless you create relationship with them. So one of the biggest things that you can do. And most important things that you can do is learn how to build relationships with people. And it's difficult. I and there are some simple exercises, simple things that you can go and do to help you get used to that, but that is a challenge for people.
Aaron Moncur:I'm thinking with my engineer hat right now, and if I'm an engineer, I'm listening to Ron, and I'm saying, Okay, I have to learn to develop relationships with people. Check, great. What's the process for that? What do I do first, and then what do I do second? And then what do I do third? My opinion, there's not really a linear checklist to go through. But what are some suggestions that you have? What are some pro tips for building relationships with people?
Ron Higgs:Well, let me just say this, yeah, engineers have to do this. We all like data, right? And some of us disregard qualitative data, right? We look at quantitative data. We look at statistics and we get all these numbers, right? There's qualitative data out there that doesn't have any numbers. There are no numbers. Can't measure it, forget about it, right? So we one have to sort of let go of that whole thing. You know, how much do you like somebody, right? Can you quantify that? Really? Relationships, feelings, desires, motivation, all those things. Can you measure any of that? So the first thing is to just let go of that idea of everything has to be measured, right? And come at it from as far as talking to people be genuine. If you're genuinely curious about someone, that will come naturally genuine. For me, it's genuine curiosity. I just like to know people's stories. Everybody has one. Everyone has a great time, a great story. And I guarantee you you engage with someone on a regular basis, you'll come out of that conversation and go, Man, I never knew that, and some of those discussions were able to help me shape and or reshape some relationships I had with people throughout my career, listening to a story of a 16 year old Native American lady who worked for me, who went to college when she was 35 years old and had, you know, four kids, and all these things. And you learn about man she went to college, which she was, you know, 35 years old and had four kids, and then got divorced, and all sorts, I mean, just all sorts of things. And I just realized how strong of a person she really was. And beneath all of that, you know, one of the things that I think about is everybody you meet is fighting a battle, you know, nothing about, right? And so the more I got to know that person, what her characteristics were, what she was capable of, the more I was able to challenge her in that role and and have her Excel. So just to sum this up, just be genuinely curious about people, and I think it'll come naturally. That's
Aaron Moncur:such good advice. I mean, if you just ask people questions about themselves, they will start talking, and they will love you forever. People love to talk about themselves. I'm not saying that in a condescending way at all. It's just how we're built.
Ron Higgs:People also love to give advice, I think. And so if you you're having trouble, you know, getting through, because there are some people that will be guarded, you know, notice something about them. It's like, oh, I noticed that you're really, really organized. It's like, what kind of advice would you give to somebody like me that's trying to get as organized as you are? That's
Aaron Moncur:huge. That's a huge insight right there. Wow. Okay, going back to executive leaders, right chances are there are plenty of engineers who are listening to this right now. Maybe they're early in their careers. Maybe they're managers right now, but they have aspirations to be. Climb the ladder and become executive leaders at some point in their careers. What are, I think we've already talked about a few of them, but are there any other key attributes or behaviors that are really critical for leaders at an executive level to have to be successful?
Ron Higgs:Well, I think one of the things you have to get past, right is that I think a lot of engineers think that technical proficiency is for as long as I'm technically proficient, as long as I'm good, that's all I need, right? And it's not. And so all the things that sort of got you that promotion into into executive leadership or any kind of a people management role, are not the things that you need to be successful in that role. And so some of the blind spots are really overvaluing technical proficiency at that level, because most of the stuff we're paying you for now is the people stuff the dynamics and team dynamics, people interact, right? And then I mentioned it earlier, undervaluing those soft skills, right? So it's a combination of, Wow, so and so's great engineer, right? But nobody says, Man, that person's really great at making relationships, or they're great at they're great at maintaining these relationships with non technical stakeholders, that's a big thing. And so to go into some of those other traits, right? Thinking, big picture systems thinking, try it, because we're naturally in the weeds all the time, lots of detail, right? But sometimes you got to back out of that detail and look at the whole forest and understand, understand the bigger picture, and being able to communicate with your non technical stakeholders. There are always HR people, finance people, you know, all sorts of other people, marketing folks, sales folks, who aren't technically astute whose eyes glaze over every time you start, every time we start describing something to them. So we literally have to learn to communicate with those folks. And again, it's just about asking, you know, and thinking it's like, Well, what a marketing person tend to know? Because we tend to just, hey, I'm going to tell this person everything I know. Well, no, the real art is to tell them what they need to know, right? It's to understand and tell them what they need to know.
