Thank you to all of you who attended the Technolink Spring 2018
Presidents' Club Forum!
Our panelists were invited to ponder this year’s theme, “The
Transformational Shift in Business and the Workplace.” Our visionary panelists
were Steven Peterson of P2S Inc., Kevin McDonald of Alvaka Networks,
Carrie Spiker of The
Boeing Company, David Gallagher of Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Heather Lord of Northrop Grumman Corporation and Gregg
Profozich of CMTC.
We asked our visionary panelists to consider and reflect upon the major shifts they are experiencing, the challenges they present, and their thoughts and advice for the future.
And the future is bright. In the words of Gregg Profozich of CMTC, “Technological innovation hasn’t stopped. What’s coming out of Silicon Valley, what’s coming out of here, what’s coming out of San Diego, in terms of new technologies and medical devices, software and IT, is amazing.”
Our panelists -- representative of diverse industries -- shared similar challenges. While placing value in human capital is vital, there was a realization that, now more than ever, companies –- whether they be big or small –- are connected and rely on each other to truly thrive.
We asked our visionary panelists to consider and reflect upon the major shifts they are experiencing, the challenges they present, and their thoughts and advice for the future.
And the future is bright. In the words of Gregg Profozich of CMTC, “Technological innovation hasn’t stopped. What’s coming out of Silicon Valley, what’s coming out of here, what’s coming out of San Diego, in terms of new technologies and medical devices, software and IT, is amazing.”
Our panelists -- representative of diverse industries -- shared similar challenges. While placing value in human capital is vital, there was a realization that, now more than ever, companies –- whether they be big or small –- are connected and rely on each other to truly thrive.
TO VIEW A CURATED SLIDESHOW OF THE TECHNOLINK SPRING 2018 FORUM,
No matter the industry, the largest challenge is how to retain
one’s hires and how to bridge the generational gap. How to attract and retain
the easily distracted millennial, in particular, who is prone to
“lily-padding,” or leaving a company to gain experience elsewhere in a short
amount of time? “In Boeing,” says Carrie Spiker, “we have very
different organizations and it keeps me engaged and excited about our projects
–- and excited about the innovation we are doing because it’s always
different every couple of years or so.” However, Kevin McDonald of Alvaka
Networks points out that small companies are having a hard time retaining
employees without the same resources as big companies. “Millennials are like
frogs, they jump and…won’t stay very long. Part of the challenge for small
business is that, if you don’t have as broad a footprint as a bigger company
to allow them to move internally, you train them in something, they post their
new certification on Linkedin and in 48 hours they're poached.”
Steven Peterson offered that P2S Inc., although a smaller company, is
adapting to the different patterns of learning of the younger generation. “We
tell our interns and our new hires from the first month they are with the
company that there are a lot of teams here that you can get involved with
besides engineering. We encourage them to reach out to those individuals
because we want to see them get involved in as many places as they can. I think
a lot of the younger interns and new hires don’t want to have one task they can
do for eight hours. They want to be involved in as many things as possible.”
Peterson reports success in hiring interns at the end of the summer with this
approach. David Gallagher of JPL also shared that some very innovative ideas
come from their interns because, “some of them aren’t yet smart enough to
know they can’t do something, so they push out in an area and it may not end up
exactly where she started or he started, but it winds up being a brilliant
idea.”
We learned from Heather Lord that Northrop Grumman has a unique
approach to keeping their middle workers engaged and passionate. “One of the
things that Northrop has that I think is really critical to maintaining the
middle work force is a fabrication laboratory. People can go during their
breaks, after hours, on the weekends, and create. They can 3-D print something
they are working on either at work or at home. They have paint canvases and
sewing machines, so it’s essentially an area where people can go and create. I
think that is critical to maintaining the culture at Northrop because there are
a lot of programs to maintain and motivate them.” Clearly, Northrop Grumman
creates a culture and environment where people want to stay.
Another transformational shift that presents complexities and
challenges across the board is that of cyber security in the workplace. A
big challenge is communicating the importance of protecting intellectual
property internally and externally through training and awareness. Big
companies rely on small companies in their supply chain and demand that they
comply with more and more costly security demands in order to deliver projects
and products safely. Some of the smaller companies are struggling to keep
up. Explains Gregg Profozich, “A small manufacturer is good at making the thing
he makes. That IT stuff came along after he started making what he makes. So,
that mindset, that transformation, hasn’t necessarily happened yet. ‘I
just got a 3-D data package from Boeing that I have to make this project on and
it needs to be secure because they keep spending millions to keep it secure,
but I’m the weak link and what does that mean?’”
Carrie Spiker of the Boeing Company replied, “It doesn’t matter
how small you are. These security requirements are going to get flowed all the
way down to the smallest company and I know it’s harder to implement these
types of things when you don’t have the resources, but that’s the only way we
can secure our data. I mean if other countries and whatnot are going to hack into
these networks to steal our designs, we have to make sure it’s protected from
all areas.”
Finally, the panelists shared that a key success of navigating
these times is to continuously urge employees to look for and consider new
revenue streams beyond the norm, beyond what one would have considered before.
Innovation also means a willingness to try new approaches, and often times,
it’s the younger generations arriving in the workforce who are infusing it with
new ideas. “We learn a lot from the students coming out of college,” says
Heather Lord. “They are the ones doing their college projects using AI and VR
and we should be open to their view and ideas because they can teach us a lot.”
Although the concern was raised that AI and VR might replace jobs, the panel
expressed that there is still a great deal of discomfort with that from an
ethical point of view. Gregg Profozich of CMTC offered the
following: “Technology creates new jobs that we can’t envision right now.
So we are sitting here and we can see what is going to be replaced, but we
can’t see what’s going to be necessary because of what is going to be
replaced.” STEM, for example, continues to be an important funnel in education
for the future.
Ultimately, innovation and technology is successful due to the
integrity of your hires. Our human connection is what keeps us happy and
creative in the workplace and a step ahead of security breaches. And, while no
one is able to forsee the future, we have proven throughout history our ability
as a population to adapt with each evolution. In the words of Carrie Spiker of
The Boeing Company (a company that has weathered many a shift in its 100+
years), “We’ve got the crystal ball. We have 12 of them. We don’t know which
one is right. Is it one of them? Is it a bunch of them? We’ve got them all
going in parallel. And we are going to keep that flexibility up.”
We are pleased to share Kevin Smith's spotlight on our event
in the Pasadena Star News: "Spacecraft buses? Monetized payloads? Experts speak to
seismic shifts in business and the workplace."