Bridging the Gap: Navigating Conflicts Between Engineers and Business Professionals

[Music] in every company there are two types of people those who make stuff and those

who sell stuff and these two groups clash regularly in one corner you've got the software developers the architects

the graphic designers with great technical skills but who are often so deep in their own world that they avoid

everything else and in the other corner you've got these salespeople the visionaries the marketers who strategize

disrupting entire industries but need to work with a techie to make it happen today I want to talk about the most

common frustrations when those who design and those who dream come together and to do so I'm going to use business

versus engineering as the example having worked in startups over the past four years I've seen engineers and business

people go at it in nearly every organization you can imagine and few professions managed to clash in just

about every way from different values and personalities to different goals and interests and even if you're not an

engineer or businessperson you'll find that the stories and advice I'm about to share are relevant for anyone in today's

tech driven entrepreneurial workplace so let's say you are a business person or an engineer and you've just come out of

a heated debate with your lesser half the first thing you should do is read out your frustrations besides relieving

us of our emotions writing out our frustrations helps pinpoint the things that drive us crazy and so here are some

things that you might find familiar about once every couple weeks an engineer friend in a start-up will tell

me a story like this Jeremy I don't know what to do last week I was coding when all of a sudden

someone's home from marketing barges in to tell me she's got a great new product idea that was kind

in the zone but I figured hey she's already interrupted and you know she looks pretty excited but then she starts

talking about how AI is a big deal and she asks if I could do some deep learning AI to mine bitcoins from

asteroids so I tried to explain what Bitcoin mining really is and I asked why exactly do we need to use AI - what she

says well you know because everyone is but you know you're you're an engineer you're smart you can figure it out and

then a few days later one of my friends in marketing will come up to me and say something like this Jeremy I don't know

what to do last week I thought of a great product feature that would sell really well so I

went to our software lead to get his thoughts but before I could even finish explaining he had already begun his

usual barrage of no no no no no that's that's completely wrong you can't do that you know you're thinking of

something else you know this guy loves to argue with me he loves to critique my ideas but he never tells me what's good

or how to take things forward the only thing that this guy can carry a conversation about is the boring

debugging work that he's always doing and after enough of these encounters you start to see certain patterns repeating

themselves debates over analysis versus action engineers wanting more data business people wanting to move quickly

debates over social interaction engineers huddling to themselves and business people eager to meet new faces

debates over how time is spent engineers staring at the same lines of code day in day out and business people having lunch

meetings on the company dime but not all engineers and not all businesspeople are the same and as an

outsider it's easy to generalize and misconceive things that frustrate us so whatever is on your mind no judgment

just write it out and that brings us to step 2 imagine happening their job in other words understanding how the nature

of their job forces them to be the way that they are part of me gets a little anxious every time I go up to one of my

technical friends and I ask them what does the sales team do a typical response might be to sell product or

dead revenue and although these things are true they don't tell us what it's like to be in sales maybe there was a

time decades ago when the typical customer had various responsibilities but they could still afford to sit down

with the salesperson and have a nice chat a time when the typical customer was knowledgeable about most things and

wanted to know the product inside out that is what most engineers think sales meetings are about seeing the customer

as they see themselves swooning when they hear all of the appealing features but times have changed today

potential customers like you or me or businesses are living in a world that's already filled with all kinds of

competitors and distractions and other work products and people come and go and that's just how it is now as we just

McKenna points out in the introduction to the book crossing the chasm is no longer about promoting products it's

about building relationships we live in an age of choice we're bombarded by new technologies every week and it is strong

relationships that buffer the shock of change not product features that will be obsolete by next week so the next time

we see our business colleagues out in dinner meetings or sounding interested in everything that everyone seems to be

doing it's too easy to think they're just being superficial we're all busy these days and it takes extraordinary

listening and persuasive skills to can then someone that not only do you have a great product but that you can be a

trusted partner moving forward and when the sales team hurriedly rushes back to the engineers to tell them what to build

next it's important to pay attention they may jump to using the wrong word they forget to justify why they need

certain things but fundamentally they act as our eyes and ears in the real world and that's data worth processing

now it's also interesting to ask the business team what they see is the purpose of the engineers and if you were

to guess building products or solving problems that too would make for a shrew but incomplete answer very frequently I

have a certain type of conversation with a self-proclaimed visionary who wants a technical opinion on something and it

usually begins with them evangelizing their cool new idea and then partly through the conversation I'll ask a