Aaron Moncur:That is a huge, huge point. I worked with an engineer for a period of time, and he was brilliant. This guy could run circles around me when it came to technical expertise, and honestly, I didn't understand a lot of what he said. It was just it was so far above my head, above my technical capabilities. And I remember being in awe that he was just so smart, so brilliant, right? But also as as his leader being so frustrated because I could never get cohesive communication from him, anytime I asked him something, the answer, it didn't make sense to me. He He really didn't understand how to give me the information I was looking for. And I've seen that over and over in some engineers and other engineers, they just get it right. They're able to give you a concise explanation of what you're looking for. Great. Done. Move on to the next thing. And that is such a huge skill, I can tell you that as a business owner and as I lead my team, the the individuals, the engineers who know how to give you a concise summary, give you the information you need, and then just move on, those are the ones I love working with. And I, I want, I, I do everything in my power to keep them there right promotions and raises and recognition and all of this stuff, whereas the other group, let's say, and I'm not suggesting that these individuals are at pipeline right now. This is just general experience here, but those other individuals who who don't know how to to communicate. Well, wow, I just I almost run the opposite direction when I see them coming, you know? So anyway, a couple of my data points there. I
Ron Higgs:believe that being able to simplify things is a superpower. It really is. And for me, I come from a family of folks that are, let's say, relatively uneducated, like my grand my grandparents didn't have an education because black people at their time weren't allowed to go to school or were limited in the amount of education they could have, especially the women, right? And I remember my grandmother just. Asking me things about what I was doing. I was like, I need to be able to explain this to my grandmother. You know, my mom was a medical assistant, no technical knowledge whatsoever, right? And I loved and my mom was always very curious about what I was doing. I was like, I have to be able to explain this to my mom. And so I just thought about that, how can I really explain this so that almost anyone can understand that. And I realized I was validated. I was talking with a CEO when I was looking to make my transition out of the aerospace and defense world and into the consulting business, and I was wanted to just make sure that my skills were transferable. And the first thing she said to be she says, I've never seen anyone in your position being able to take such complex, complex, complex ideals and simplify them the way you do that is really, really valuable, and I didn't know it. Because remember, those of us that are really, really good at certain things sometimes don't realize it, because they come naturally to us, and so we have to ask other people what we're good at. So one of the ways I was able to, you know, really settle on the coaching thing, is to ask people what I was good at. They're like, Oh, no, Ron, you do this. Well, I'm like, Really,
Aaron Moncur:this is so true for a long time, I think that I'm very good at communication and organization, and for a long time, I did not understand that that was a special skill set I had. I thought everyone can do this because it's easy. It just makes sense, right, to communicate efficiently and to be organized. It did not occur to me that that was a special skill set until much later in my career. So just echoing what you said, oftentimes, the things that we're really good at, we don't realize, because they just come so naturally. Yeah,
Ron Higgs:your normal is an aha moment for others, right? Yeah, or can be an aha moment for others
Aaron Moncur:you worked at or maybe consulted for. I can't remember now, but a company called commercial laser Corporation, and I read that you helped triple their valuation. Is that accurate? Yes, okay, that floored me, and I would love to hear obviously, it takes a village, right? Wasn't just Ron Higgs, but what were some of the things that you and the team did to triple A company's valuation.
