commitment, to the problem you want to solve & the life you want to lead

Lunch on Friday in the Financial District. We were sitting in a gorgeous courtyard, full of marble and light and San Francisco sun. I asked Charlie if he ever gets sidelined by the perception from inside a company that consultants come in uninformed about and uninvested in a company's goals and culture, suggest swooping changes and then leave the actual implementation - the hard part - to someone else.

Sure, he said. But that's what happens only when the tasks haven't been well-developed. When a company hires a consultant without knowing what problem they're trying to solve.

This isn't so different from product development. I get frustrated with how often requirements change. Of course, time changes things. Patients change. Procedures change. Technology changes. But what can't change is our commitment to the problem that we were originally trying to solve. That's the easiest way to kill a good product idea before it hits the market.

You can't design to a moving target.

Don't get me wrong. You can design to accommodate change. You can design with a vision of how that design can change. What can replace it. Apple's the classic example of companies that develop products with multigenerational product strategies. But the point is, commit to something. A set of requirements that may not last forever, but that last for right now and give you something to work towards.

Commitment is a whole separate topic. It takes courage. We're so afraid of it. We're afraid of what might happen if we commit to one thing and miss out on ten others. This is true in product development. This is true in life.

Thomas living his ideal life in Napa Valley.

I was reading Unclutterer yesterday when I came across this post. Erin's post is like Covey's second habit: begin with the end in mind. I think the hardest part of being young is realizing that it's ok to change your mind as you get more information. That the ideal life right now doesn't have to be the ideal life forever, that your life has its own multigenerational design strategy. What shouldn't change is your commitment to live according to the things that you value. 

first shots off the mold, and all the emotion that goes with it

It's been a day.

A lot of you have heard the stories I’ve told of being responsible for a major product launch (less than two months now, and counting, if we ever get our QE back). Most of you that know me personally also know that I'm pretty even-keeled. Our head of BD told me I'm too "smiley." My boss, in fact, told me last week that I don't get mad enough.

Today, I was all over the emotional spectrum. It was interesting to see our team react to my excitement about first pieces off the mold, my frustration about losing my Quality Engineer to another project for another week, and my stubbornness in taking a stand about the scientific analysis we have to perform to release a new product.

An artsy (and purposely ambiguous) photo of first shots.

Anyone that works in product development will tell you that they don’t learn nearly as much from the things that go right than they do from the ones that go wrong. We’ve had plenty, over the past 15 months, go wrong on this project. Today, I let some of that bubble to the surface.

A lot of people are afraid to let their feelings be known in the workplace. I think we're afraid of confrontation because we mistake confrontation for conflict. Even in our personal lives, we don't necessarily want to show our excitement in case we're disappointed later.

But sometimes, we need to embrace how we're feeling. I've spent three weeks being incredibly mad about having a team member pulled at a critical point in the project. I was exhilarated to see a design that we have been refining and iterating for months, finally make its way into a part. And I was exhausted to see that despite all the progress we've made, we've still got a long way to go. The trick is being able to channel those complex emotions into momentum for action. To use those emotions as constructive motivators, as lessons learned. The last 10% to get a product out the door is the toughest 90% of the work. I'll be down in Mexico in two weeks building parts for the first time.

But today, some vindication. First shots off the mold look stellar, and more importantly, they WORK. It's rewarding to come full-circle and see a functional part nearly a year and a half after first starting down this road. I'm sure it will be even more rewarding to see a design that I contributed to and filed IP for, finally being used on a patient in a few short months. Talk about hope made visible, in the form of polycarbonate injection-molded parts.

making hope visible

Spending the weekend in New Haven, Connecticut, at the Unite for Sight Global Health Conference. There have been so many great conversations centered on healthcare in the developing world, and I'm sure there are more to come, but one thought on design for the developing world.

Michael Fairbanks of The Seven Fund told us earlier that with one question, he can predict the economic prosperity of a nation for years to come. That question is "Do you believe in competition?"

Unfortunately, the global health contingent, and subsequently, this conference, is being driven by nonprofits and by medical professionals. Those groups are necessary and much-appreciated - we need people focused on policy, on aid, on one-on-one patient care. But the real innovation, the sustainable developments that will change a country, come from industry. They come from the translation of the research into practical products.

Out of 2,200 attendees, the vast majority are medical students, undergrads, and nonprofit managers. But, industry and entrepreneurship are taking a stand. There are numerous examples of for-profit enterprises who are seeking to be socially responsible in their mission, and industry posing smarter questions in how to make our models work for more people in the world.

The game has changed. It's no longer "Is there a fortune at the base of the pyramid?" The question has been fundamentally reframed, if even by a small group of people, to ask, "How can we create a fortune with the base of the pyramid?" Corporate social responsibility is no longer adequate, and industry is slowly but surely, rising to the challenge.

We don't have the answers yet. We don't know exactly where to take it. But the questions we're asking are making hope visible this weekend.