Skot Waldron:
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Hello, welcome to another episode of Unlocked, where we talk about unlocking the potential of people in order to unlock the potential of our organizations and the people that we're serving. Today I've got Adam Barrett on the call. Adam is a reliability engineer. And if none of you know what that is, don't feel embarrassed because I didn't know what that was. There's a whole industry around reliability engineering. And if you did know what that was awesome. Adam comes from that world, that engineer world of what that is, how to make things work and how to make them reliable over time. Right? We've all had products or cars or something that we bought that broke right over time. Now we hear of things breaking over and over and over again, that's a reliability problem. And he helps fix that. Now he's had experience in medical, robots, consumer, electronics, appliance, ion implementation, diesel systems. He has touched a lot of different industries and talked to a lot of different leaders.
What we're going to talk about this interview is he has a new book coming out about reliability culture and what that means and how leaders undermine the products and the reliability processes that they're going through. If you want your product or service to be reliable, I'm not just talking about a phone or computer or a car, if that is your industry then cool, but if you want anything you do to be reliable, listen to this interview and listen to what Adam has to say about it. Okay. You're ready to get rolling? I am. Let's do it.
All right, Adam. Welcome to the show. It's good to have you.
Adam Bahret:
Hey Skot, thank you. Good to be here.
SKOT WALDRON:
So reliability culture, first of all, before we get into the book and a little bit more of what's in there, for the mass audience, honestly, this is my first introduction to reliability. I know what the word means. I just didn't realize there was a whole industry around this. Right? So introduce us to that idea, that concept, the industry and what it means and how you play a role in that.
ADAM BAHRET:
Yeah, absolutely. So reliability engineering quite simply is the best design practices and the toolkit around that of testing and analysis tools and other methodology that you use in product development. So you're using mechanical product development, electrical, software, and the way the discipline integrates is, picture that somebody invented something and it has its paperclips and scotch tape, and it's just barely working and you got it together. Well, you got to turn it into a product. You've got to fully engineer it and make the design. So reliability engineering, in that process, will ensure that you make a design that the first time is very robust, highly reliable, hits all the other factors and performance and feature factors that are important. And you do that in one product development cycle. So the alternative is, you create an invention and you kind of mature into a design. You're under a lot of schedule pressure and you have limitations and you're not sure if it's good enough or not.
It's not until you release it to the customer and it's in the field, to where a lot of issues happen, high warranty costs, unhappy customers. Teams are frantically in the field trying to figure out what's happening and make fixes and this very firefighting process. And it's not until the second or third generation of the product that it's really a mature product. So that's what you're looking to mitigate.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. That makes sense. I'm like, oh yeah, of course, just, the name, the label, I just didn't even realize that that was there. Okay. So very cool. So the book, then, you've written a book about this, but my audience is going to be going, hold on you've got this engineer guy on here talking about this, what's it have to do with you, Scott and leadership and culture development? But you've got it in the name of it, right? Reliability culture. What's the angle on the book?
ADAM BAHRET:
So, as with many things and many disciplines, reliably engineering discipline's gone through some major chapters in its life, major phases. And the one that's really happening right now and I'm kind of pushing and trailblazing in because I've experienced it in a lot of different industries is the idea of how leadership can do things different. By leadership I mean the executives can do things different to ensure that all the reliability tools and process and product development process are efficient. Some of the history of the reliability and the part that's not of interest to your audiences is, originally, really the origin of it were very just deep statistical mathematical. That was very much at the core. And it was a bunch of people that went off in a corner, the type of people who didn't like talking to people or being hugged, they go off in their corner and just do their math blissfully and come back and help use it to guide some of the product development decisions.
And then the next phase with some more advanced testing techniques that were in the design process, then one of the big surges, and this is back in the 1990s, was what's called design for reliability. And it came out of the whole DFX initiative. DFX is designed for X meaning that when you're designing you consider other factors. So it could be designed for manufacturing, include manufacturing needs in design right off the bat. Cost, and designed for reliability was about including the bigger design teams in the reliability process. And it really, at that point, surged. That's when, all of a sudden, you saw the reliability of products explode. You went from having to fix your car, you know every Saturday you expected your dad to be out there fixing his car in the sixties or seventies to where in the nineties or 2000s, you were angry if your car had an issue once a year. And that was because of that kind of thing, DFR.
And so through my career, I've built whole reliability organizations in different industries from the inside as a director level and now as a consultant, seeing a lot of companies at a high rate. I've seen the challenges of how executives knowingly undermine how products, applying that toolkit and having it be successful in product development. So through that time, I've started to really root cause those issues and even develop toolkits that now executives are using that seem to have a really big difference. So now it's the people and the behavior and culture, which is the core beliefs and how they direct what you do. And the interesting thing here is I noticed that a lot of time when product development programs start and the objective is to get X market share and X profit and these things, they actually do a pretty good job of figuring out how in product development these things should be balanced.