Ron Higgs:Well, let's say that that was a startup, right? And, you know, in startups, teams have to work well beyond their job descriptions, and I think you know that. And so for this particular one, the CEO was very, very direct. I didn't take a lot of input from others. And there was, you know, there was also a lack of Team diversity and lots of different aspects. So when I came aboard, you know, I was able to notice something and share my unique perspective that just helped identify a new value proposition. Because, you know, we're looking at the companies locked in on a value proposition. This is what our valuation is. And I'm like, I'm like, Oh, wait, I don't think so. And here's what I think our real that is a value proposition. Here's what I think our real value proposition is. And I think this much more valuable than the one that you're going as our primary valuation. So, like you said, it takes a team. We look at it go, you know, what? You know, or, like Ron's on to something here, we're right. So through a little bit of work, you know, we were able to to adjust our numbers. You know, there are a lot of there are a lot of contributing factors there. You know, leadership, practices, valuing teamwork, you know, recognizing courage. Because, you know, it was a startup, I wasn't going to be bullied. You know what? I mean? It's like, Hey, I'm gonna, I'm good at my opinion. And if you don't want it, then I can go elsewhere, where I think it'll, it'll be valued, making sure all of our goals were aligned. And as part of a startup, again, you just go in there, especially when you're new, you could go in and look around and just start asking those new guy questions, like, Well, why don't we have this? Why don't we have this? Why don't we have this? Is like, Okay, I'm in a startup, so I'm going to do it. And, you know, engaging everyone cross functionally, the systems thinking that we talked about, really, all those things made an impact, and that's how we were able to I was the catalyst for that. I didn't do it on my own, but I was the catalyst for That's
Aaron Moncur:fascinating. Wow. You often talk about systems thinking. What? What does Systems Thinking mean? I
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Ron Higgs:Well, systems thinking is understanding how different parts of the system interact with and influence each other. So if you look at everything, and ironically enough, I have a bachelor's degree in systems engineering, and when I got my first coo job, the thing that helped me the most, night and a lot of different jobs before, you know, the military and out. But as a COO the systems engineering actually helped me the most, because I looked at all the operating functions of the business and how they operated the system and how they were interrelated. And I, you know, getting to talk with the other executives on the team that's like, okay, sales guy, you just sold this, but you told the client that we could deliver it in three months. We have a six month backlog, and so now you see what you just did to everyone in this entire thing. Now you're going to make the entire business look bad because we're not going to be able to deliver it. You're going to put some extra pressure on production, manufacturing, all those people. I mean, do we understand all that? So again, everything has a what is that was called the butterfly effect, right? All of those things and how different things happen. It's not as extreme as that, but understanding where your piece fits in the hole, how or into the hole, and how it influences everything around it, and how it is being influenced by the things around it, I think will make you that much better of a problem solver. Now, sometimes this came from the military. The military was really, really good at mission alignment, so we all took an oath to support defendant constitution United States. We're all very clear on the mission of each individual service, right? And so we're also very clear on the mission of our part of the service. So I knew the mission of the Seventh Fleet, I knew the mission of the aircraft carrier. I knew what we were doing every day. I knew the mission of my aircraft, and I could map out every action that I took to how it was, how it supported and defended the Constitution the United States. That's alignment. That doesn't happen everywhere, right? But if you understand that system, I think that you will then become a better problem solver and a better part of that system,
Aaron Moncur:yeah, I think that is that as a whole, and not just engineering organizations, but many organizations where we don't understand the high level why the purpose, and I'm sure that's the case to some extended pipeline as well. How have you helped teams overcome that and draw very clear paths between individual roles and the overall purpose of a company?
Ron Higgs:Well, you really have to start at the top, right? So now we're going to go back to talking about the soft stock again, right? So mission statements, very valuable, right? That's your North Star. That's what you're doing. Your vision statements, the difference between the two, your values, all those things that make some engineers eyes glaze over, that's not really important stuff, but yeah, it is right. And so you've got organizational goals that should align with the mission, right? And then there's individual teams and or, you know, organizations or departments within the organization, can you help them see what their specific part is towards that goal? Now, a lot of it's easier said than done, but it starts with getting the the front office, the executive team aligned? Because, because if the executive team isn't aligned and they're not functioning well together, then the company's not gonna function well, right? And so you have to start there, and it has to flow down.
Aaron Moncur:How have you been able to identify whether an executive team is or is not aligned, because these are highly educated, capable, smart people, right? It's how do I say this? They're probably not going to be or maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. They're probably not going to be advertising the fact that I know we're not in alignment and we're not doing things. Right? And maybe they have their guards up and they're not looking for a consultant to come in and say, You're not aligned as a team. How do you identify? Goes back to the soft skills, right? You have to make people comfortable, genuinely trust you. But how do you how would you assess a situation, situation like that?
