CÆDENCE Consulting LLC

The CAEDENCE team was excited to deliver a virtual talk to the students of both The Johns Hopkins University and Cornell University last Monday, 29-April. "Navigating the Technical Interview“ reveals the inner thoughts of interviewers and explains how students can use that insight to best prepare and present themselves. JHU’s Mark Savage, Associate Director, Life Design Lab who organized the event said, “Andy and Eric’s talk revealed the purpose and structure of technical interviews and provided the students with a roadmap to successfully navigate them. They offered a clear, concise, step-by-step approach the students can use to prepare for technical interviews. Craig Alan Jones, M.Eng. Career Advisor, who coordinated the event for Cornell added, “I’ve been working in Career Services for 21 years and found Andy and Eric’s presentation very informative. They shared valuable information from the employer / recruiter perspective. I’m looking forward to applying what I learned when coaching students for their interviews. Thank you!” “It’s rewarding to ‘pay it forward’ and help reduce the students’ stress around the interview process, especially considering the amount of stress I’ve caused interviewing students over the years!” remarked CAEDENCE’s Andy Willner, P.E. And CAEDENCE Managing Director Eric Reidemeister commented, “Helping graduating students prepare for their careers is a great opportunity to share my experiences and support the universities.” When they’re not volunteering to help students, CAEDENCE’s team leads issue resolution & prevention for companies and their supply chains, solving problems hands-on in: customer satisfaction, product development, launch readiness, quality and manufacturing, business processes, and strategic initiative rollouts. Additionally, CAEDENCE offers novel business and technical skills development workshops and leadership coaching. #engineeringmangement #careerdevelopment #leadershipdevelopment #professionaldevelopment #caedenceconsulting #students #Cornell #JohnsHopkins

Last week we challenged you to “Decide if your company really wants to improve quality!” This week we’ll reveal how a company can de-emphasize quality without even realizing, and what to do about it. After 14 years managing corporate quality, I moved to a role with P&L responsibility and realized that quality is viewed very differently from “the business side”. Before, I was dedicated to making quality improvements and achieving 100% customer satisfaction, an uphill battle of incremental improvements requiring constant pushing & aligning of functional teams. Suddenly, running a multi-million dollar business unit, the priorities were revenue growth & profit margin. Quality was rarely a topic of management meetings and metrics lacked quality improvement goals. It was as if leadership was saying “Quality’s not that important”.   Upper management talked about quality not as a growth enabler or savings opportunity but as an area to quietly manage. To them, quality was about maintaining & reacting, not driving improvement. Discussions were about inspection costs, customer pain, slow root cause investigations, and irritating documentation – always negative aspects. “Don’t distract engineering - go handle it” was the unspoken (and at times spoken) sentiment for the Quality team. Peers in other groups didn’t want to work on quality issues, and who could blame them? - painful interactions with angry customers, torturous audits, and action items outside your expertise. Quality was viewed as a drain of time, energy, & money. Leaders without quality background were even more likely to diminish its importance. We had to make an extraordinary effort to regain our quality focus, driving several strategic and tactical changes to turn things around:   • Holding an off-site leadership meeting to review quality performance and set short- and long-term goals • Aligning with upper management to own quality performance metrics • Implementing corporate-level quality KPIs & setting quality KPIs for all functional groups • Assigning each top-level functional manager to own a key customer’s experience and scorecard • Training engineering to understand the impact of design choices • Adding quality resources for each product life cycle phase (not just to create documentation and clean up emergencies) • Cross-pollinating engineers into quality roles – a great way to generate ownership of quality and develop fresh ideas • Proactive, planned, annual customer visits • Tracking COPQ (cost of poor quality), COPE (cost of poor engineering), COPPM (cost of poor project management) & making those impacts visible   These are just a few of the steps needed to make strides in quality performance. CAEDENCE can help you develop your plan to shift from de-emphasizing quality to putting it in its rightful place as a pillar of a successful business, on equal footing with other top business priorities.   #leadershipdevelopment #worldclassquality #qualitymanagement #CaedenceConsulting