The problem is, it gets lost there. And that balance and those elements don't continue to guide decisions throughout the program. And a lot of decisions happen in a program, schedule pressures, cost pressures, features change, R & D can't make this, or R & D invented that. And those elements, those beliefs are a part of shaping the original objective are not considered any longer. So you easily go off the rails and end up in areas you didn't know. And yeah, so it ended up becoming a book. My first book was about all the tools for the engineers. And then this one, at some point I was like, there is a whole book here.
SKOT WALDRON:
Very cool. I have a very important question to ask though, do you like being hugged, Adam?
ADAM BAHRET:
Yeah. You can tell I'm a social, I'm a very weird engineer.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah. You are. You are. I did not expect to have an interview with an engineer that would be so dynamic. Right?
ADAM BAHRET:
That's a thing, I'm different. Right. So those guys came in and bought all the math and I'm like, what about the people? And so-
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah.
ADAM BAHRET:
So now I'm trailblazing.
SKOT WALDRON:
People matter? What?
ADAM BAHRET:
What about the people? Yeah. So yes, I'm the huggy reliability engineer, thus reliability culture.
SKOT WALDRON:
Very cool. I love it. So leaders, executive teams, they're like, Hey we need to bring in this guy. We need to bring in this guy to help our design teams and understand reliability and all these other things. Right? So they bring you in because the design team's the problem. They've got the issue. They need the help. And then you come in and you start seeing some other things happening. Right? So, tell me about that dynamic.
ADAM BAHRET:
Absolutely. Yeah. So, I see it at a much more rapid rate now as a consultant. I've been doing consulting now for almost 10 years. And it's exactly like you said, there's executives who are like, how come we keep designing these, we have all these smart people and technology, and we're investing a ton of money and we keep releasing these products and they have these high warranty rates and angry customers. And then we're frantically firefighting trying to make a better, instead of designing our next generation product, we're trying to fix this one. And why is that keep happening? And our design process and our design teams aren't doing it right. And they'll bring in somebody like me and I engage with them. And I start to help with that and how you can do a better. But usually at the same time, as I'm pulling off the onion layers and fixing, I'm like, oh man, these executives don't realize that they are undermining these initiatives that are so important to them.
And the analogy I always make is it's like somebody's kids misbehaving and you bring them to a therapist and the child's therapist is like, you guys might want to think about marriage counseling as well. There's some other elements here. And, I have moments, I even put them in the book, where I had a senior VP, it was a very, very large company, well-known name and this was with robotics and some very complex technology that was being pushed very fast, is a real game changer and it's exactly that scenario. He brought me in to help his teams and worked with them and when I ended up helping them build a department before I left, after about two years of engagement but he always had these questions, he's like, how come I go around and I want these testing programs and these things aren't happening the way they are. I'm not getting the integration I want.
And I was engaging at that time with four teams, one was in Germany and there were three in the United States spread around the US and I was coordinating with all of them, but there was consistent behaviors of how they were acting. He was like, why is this happening? And it wasn't until the program really concluded and he and I would still meet for on occasion and I finally really explained it to him how it was him and things he was doing. And I'll never forget he just kind of got frozen for a second. I watched the click. It almost was like a click. He just kind of looked off for a good couple seconds, which is a long period of time when you're in conversation and then he came back and he was like, Hmm, maybe, maybe. So, I saw that moment where he was like, oh my God, it's me. He realized that the thing he wanted more than anything and his job depended on and everything, he was going around and accidentally undoing it. So, yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
Whoops.
ADAM BAHRET:
Whoops.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah. Yeah. And that takes a lot of humility and I guess self-awareness. Right? To understand the things that are happening and sometimes it takes an outside person to come in and help make you aware of those things. So when you're talking about leadership undermining reliability, and give me an example, how are they doing that?
ADAM BAHRET:
Absolutely. Yeah. So here's a common one. When you start out with, Hey, we're going to make this new product. You're XYZ tech company and you see a market and it might be a market you're in, or you're not in. And you look to say, okay, I think we can grab 30% market share with this technology. The guys in the back have been inventing this thing that will add Bluetooth and take it to the next level when Bluetooth was a big deal. And I think if we sell it for this cost point, these features, the cost to reliability balance, this reliability target. Think about when you purchased cars. Right? I mean if you buy an $18,000 car, you're willing to compromise reliability for cost point, but you buy an $80,000 Lexis, you kind of have some expectations that are different. So you have to balance all these things. And they're all part of really the full product's identity and how it represents on the market compared to everything else.
