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David Hannah wants his product development team to embody a Swiss Army knife in terms of its versatility, reliability and immense usefulness. Building a diverse skill set and knowledge base within the team assists with cross-functional understanding and deepens employee relationships, said Hannah, Chief Technology Officer at Tyber Medical. Mastering those efforts, though, takes dedication and discipline from leadership on down through the company.
Hannah offered this insight during an OMTEC 2023 session on how to build winning product development teams. He spoke alongside Paul Vasta, Ph.D., Chief Technology Officer at Gramercy Extremity Orthopedics (GEO) and Chuck Jaggers, former Vice President of Product Development for CMF, Neuro and Chest Wall at Acumed.
The three panelists leaned on decades of experience in leading orthopedic teams when they shared valuable advice on aligning orthopedic engineers to achieve R&D goals in an evolving work environment. Their comments were edited for brevity.
Staying Connected
How we work has changed dramatically in the past three years. Whether you’re working in the office, at home or a combination of both, it’s likely that the tools you use and the ways that you interact with your colleagues have changed since pre-pandemic life. It’s important that product development leaders find meaningful ways to facilitate team interaction.
Jaggers: Overall, people are much happier with the opportunity to work from home, but remote work has some drawbacks. The lack of physical interaction and exchange of ideas is hard for people. The face-to-face dialogue between marketing and engineering, while having parts in front of you on a table, is essential for a product development team. Our team goes into the office one day a week. Teams can sit together, work on problems and generate ideas.
Hannah: We left the office for two weeks at the beginning of the pandemic, and then we returned. We have many operation-heavy jobs that involve people running machines and we focus heavily on cross-functional teams. We wanted to support our labor team and also our collaborative culture. Remote work is difficult for product development. Sometimes we turn around prototypes in under 48 hours, and that iterative process gets held up without talking to each other.
To stay competitive in a tough hiring market, we looked into establishing satellite offices. Instead of having remote workers around the country, I’ll pick certain cities and hire around that area. I can drop a 3D printer in the office for product iterations. We’re also looking into 24/7 virtual windows, which would allow employees across the country to see their colleagues in satellite offices to get the psychological sense that somebody is there.
Dr. Vasta: Maybe we’re just old-school guys, but I haven’t found anything that can take the place of walking down the hall, sticking your head into somebody’s office and brainstorming. I have not seen or been able to accomplish that same level of interaction through electronic media.
I say that with the background that my original team met in my dining room when the company was founded in 2015. We relied on tools like Box and Zoom when we weren’t together and discussed ways to remain productive through file sharing, whiteboarding and chatting. There are numerous tools geared toward productivity that can be leveraged whether you’re remote or in the office.
It’s also essential to make sure that interactions happen organically. Yes, you can force meetings, but you also want to encourage impromptu discussions. It’s a balance, and leaders must make sure that their team thinks about those interactions, because it’s easy to become isolated.
Promoting Teamwork
Product development work is complex and requires input from different perspectives. A successful project requires an understanding and reliability of other job functions. Engineers will experience greater success by participating in cross-functional efforts, demonstrating intrigue and communicating effectively. Product development leaders should help their teams prioritize collaboration and demonstrate what is expected through their actions.
Hannah: We create Swiss Army knives out of our engineers through cross-training. We encourage everybody to walk the process, whether it’s GD&T training or learning how to run a Haas machine. I have engineers who can program and run machines, perform CAPAs and complaints, support audits and write 510(k)s. I can’t pretend they will be at Tyber Medical their whole careers. We want them to grow their toolboxes and evolve professionally. Then you’ve built a lasting relationship if they become leaders somewhere else.
Cross-functional team understanding also helps handoffs between workflows among quality, manufacturing and R&D. We want to involve everybody in these different aspects of our business. It has also helped with cross-department hiring. It creates natural leaders who understand the workflow between departments. Plus, they then have deep relationships within departments.
Jaggers: You need to give people opportunities and freedom to build teamwork. An effective tool is brainstorming exercises. An engineer may grab a marketing person, quality engineer or development engineer to brainstorm ideas. By doing that, they are building connections, communications and relationships that will serve them well in the future.
We have locations in Portland, Oregon and Dallas. We’ve seen value in getting engineering teams physically together to review products that we’re working on or stumbling over. Maybe one group figures out that the other team has an expert in screw technology who can help solve a problem. Suddenly, the teams start to work together. Management needs to encourage and support giving people the freedom to tackle challenging issues together. It provides the team with confidence and shows that management believes in them. It also helps them build and develop relationships and connections, particularly around problem solving.
Dr. Vasta: We work with many contractors, which I also consider cross-functional interaction. Communication is key with outside teams. We’ve all experienced posing a question and hearing nothing back. Your mind immediately imagines the worst and assumes bad things are happening that you don’t know about. Everything is usually fine, but those seeds of doubt can kick the legs out from under a project that’s moving forward as expected. Whether the group you’re working with is inside or outside of the company, build a standard based on clear communication: I must communicate; I must let somebody know what I’m doing; I must ask questions if I have an issue.
Measuring Success
In theory, building connections and promoting teamwork should create focused teams and lead to product launches. But how do product development teams know if they’re successful? It’s likely a combination of objective and subjective factors.
Dr. Vasta: I prefer to look at team success on a daily or weekly basis. The other side of the coin involves creating set objectives, which can be problematic. We’ve all been in situations in which project leaders say, ‘I need this tomorrow. You aren’t working fast enough.’ If the person turning the crank gets that message to the team, an urgent deadline becomes their new objective. If the team is driving toward that type of objective, they’re missing important factors in the product development process. My point is that there is an emotional element to team success that can’t be overlooked. It’s essential to monitor your team frequently. How are they interacting? How are they sharing knowledge? How effectively is the project moving forward?
Hannah: We are hardcore metric driven. Our top metric is product complaints. We also look at employee turnover rates and finances. Additionally, everybody knows the 510(k)s we’re going for and what products we’re launching. We broadcast our goals to the entire company. We also leverage feedback systems by entering contests for the fastest growing company or best places to work.
Jagger: I think the measurement of success involves a mix of what Paul and Dave shared. We have to hit hard KPIs, which are important. With those, you need to consider the events that occurred. Was funding cut or reduced? Did you lose a person on a project? Also, how is the team executing? Are they driving and working toward their goal in a meaningful way? Management can’t always be black and white. A metric might be missed, but a team can still succeed if they launch a great product.