question about some feature and working in the aerospace industry one question that I very commonly asked

is how fast will it fly and the business person will reply oh as fast as possible you know time is money for our clients

okay so then like okay so so so I know that to fly fast means you got a carry of a powerful motor or a bigger

propeller except some other design trade-off so ask a question like okay how much would weight and the business

person will apply well as light as possible our competitors are only getting lighter

well inevitably I get around to asking if such and such speed sounds fast enough and they say no and then a

such-and-such weight sounds light up and say well yeah it could be later and unfortunately the conversation

reaches this this dilemma okay would you rather it fly this fast or be this light weight and they'll reply yes

as the saying goes visionaries are easy to sell but tough to please ironically that engineer who was earlier mocked for

their bad social skills now has to embark on the newest exercise of poking and prodding the uncompromising

businessperson to get buy-in on real design requirements if the engineer who ends up defining the opportunity in a

way that can be addressed so for you business minded folks if you're wondering why engineers can seem a

little distanced from the things that you seem so excited about it's probably because they only heard the dream that

engineer knows just how much work is left before that dream becomes a reality and rather than getting frustrated at

how analytical or negative we seem to be it's important to realize that engineers are just doing their job so suffice it

to say that both professions are tough and important business people aren't just selling stuff they're creating

networks and they're letting the engineers know what's needed and engineers aren't just solving problems

they're defining problems in a way that can actually be solved which requires some people's skills but that's about as

far as most of us will go getting our emotions straight and maybe getting some perspective but there is one last

crucial thing that anyone can do to manage conflict better and that is to give and ask for feedback to be sure I'm

not talking about venting or complaining or seeking compliments I'm talking about a compassionate attempt to further

someone's growth and that's someone might be you or the person next to you the reality is that there are so many

battlegrounds for two people to pick a fight and then to walk away thinking they'll never get it and it would be

impossible to cover them all in a single talk but giving an inviting feedback empowers everybody to do two crucial

things to figure out what's working and what's not and more importantly to recognize that conflict is really about

our attitude now of course it isn't easy to admit that we've done something wrong and

people whose opinions carry weight but a simple hey what did you think of my idea or would you mind if I shared my

thoughts on your design or even a Wow you handle that meeting so smoothly can disarm and force others to reconsider

you you know if that engineer builds the wrong thing and maybe instead of blame storming where she went wrong I could

have given more detail to what I wanted or if my manager makes one more ridiculous technical suggestion maybe I

should role model how to give more helpful critique feedback enables us to feel a sense of control in situations

where were otherwise powerless it turns people into individuals into engineers who get business and business people who

can help design now one of the clearest memories I've had when I failed to act on feedback it took place about two

years ago when I had just taken over as the head of the UFC aerospace team a student design Club that builds drones

rockets and satellites when my first tasks was to pitch a longtime sponsor to give us money again and so I thought of

all the things that made our team great the cool designs the ambitious spirit their awards we had won and I put that

all into a presentation and up until this point all the rules I had had within this club were technical and so

as I was rehearsing this presentation a friend of mine had come up to me and said you know Jeremy really shouldn't

focus on all the details you know that sponsor probably cares more about that publicity and whether you have a

charitable business number but I had a resent over the slide deck I had already rehearsed so many times and I figured

you know what I was a person chosen for this role so I shrugged it off

and I lost that sponsor on the day of the presentation I was asked one question do you have a charitable

business number and what's even more embarrassing is that at the time I thought we didn't when it turns out we

did and so I spent the next three months playing catch-up and worrying about my credibility as a new leader and this

case I I got lucky because the finances worked out in the end the friends who gave me the feedback was a friend I said

the person who gave me the feedback was a friend but in most cases we're dealing with coworkers and the consequences can

be disastrous if we fail to ask or to listen and by that point you're probably in denial I want to end by just

acknowledging that humility is the price we pay to be better and that applies to us as individuals as well as to the

teams that we work in the number one reason that people self-report globally for workplace conflict is clashing egos

sure it's tiresome to constantly empathize with different people but we live in an innovation economy and it is

diverse skills and perspectives which enable creativity it isn't acceptable to think that we can get by on stereotypes

or to think that we have nothing to learn from others even when they bother us I kind of lied in the beginning when

I said that there are two types of people in every company in reality there are two types of thinking and today

everybody needs to know a bit about building and a bit about selling to survive thank you

[Applause]