They carefully figure all that out. This is what they do. So then they kick off the program and they have this beautiful balance they've made of these key factors. And they then give the individual goals to individual people on the team. So they tell the project manager, this is the schedule you're going to stick to and if you miss this schedule, you're on the street. They make it very personal. You're not getting that bonus, like real, food on the table, kind of stuff. Right? It's not an abstract thing, or getting a pat on the back. It's like your job, your paycheck. So the project manager is like, oh my God, this thing has to be on time. Right? Then the R & D guys, that thing you said you invented, it better be ready to go in the product by this date. And to them, that's getting that promotion, that's all these things. And so they break the goals down by discipline. So what happens? Well, it's a gladiator scene at that point. Right?
So you get middle of the program and the design engineers need more time for that thing they're inventing because they don't want to be in trouble. The project managers like, you're not getting more time. And every meeting is just these fights. Everybody with their individual goals fighting to win. And when you have fights, you always have a winner. It's not because they're right, maybe they just have more pull or leverage at that point in time. So you can see that this careful balance that was created is no longer guiding program decisions. And for reliability, we're hypersensitive to that. The reason is, we come into those fights at an insane disadvantage. How can we make it a case when our return on investment is so much farther out than everybody else's?
So for the guys making the argument of needing time and money for developing a new feature, they're going to return on that in a period of months or obviously before the product leaves, time to market, you're going to get that return. Reliability, it's not till a year or two after you find out that you're at a 10% failure rate or something when you stole from our testing program or our time. So we have a hard time, a really hard time, in those negotiations and lose in the arena. Okay. So what happens? So the product goes out on time and it has the feature and all the reliability testing got canceled, cut short, ignored let's say. The project manager gets their bonus. Right? They did great. The R & D engineers, they got that promotion. Right? They did great. And the product goes out the door. And with the way product development cycles work now a lot of those people then go onto the new project. Right? There's a new next generation product and they actually are not even on that program anymore.
So then fast forward six months, a year, and the failure rates start going up and up and up because we skipped all that reliability testing. And the CEO is, everybody's freaking out at this the point. They're like we're not only going to not do good in this market, we're ruining our brand. And first thing they do is they pull together our tiger team, which is a cute name they give to, they have to pull together everybody and they put their full energy into it. So they pull back those engineers from the new program that were on it before or the project manager, all these people who were in it are the only people who can save the day. They're the heroes. Right? So these people come back and they're the heroes and they get tons of face time with executives. Right? They get pulled into the executive steering meeting because that's the only thing anybody cares about. And they solve these problems. And then there's a banner and a cake. So what's happened?
This executive who cares nothing more about that product balance, making sure it has good market share has incentivized people to violate that balance as much as possible and win just for their one goal and then rewards them a second time when they come in and fix their own problems. And then is left holding the bag for developing products as a CEO, CTO, CFO, or whatever, they were left holding the bag of these horrible products. And they have no idea that if I as a reliability engineer am passionate about it, if you made me a project manager, I'd be like screw reliability, I want to keep my job. Right? That's what they've created to where people who even want to do the right thing are like, I can't afford to do the right thing. And they did it. And they have no idea that's what they did.
So you can imagine how once that clicked, you're like, oh my God.
SKOT WALDRON:
Wow. Yes. I mean, and you can see that, I guess, with a lot of different industries and yours in particular. I hope that people can apply that to their industry. I don't care what industry it is. Right? Of the quality control or the things that go out afterwards to make sure that that represents our brand well. And it's building good rapport with our customers and our clients and that all starts on the inside. Right. You're talking about developing culture and developing people, helping them feel bought in and valued and heard and understood and collaborating so that we can create a product that goes out that helps us all win. Right. As opposed to just the product guys win or just the design team won or whatever. Right. So I think that's really, really important. So what is the answer? What are those leaders to do instead?
ADAM BAHRET:
Yep. So those are a lot of the tools that I've developed that are in the book that I've worked with leaders and seeing really good results. And a lot of the methodology I called the bounding methodology. And there's a lot of specific tools in there. But the basic idea is this, that all that hard work they did figuring out the right balance between all those goals, like home product factors often, they've done so much hard work backing out, starting with market share, and then profit and then, okay, what time to market and all of these things. Simply ensuring that you have mechanisms that make sure when program decisions are happening throughout the program, those are always bounding the decisions. That's why I call it the bounding methodology. Right. When you're trying to figure out what to do, sometimes the right thing to do is skip a reliability test. That is the right thing to do because time to market's everything. Right.
If you're selling a product that's a Christmas present, there is no point releasing it after Thanksgiving. Right? It doesn't matter. It really is worth compromising this or taking out that feature or whatever to get it there on time. You know? And other times if you're making the Mars Rover, you know what there's no service calls so it's better having it be a five-year extra development time to make sure it's perfect. Right. Reliability should win. You know? So whatever those balances are, they're guiding your decisions the whole time. That's pretty much a big part of the fundamental principle and I describe a lot of tools that can help with that.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. Very cool. Talk about the intention versus actions. You talk about that as well. Expand on that idea of how we use intention and how that's reflected through our actions and how that has an impact on us as leaders and on what we deliver.
