💡Crash - Ep #20
I still remember the song I was listening to when I crashed my 1994 Honda Accord into a beautiful 2007 Yellow Audi RS4...and I can still taste the gas from my airbag.
"Well, it would've been, could've been worse than you would ever know...
Oh, the dashboard melted, but we still had the radio"
The song "Dashboard" by Modest Mouse literally describes a totaled car...
...and an even deeper irony was that I was attempting to change the CDs when I looked up and saw the Red light I was running through before T-Boning that gorgeous yellow Audi.
This song and the Crash are at the center of my Engineering Origin story.
I had spent my life savings to buy that car, and as I looked at the mangled metal from the collision (with the radio still playing) ... my life was over.
Or so I thought at the grand age of 15...
Today's "Sunday Sip" is inspired by Navreet a Global Healer, Community Builder, and one of the newest member of The Big Brain Club
She was recently on the "Sunday Sips" Podcast and when asked how she builds her life....she replied...
- "The word that keeps coming up is Naturally...Like let the process happen naturally and let it find you versus the other way around... Not forcing it."
As an systems engineer, going with the flow is so unnatural to me.
I want every aspect of design to be clearly bounded with risks identified and user driven requirements cascaded to ensure a product functions as intended.
But naturally our lives unfold in beautiful, unexpected ways... which can often be difficult to prescribe.
The crash is one such example for me, as it enabled me to discover who I really was with ever evolving clarity.
At 33 years old, I see my life as a product of both intentional action and natural sequencing or circumstance.
So back to 15 year old Joe...
A Path To Mechanical Engineering
Prior to the accident I was teetering between Civil and Mechanical engineering as I had a brilliant fascination with bridges.
Marshmellow and toothpicks will forever be may favorite activity in school.
When I crashed the Honda, a friend from church offered to let me park it in his garage. He handed me a welder and said good luck... that was all the supervision I was given.
So I worked a part time job painting my neighbor's house to save up enough cash to buy a new front end and hood from a junk yard. I then started dismantling my car one layer of torn metal at a time until I made it to the frame.
I cut off the mangle frame in four locations and welded on a new one... then reassembling began... piece by piece.
As I made it to the radiator all hell broke loose.
The tubing is incredibly tight and I installed/uninstalled the radiator 13 times over the course of several hours before everything was seated properly.
This is the moment when everything clicked for highschool Joe.
I realized someone doesn't just wake up one day and decide to design a radiator for a 1994 Honda Accord...
They work across a broad range of constraints from other subsystems, partner with a team, innovate on prior models, and craft a solution that works in harmony with the rest of the system...
And I found this collaborative approach to innovation beautiful... setting me on the path towards Mechanical Engineering and eventually MedTech at Johnson & Johnson.
A Path To Innovation From Japan
Fast forward a decade and I found myself at the heart of JNJ's 12+ Billion dolllar play in Surgical robotics... one of the most complex systems I've ever been a part of.
I Lived & Died at integration points between Software & Hardware, Instruments & the Robot, Clinician & The Patient.
I place such a heavy emphasis on the "&" because innovators can often become stuck in "OR" thinking.
Robotic Controls Engineers argued that the spring (Hardware) is introducing a compliance that is too difficult to control (Software).
The Instrument Design Engineer argues that the spring (Hardware) is critical for accommodating tissue variability and that controls (Software) are to blame for poor performance.
As a Systems engineer I spanned opposing dialogues such as these to provide clarity on risk profiles for patients & clinicians as well as craft critical requirements to ensure than an optimal middle was found.
I literally became the engineering mediator who established the tight tubing fit on my 1994 Honda Accord.
This reached a whole new level when I mediated for entire organizations during my role Directing Front End Innovation from Japan.
Upstream R&D felt that their product pipeline was responsive of the needs of Japanese Clinicians...
Downstream Japanese Regional Marketing/Sales felt that Japanese Clincians were not a priority in our US centric product pipeline.
They were both right & wrong.
More Context if you check out my virtual portfolio -> HERE
A Path to Restoration
Near the end of my career at JNJ as I was finishing my Masters in Global Leadership, I studied a practice called Retrospective Sense Making... (See Section 3 of last weeks Sunday Sips)
This led through an exercise of revisiting that car crash from so many years ago.
Here's an Excerpt from my Final Paper:
"LP1 (15yr), Epiphany type: Type IV Providential Circumstances – Restorative Engineer
When I was in high school, I ran a red light and totaled my 1994 Honda Accord. I was able to fully restore the vehicle with no prior automotive experience. I found the complexity of design as well as the collaborative elements of it beautiful. It was during this repair that I had my “ah-ha” moment about becoming an engineer. Recent reflections on this moment have revealed that I’ve always had an innate sense of inclusion, collaboration, restoration, creativity, user-centric design, persistence, and systemic thinking. I have the ability to connect seemingly unrelated pieces of complex systems and create something of value. But more than that, I bring others along in the process, including them in discovery. I spark joy.
Life Purpose Indication: God has entrusted me with a creative and restorative skillset that allows me to advance human-centric solutions"
Truly a deep "Ah-ha" moment for me as I can take that restorative, collaborative and empathetic innovation mindset into any industry beyond MedTech.
As I'm still in a season of exploration, I have this deep sense of self and life purpose indication gives me a north start to follow as I explore various opportunities.
So I'm curious, what experiences have you navigated in your early years that have deeply impacted your value systems and the essence of who you are?
And to build upon Navreet's idea of "naturally"... how are you following this natural unfolding of your life day by day as you live into deeper giftings?
Benediction:
So may you recognize that a "crash" isn't the end of your world.
Rather is can become a defining moment that empowers you to let your life unfold in beautiful, unexpected ways...
And as always friend...
Keep Changing the World!