You may think that your company’s mission statement highlighting ‘exceeding customer expectations’ and ‘striving for world-class quality’ was defining the company’s actual priorities. Wrong! Quality performance has historically been a major differentiator in a company’s sales and customer satisfaction, and for many decades took a lot of attention from top management to achieve. As quality has improved over time, high quality is no longer a customer delighter but now only “table stakes” to maintain market position. Quality performance becomes visible only when you fail. Companies have fallen into a trap – the have put their quality system on ‘cruise control’. This puts them at high risk. When you look “behind the curtain”, things are often quite different than company priority statements. Look at monthly management review agendas. Is quality near the top? Likely not. Look at the Key Process Indicators (KPIs) and other high-level metrics. Do you see more than token quality measures, or any quality measures at all? Often not! If you do see quality performance represented high in management agendas and prominently among KPI’s, congratulations - you work for a quality-focused company. If you don’t, a higher priority is front and center for top leadership. Financial performance, shareholder value, and/or top-line growth are the priorities of most companies. (Those outcomes keep a company alive, so this should not be a surprise.) That said, a company without the dedication and a robust system to achieve world class quality can easily fail! For long-term success, it is imperative to set up a system that pushes quality performance to ever-higher levels. However, quality is often a secondary (or lower) priority that most top leadership want “handled” (by someone else). Leadership setting goals for the quality group doesn’t imply quality is a top priority; it may be just a side activity to handle the mess called “quality”. The difference between “quality on cruise control” vs. “quality truly prioritized” is easy to spot. Your company is REALLY prioritizing quality when you see: • The top-level company priorities and measures include quality performance • A clear quality improvement plan is visible to all employees • Management is proactively monitoring quality performance with KPIs • Management is swiftly addressing quality excursions (internal & external) • Resources are added to address quality, not just financial performance • Problems are not only fixed, but the deficient systems behind them are corrected • Quality performance is visible to the entire company If you don’t see nearly all these things, your company is at risk. A competitor who is truly quality focused will “eat your lunch”. There are ways to combat this. CӔDENCE can help you push through the roadblocks to establish a thriving quality system and achieve world-class quality. #leadershipdevelopment #worldclassquality #qualitymanagement #CaedenceConsulting

MARK YOUR CALENDAR! This Thursday (for the 3rd year running) IEEE Providence Section is hosting a talk loaded with practical tips for aspiring engineers of all specialties. Successful colleagues shared with us the high-impact skills they learned the hard way in their first few years on the job. Guest speaker Andy Willner, P.E. of CÆDENCE Consulting LLC will share their insights with you! This event was organized by Howard Michel and Anthony Ruocco of IEEE Providence Section. IEEE vTools Event Link: https://lnkd.in/gdH3BQwp WHEN: Thursday, April 18 · 5:00 – 6:00pm EDT WHERE: https://lnkd.in/du8vk2ZQ Zoom Meeting ID: 996 2795 8889, Passcode: 427040 #RWU #Umass Dartmouth #WPI #Northeastern #engineeringmanagement #leadershipdevelopment #careerdevelopment #CaedenceConsulting #IEEE #ri #professionaldevelopment #careerdevelopment #students

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CÆDENCE’s Andy Willner, P.E. participated in The Life Design Lab at Homewood - Johns Hopkins University’s “Jobs for Jays” event last week, helping students wanting to learn more about interviewing and life as a professional. “Jess Harlee, Kara Hunter, and their team at The Johns Hopkins University set up a well organized and highly interactive virtual meet & greet. I’m happy to have been able to share a few insights with the students as they get ready to begin their career journeys.”, said Andy He also commented, “For job seekers, reviewing a company’s website or LinkedIn posts (and, of course, the job description) ahead of an interview can go a long way toward signaling that you’re really interested by providing material for deeper questions than many other candidates might be asking.” #JohnsHopkins #engineeringmanagement #leadershipdevelopment #careerdevelopment #CaedenceConsulting