ADAM BAHRET:
Yeah. Yeah. I use the word intent so much people started calling it Adam's I word, because a lot of times people ask me a question and I'm like, so what's the intent? I'll tell them, what you just said makes no sense to me. It has zero value. And they think they've said something profound. And then I'm like, well what's the intent of it. And then it unravels because that's not there. And so the idea with the intent is always connecting what you're doing, and this is to some degree a little bit of a bounding thing too. If you keep in mind the intent of what you're doing as you're executing something, you're going to always make sure that it's on target to get the maximum value of why you did it. So without that, it's very easy to get lost. And sometimes getting lost can start with something as simple as language. I mean, you can just make mistakes in language that can accidentally get you off your intent.
Almost like playing the telephone game with yourself. Right. I mean the telephone game is saying a single word, right? We all have done that game. And you can see how you can lose whatever the definition was, which would be the intent. So by keeping that in focus and always asking that question, it's a very different outcome. So the funny thing is, it's almost like that trick therapist used to play. The last word you said, you're like, well, I remember being on the farm. They're like farm? And you explain about that.
SKOT WALDRON:
I'm going to use that now. I'm going to use that. That's really good.
ADAM BAHRET:
They did nothing but say the last word back to you as a question, like really? Sometimes I'm getting paid a lot of money to just be like, is that the intent? And they're like, that was great. I'm like, sure. All right. Yeah, fine.
SKOT WALDRON:
You just made us all a lot richer because that's all we need to do is us the last word, put a question mark on it. And they're like this guy is so strategic.
ADAM BAHRET:
God, he's so insightful.
SKOT WALDRON:
So deep. So deep.
ADAM BAHRET:
Really gets me.
SKOT WALDRON:
So deep. Is that what your book is, your chapter titles have question marks at the end of the them?
ADAM BAHRET:
Yeah. And the great thing is I'd beat that book. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.
SKOT WALDRON:
So smart. That's really, really good. And you obviously have a lot of value to bring, not only to the reliability engineering field, but really just us as leaders what we need to take from this and your knowledge and expertise. So you offered a free guide to some of the listeners right now. And what is that and how can they get their hands on that?
ADAM BAHRET:
Yeah, absolutely. I created a guide of some of the key points for reliability culture. And I guess you'll have a link. You'll do a link within your thing. Yeah. So with that link, you can request it and you'll receive that guide, kind of like a pocket guide for some of these principles that can make a big difference in how leaders lead.
SKOT WALDRON:
Very cool. Well, good luck with the book. Super excited for you. It's your second book now. And it's out now. Where can everybody get ahold of that?
ADAM BAHRET:
On Amazon like everything else.
SKOT WALDRON:
Nice. Right. And Amazon is the place to go. You are number one on Amazon in a category there. And so fantastic. Lot of luck to you and everything you're doing. If anybody wants to get in touch with you, how can they do that?
ADAM BAHRET:
My firm is Apex Ridge, A P E X R I D G E. They can go to apexridge.com. My name is spelled uniquely so you can just start from my name and you'll get me. Bahret B A H R E T. Anybody can feel free to reach out and connect with me any time.
SKOT WALDRON:
Very cool. And I will say, yes, you have a very engineer brain, but you have a very creative out of the box engineer brain. And if people just go to your website and watch you drive a sports car and teach us while you're doing it, they will get an idea of what you have to offer. So I appreciate you being here Adam, and good luck with everything, man.
ADAM BAHRET:
Thank you. Good to talk to you.
SKOT WALDRON:
So we'll warn you, do not be one of those leaders that brings in a consultant to fix everybody else only to realize that maybe it's a little bit you, maybe you are a little bit of the problem and you need just a little bit of a kick to understand that. Now granted, we can bring in that person still help those processes but we need you to work on yourself as well. So the kids can get the counseling, but also do your marriage counseling. Right? Let's help the whole family. Leadership undermines reliability because they put teams up against each other. It doesn't breed health. It doesn't help each other feel more collaborative. It doesn't help that team thrive in that environment in which they need to, therefore the product will end up suffering and the brand ends up suffering. And that's what we want to prevent. Talking about intent. Right? What is the intent? What is the intent of what you're trying to do, of what you're trying to accomplish?
The vision, the values, making sure those are all intertwined into what you're doing as a team is going to be crucial to the success, not only of that product, but your company as a whole. Thank you Adam, for being on the show. Good luck with your book. If y'all want to find out more information about me, you can go to skotwaldron.com and you can see more my interviews. You can see also some free tools on there. If you want to go to my YouTube channel, subscribe, like, share, comment, do all those things. And I would really appreciate it. So thanks everybody for being here. And I will see you next time on another episode of Unlocked.
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