Ron Higgs:So my executive team coaching. I've usually been called in by a CEO that says my executive team isn't getting along, or there's conflict within the team. There's conflict within the team that's impacting our mission, that's impacting the bottom line, or an exact quote from one of my clients is like, my team is good. I want to make them great, right? And then you start, you know, I have an assessment that I use. There's a thing to make sure that, you know, businesses go through stages of growth and decline, and everyone sort of has to be aligned on what their depending on what stage they're in, their priorities and the things that they should be working on. So, for instance, if you're a startup, you should be working on cash flow. You should be working on finding a profitable, sustainable market, right, so that you become self sufficient before whatever seed capital you have runs out. And if everybody's not working on that, then they're not aligned, right? So there's some way of figuring out, you know, hey, here's what we here's what we all need to be doing. Sometimes, when you have visionaries, you look at the company vision, you may have people at the top who have completely different ideas of what success looks like for the company. Hey, we want to take the company in this direction. Now we want to take the company in this direction. So which ends up leads to, how many stories have you heard about co founders breaking up? Right? And that's usually what it leads to. So I'm not sure that was a good answer to your question, but some symptoms are, you know, executives not getting along. A lot of things get buried under the rug too. A lot of people just don't want to address it, right? Because people just like, oh, wow, I don't want to, you know, I'm scared of conflict, not necessarily scared of conflict, but just don't, don't want to do any conflict, right? So they let things get swept under the rug. Everybody knows when you have a problem person, and it only takes one person to sour your culture, sour your organization, so you're going to get what you tolerate. And so example of that is like, hey, so and so is a is our top salesperson? Yeah, we know they don't follow all the rules. We know he or she has done something inappropriate and prone to do inappropriate things at times, but they're the number one salesperson, so we let them get away with that, but what you let them get away with and what you tolerate is what you're going to begin to get right. So now you're telling people that whatever bad behavior they're exhibiting is okay as long as they can perform, which will destroy your culture, as you all know. So you have to make a choice. Let's
Aaron Moncur:let's extrapolate from there a little bit. Can you think of a situation that was particularly challenging, right? A leadership situation, and how you resolved
Ron Higgs:it? You know, there's a couple. And these aren't specific. These aren't very, very challenging, but I'll give you the examples just to kind of prove a point, right? So I had one where a group of people came or several team members accused the lead of sort of slacking and underperforming, like hey, so and so is slacking off their underperforming. You know, this guy's a dirtbag. You need to move them here and there now, because I had created a relationship with this person. And I knew him. I knew that he was a Navy, a retired Navy Master Chief. That is the highest enlisted rank that you can get to slacker is incapable of being a slacker. And I knew that, so pulled them into my office and just asked, Hey, you know we're not seeing our usual high standards of performance from you. So do you have any you got anything personal going on that's impacting your ability to engage at work, and that emotional opened up with some of the challenges that he had. And I'm like, okay, so listen, we're interested in a whole person here, so let's help you out. So what can we do so we were able to adjust some of the responsibilities that he had, and give him more time to focus on his personal issues and and satisfy our team responsibilities. Also gave us the opportunity to have a couple of other team members step step up. He also personally apologize to some of the folks on the team, but. So again, the biggest lesson in that is just get to know people and lead with some kind of empathy. Because I knew that guy was in a dirt bag, right? And this was, there are a lot of people going, No, no, you got to get rid of this guy. He's not doing this. He's not done that. I'm like, No, that's that's not the problem. Wow, somebody else, had I not taken the time to get to know him beforehand that could have came out a lot. I'm glad it came out the way it did.
Aaron Moncur:That's a beautiful story. Thank you for sharing that
Ron Higgs:so, so that's a people issue problem, right? And then we end up with technical issues, right? So I was in charge of an aircraft delivery at a large aircraft manufacturer, right? And our aircraft delivery timeline wasn't being met. So and in fact, our timeline was, let's say, 10 days. And when I showed up, the average delivery was taken 21 days, you know. And so one of the things that we did is step back. We took a six systems thinking approach. We took some input from all of the stakeholders. And as it turns out, the contracts team, it was taking the contracts team five days from the time we finished the aircraft to the time that they were able to get all the contracts paperwork done right five days. Turns out they were working from the wrong schedule. They were working from sort of a master schedule. And so all I did, I put them on delivery, I put put them on distribution for our aircraft status updates, okay, decrease that time to one day, because now they were doing it in parallel instead of series. Okay, biggest lesson there sometimes really, really simple solutions can have a big impact. It doesn't have to be a really big one, right? So that was a leadership challenge, right? And inheriting this kind of, okay, Ron, what are you going to do about this? It's like I just got here. Give me some time. But every solution doesn't have to be elegant, right? I mean, that was probably an example of the simplest solution that I think was ever proposed to solve complex problem. Communication, yeah,
Aaron Moncur:yeah, that one comes up over and over. Communication, well, what for, for the engineers listening who are interested in moving into more leadership, strategic roles, what's Of course, there are many, many things, but if there was one thing that you could recommend that they start tomorrow to move in that direction. What? What do you think that would be? Um,