Let IEEE and CÆDENCE give your career a leg up! Whether you’re in electrical, mechanical, computer, systems, quality, or any other engineering discipline, if you’re new to the workforce or soon will be, you won’t want miss this webinar! (No need to be an IEEE member to attend.) For the 3rd year running, IEEE Providence Section is hosting an engaging virtual talk full of practical tips that aspiring engineers of all specialties can apply immediately to stand out from the crowd and accelerate their career growth. Successful colleagues shared with us the high-impact skills they learned the hard way in their first few years on the job. Their insights form the core of this must-see talk for aspiring professionals! The guest speaker is Andy Willner, P.E., Managing Director of CÆDENCE Consulting LLC. His team engages directly with clients’ teams to resolve pressing issues and offers business and technical skills workshops & coaching to drive sustainable improvements. Andy honed his expertise in developing engineering talent over a career leading successful new product development teams at Texas Instruments and Sensata Technologies. He has degrees from Cornell University, Binghamton University, and National Technological University. Andy has 8 patents and is a Massachusetts registered professional engineer. Thanks to Howard Michel and Anthony Ruocco of IEEE Providence Section for organizing. WHEN: Thursday, April 18 · 5:00 – 6:00pm WHERE: Zoom: https://lnkd.in/du8vk2ZQ https://lnkd.in/gdH3BQwp #RWU #Umass Dartmouth #WPI #Northeastern #engineeringmanagement #leadershipdevelopment #careerdevelopment #CaedenceConsulting #IEEE #ri #professionaldevelopment #students

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Remote work - you love it for the flexibility, convenience, and time & cost savings, but have you thought about the longer term impact it's having on your career advancement? Traditionally, the skills you need to grow your career were transmitted by informal mentoring during daily face-to-face interactions with managers and colleagues. Skills development and influencing happened in offices, in the cafeteria, and during chance meetings in the hallway. As we all know, the world has changed. Working from home several days per week (or working in a different city from your teammates) means that the traditional informal mentoring system has broken down. Face to face interactions are far less frequent and spontaneously bumping into someone is even rarer. That way of expanding skills and influence simply doesn't exist anymore. So how should you deal with this problem? The first thing is to actively cultivate a mentor-protégé relationship with your manager or a senior colleague. (Or if you’re a manager, facilitate these relationships among others.) When seeking a mentor, many people focus first on “what do they know”, but we find it’s ultimately more beneficial to focus on “do I trust them enough to open up and be candid about my concerns?”. (If you’re a manager matching mentors with protégés, weight the interpersonal chemistry between the people higher than their specific skillsets.) Also, don’t expect your mentor to set meetings, establish agendas, or otherwise “drive” progress – that’s the protégé’s responsibility. Mentors are busy with their day jobs, and they’re already carving out time to guide you. Setting logistics and focus areas is up to you. If you can’t find the right match with an internal mentor, or if you’ve exhausted their expertise (or as a manager if you just don’t have enough senior people to serve as mentors), consider getting some outside help to fill the gap. CAEDENCE provides experienced, high performing engineering and business leaders to mentor and coach up-and-coming high potential leaders. Our leadership development program, "Lead On!™", is offered in affordable 3-month blocks. Based on our proprietary assessment tool, each participant receives a customized experience. We coach, setting high expectations and driving performance improvement and we mentor, developing leadership and management skills and drawing on our extensive catalog of workshop materials. Packages are available suitable for companies or individuals in one-on-one or group formats. We are now accepting candidates for the next wave. DM us for more information. #teamwork #leadershipdevelopment #careerdevelopment #CaedenceConsulting

Making a customer presentation requires significant planning and coordination. Your team will need to address the following questions and actions: • What is the reason for meeting? • What topics will be discussed? • What information is required? • Collect relevant info. • Analyze information & draw conclusions. • Organize storyline. • Integrate materials. • Iterate and finalize. • Fine tune presentation. Commonly missed areas that are critical to success include: • Agreeing on the agenda with the internal team. • Agreeing on the agenda with the customer to set expectations prior to the meeting. • Team members taking ownership of their contributions to the overall deck. • Incomplete, confusing, or missing Journey Map™ • Providing the deck to the customer 1 day prior to the meeting. Have a critical customer product development or issue resolution meeting coming up? We’re here to help your team prepare, leveraging the proven techniques and toolkit we’ve developed over decades working with the toughest customers in the most demanding industries. #engineeringmanagement #leadershipdevelopment #careerdevelopment #CaedenceConsulting