Leadership

Overview

My management career has encompassed a number of diverse technologies and has concentrated on
solving four basic types of problems:

Turn-around teams and/or projects to meet quality and delivery goals

Leading teams from a research mindset to delivered product

Managing and leading new development and SQA teams from scratch

Leading teams through rapid growth phases in terms of size and/or technologies employed

Team/Project Turnaround/Transformation

The first is turning around teams/projects that have run into trouble in meeting quality or schedule goals.
Whatever reasons are given for an engineering group not meeting its goals, I have found that the root
cause is invariably a management issue that must be overcome. I start this by taking total accountability
for major custom development projects that have failed to meet their goals and where the customer is
often on the verge of walking away and claiming damages. By total accountability, I mean:

Responsibility for development of a plan

Re-energizing or building the development and quality teams - involving them in the planning results
in it being their plan and not management's plan!

Provide the engineers with the environment they need to succeed - this is my part of the bargain with
developers/SQA

Ensuring product quality functions processes are in place and adhered to

Negotiating this plan with the customer - often involving them in the QA function so they can see
what is being done firsthand. This helps to build a trusting relation with the customer.

And delivering to it - this is the developer/SQA staff's part of the bargain

I have been very successful in achieving these goals in multiple circumstances, environments and industries.

Transforming Startups from Research to Product Mode

A major portion of my career has involved assisting startup companies in making the leap from research
mode to product mode. Convincing research oriented engineers and scientists that they can direct their
work to a schedule and a plan is a challenge that I very much enjoy undertaking and have been successful
at.

These are challenges I particularly enjoy. While I have worked in a number of different technology areas, I
have found that the leadership issues are always similar and are usually the major cause of problems. The
leadership techniques that I have developed have proven to be very successful with both customers and
development teams.

My teams have characteristically turned out to be high performers with great morale and very high
retention.

Bootstrapping new teams

Starting new teams is a lot of fun. This is where the rubber really meets the road because what you sow is
what you reap and I enjoy having this responsibility on my shoulders. I formed a new software and SQA
team at Bose Corporation in with a charter to clean up a couple of earlier projects and simultaneously put
together a new architecture to meet immediate product needs. Needless to say, this all had to be done
while meeting Bose' extremely high standard of quality.

We succeeded and put out a family of highly successful home theater products with a high percentage of
reusable code and a number of accessories including a video remote, wireless speakers, and a new network
capable version of the venerable Wave Radio.

Guiding teams through rapid growth phase

This is closely related to the section on Bootstrapping new teams above but has additional challenges.
Along with rapid growth of an established team comes changes in methodologies, processes, tools, and,
perhaps, major changes in the whole development life cycle.

It takes skill and persistence to move teams that have been comfortable where they were to doing things
in new ways with new tools by a new methodology.

I have successfully led teams to using Object Oriented design and coding and to embedded C++ and Java.
I have also led teams to accept and embrace agile as a development methodology.

I can help your teams move forward if they have been static in methods and tools and need to move
forward to more advanced ways of getting your product developed.

Leadership

Product Success Through Innovative
Engineering Solutions and Leadership