Ron Higgs:I would say this, because a lot of every people just struggle with people leadership, right? That's probably the biggest struggle that people have, right? And so, what do you if you're automatically now in charge of a team, what's your natural inclination as an engineer, if
Aaron Moncur:I'm in charge of a team, my natural inclination is to get to know the people, understand what motivates them, and make sure what we're trying to do aligns with what their goals are. Find a way to match those up, so we're all enrolled in rowing in the same direction. Well,
Ron Higgs:a little simpler than that. You're probably a bit more advanced than others, but I'm talking about, I'm someone new to a leadership role. You probably are automatically, at least, I was automatically attuned to giving people the answer, like you had to have the answer, right? You were the answer person. You had to make sure that you had all the answers to everyone's problems, right? And so instead of focusing on answers, what if you focused on better questions to help your people grow? I love that, right? So in other words, you know people ask you, okay, hey, Ron, what are we going to do about this? Okay, what are our options? What do you think we're going to do? What are our variables, whether this and so you start laying out all the things you're thinking about. You start asking those questions to let them get to it, and then they don't get used, they don't get used to coming to you for an answer, right? You just keep giving them, asking them more challenging questions. And so to stop get out of that, I gotta solve everything. I gotta do it and really come at it from start asking questions. Now it's gonna annoy some people. How come, Eric, how come you answer my question with a question? Because I'm trying to get you to think for yourself, and you'll appreciate it, but that that's really one of the biggest shift, I think, that they can can make, along with that, you know, under we talked about it, understanding the bigger picture, right, understanding people, right, and getting to the point where you. You can actually are proactive instead of reactive, and you're not putting out fires. That's probably if I, as I do my research, especially with some newer managers, for folks that have been in it for a while, it's like I'm spending all my day putting out fires. I had time to do anything else. I want
Aaron Moncur:to go back briefly to your comment about answering questions with questions, because I think that's so powerful. I have appreciated and understood the power there from a sales standpoint for a long time, but I don't know that I've fully appreciated the power from a leadership standpoint as well. I know oftentimes in a sales context, a customer will ask me, Well, how big is your team? And I could just give them an answer, right? It's this many people that this number, right? But chances are they don't really care how big my team is. And so, and this, I use this question because I get this all the time. I don't know why people just love to ask this question. And so I answer that by saying, Wow, that's a great question. Typically, when people ask me that they're really looking for something else, what are we trying to get at here? Help me understand the root of the question so I can give you the most relevant answer, and that always 100% of the time, opens up a much broader conversation that we would never have had if I had just given them the answer to the question, which wasn't really the question, Well,
Ron Higgs:you're right, and that's a great answer. And my my answer went about the same. It's like, well, what kind of servants do you have that would make you ask that? Because there have to be some underlying concerns as to why you would want to know that. So are you concerned about the amount of time we have, the amount of perspectives we're going to get in answering this problem, what? What's the, what's the real question here? Right? Because, you know, just like you said that, how many people doesn't necessarily matter, there's another answer they're trying to get to, exactly
Aaron Moncur:right? Well, Ron, this has been really a delight. Thank you so much for spending some time with us and sharing some insight and some wisdom. This was excellent, and I'm super, super excited to hear your talk at PDX, coming up October 21 and 22nd we hope to see you all there before we sign off from the podcast. Ron, how can people get in touch with you? Well, if you'll allow me
Ron Higgs:to ask this question first, right? Because I'm really excited about speaking at the event as well, but I really want the talk to be relevant and impactful for everyone there, and so if you're out there listening, I'll give you my contact information in a second. But here are the things I want you to think about you can help me shape this talk so that you can get the most out of it. Think about this. What's the biggest frustration you have, biggest obstacle you have that's slowing you down, and I would say keeping you up at night, but you know, there's not much work related that's keeping me up at night, maybe. So what's your biggest frustration out there on the other side, what does success look like if all if that frustration immediately disappeared, what would your life look like? What is it that you could do that you don't have time to do now, right? And if you could just wave a magic wand and change one thing, one thing about your job, one thing about your team, what would that be? Those three things? If you can help me quit those three things, send me some answers to you can email me Ron at wolfmanagement solutions.com LinkedIn is my number one channel. You can reach out and connect with me on LinkedIn there. I also think I published some pretty engaging content. Please take a look at that. Give me some feedback on that as well. And I have a website, www, dot wolfmanagement solutions.com, any of those ways, please let me hear from you. Would love to hear from you and help me make my presentation that much more of a success, because you will have shaped it.
Aaron Moncur:Ron, thank you so much for being on the show
Ron Higgs:today. All right. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Aaron Moncur:I'm Aaron Moncur, founder of pipeline design and engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please share the episode to learn how your team can leverage our team's expertise developing advanced manufacturing processes, automated machines and custom fixtures, complemented with product design and R D services. Visit us at Team pipeline.us. To join a vibrant community of engineers online. Visit the wave. Dot, engineer, thank you for listening. You.
