CAEDENCE in the Community

The CAEDENCE team actively supports professional societies and universities. Here are a few highlights from recent months:

Clear and effective communication is at the heart of successful leadership, teamwork, and customer relationships, but it’s often dismissed by engineers as a trivial “soft skill”. In fact, they should view it as a “superpower” enabling them to unlock the true potential of their technical talent. In January, Andy addressed the New England Section of SAE assembled at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston on the topic of influential communication for technical professionals. Wentworth's SAE Baja racing team was well represented in the audience. Andy’s talk left the audience members with practical strategies, tactics, and tips they could apply immediately to their jobs at any level of an organization.

After the event, Greg Green, Chairman of SAE International’s New England Section invited CAEDENCE to speak at an upcoming meeting on “The Automotive Mindset”.

Andy said, "I always like discussing Influential Communication. Combining a topic I'm passionate about with a highly engaged group like SAE made for a really enjoyable event. This nuanced skill is such an essential part of a successful engineering career, and yet it's so often overlooked or downplayed. It was great to interact with so many people who could really appreciate the value and were eager to polish their skills."

In December 2024, Managing Director Andy Willner presented "Do Less, Succeed More!​ - Prioritization and Project Management Fundamentals" to the 99 senior capstone students in the engineering program at University of Vermont.

Keith Epstein, Engineering Capstone Lecturer and Senior Experience in Engineering Design (SEED) Program Director commented, "Andy brought timely and relevant advice to my students about prioritization, project management, and time management. He helped broaden their understanding of how important communication is to engineers, and what it is like to work as an engineer."

Andy said, "It was great speaking for the bright and engaged students at UVM. I really enjoyed sharing the basics of some of the skills we use every day at CAEDENCE to resolve customers' problems. I'm really happy Keith invited me."

While on the UVM campus, Andy also sat down with engineering graduate students to give some career advice. Jane Kimble, Coordinator of Graduate Programs said, "Thank you again for making time for the graduate students yesterday afternoon. You shared many 'gold nuggets' of wisdom.... [about]... being an influential communicator, knowing how to get a team to return a desired result, and structured problem solving.”

CAEDENCE has deep ties to Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPl). It's where Eric studied engineering, and where Andy judged MBA capstone projects in 2022 & 23. In 4Q2024, CAEDENCE sponsored an MBA capstone project. It was a great opportunity to give back and help develop the next generation of technical and business professionals.

Capstone advisor, Professor Ed Gonsalves said, "The capstone students get a lot out of wrestling with real-world business problems. We appreciate all the companies like CAEDENCE who sponsor projects based on their own challenges...and an extra thanks to Andy for connecting me with two excellent judges for the project presentations."

Managing Director Eric Reidemeister said, “As a graduate of WPI, this project holds a special meaning to me. I'm excited to work with outstanding MBA students on some new business strategies."

The CAEDENCE team made a guest speaking appearance and officially launched a novel approach to problem solving (called the Visual 8D™) at the American Society for Quality Rhode Island Section in November 2024.

Communicating effectively is important at all times in business, but perhaps never more so than when things have gone wrong. When quality problems intensify, the customer applies pressure, management gets upset, and emotions run high. Quality and business leaders need to solve problems fast and ensure their customers have a favorable experience in the process​.

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Commonly used problem-solving methods (e.g., 8D, DMAIC, PDCA, etc.) provide structure to drive activity during issue resolution, but these traditional toolkits have a glaring gap – they fail to facilitate clear and timely communication of the critical information needed to maintain customer confidence throughout a crisis.​

Introducing  the Visual 8D™

CAEDENCE has developed a novel improvement to overcome the communication-based shortfalls in existing methods. Applicable to all structured problem-solving approaches, the Visual 8D™ toolkit enables teams to execute the familiar problem-solving steps (with no additional effort), while capturing plans and progress in easy-to-follow diagrams. Visual 8D™ puts teams in the position of providing answers to management and customer questions before being asked, resulting in improved control of stressful situations and minimizing time wasted on extraneous actions.​

Here's a sneak preview:

• The Visual Team Org. Chart:
• Team leader and cross-disciplinary responsibilities made crystal clear
• Team structure clear / contact methods available
• Strengthened team commitment
• Problem Statement Template with visual problem definition tools:
• Drives clarity and buy-in
• Data-driven
• The Containment Journey Map™:
• Aligns team around protecting all potential customer exposures
• Readily understood by customers
• The Root Cause Journey Map™:
• Clarifies hypotheses / investigative paths
• Makes hypothesis-to-action-item linkages obvious
• Easy to display planning and progress at-a-glance
• Permanent Corrective Action Planning and Implementation Flow:
• Facilitates planning and execution
• Ensures key actions are visible and accountable
• Look-Across and Recurrence Prevention Templates:
• Prevents overlooking future risks
• Guides team with comprehensive view of potential systemic causes
• Visual Team Recognition:
• 8 Suggestions for celebrating team success

Leading clients' teams out of challenging technical customer crisis situations is CAEDENCE's bread and butter. Our success in this space is rooted in our team's ability to communicate effectively to influence customers, management, and hands-on teams - a core skill we've developed over decades of product development, engineering, quality, and project management experience.

Once again we teamed up with the Providence Section of IEEE, to bring this free webinar where CAEDENCE Managing Director Andy Willner shared his insights and tips on influential communication that will be put to use right away!

Career Enhancer: Influential Communication at All Levels

Free Webinar | 12 Nov 2024, 5PM Eastern | Online

Clear and effective communication is at the heart of successful leadership, teamwork, and customer relationships, but it’s often dismissed by engineers as a trivial “soft skill”. In fact, they should view it as a “secret weapon” enabling them to unlock the true potential of their technical talent. 

• Imagine being able to smoothly guide your team, manager, or investors to back your great idea, rather than being frustrated because they just don’t grasp it.
• Picture yourself gracefully navigating the competing priorities across the departments of your organization to get the resources you need.
• Consider how valuable you’d be at your company if you were able to maintain the customer’s confidence even when things weren’t going to plan.

This talk left participants with practical strategies, tactics, and tips to apply immediately to your job whether you’re an intern, engineer, manager, VP, CTO, founder, or any role in between.

CAEDENCE helps product-based startups (at Series B and beyond) with new product development (from concept to launch), issue resolution & prevention, and talent assessment & development.

CAEDENCE was represented at Startup Boston Week. Andy Willner was on the panel ”From prototype to prime time: navigating production planning and launch for physical products” on September 11, 2024 at Suffolk University in Downtown Boston. This panel was part of the “Product & Design” track at the conference. During the event, we discussed:

• How do you translate creation of a prototype to manufacturing production of a product?
• What is the difference between freelance, contractor, original equipment manufacturer (OEM), and a giant manufacturer that can do everything in house?
• What considerations do you need to take into account when making your product “future proof” such that you can expand on your product or develop it further without too many issues in the future?
• What is a reasonable timeline for developing out and launching your product?
• How important is it to conduct a cost benefit analysis on the first product of a company?