💡Fire - Ep #8
My neighbor's house burned down last night and the lack of urgency displayed by the firefighters reminded me of a unique insight I gleaned from an exploding artery in a goat...
...don't worry, I'll provide context
... and yes, the goat is dead ...
Today's "Sunday Sip" is inspired by Xuelin, an old friend and JNJ'er who messaged me:
-
I can only imagine what it might feel to re-adjust to life back in US from Japan. I still fondly dream of Japan’s vending machines and 7-11 stores even 2 years after my trip there…If I ever swing a trip to Chicago for any reason, I’ll let you know."
7/11 in Japan is a glorious experience compared with the subpar norm in the US. While I typically dream of different food adventures than Xuelin, I do love their bacon, onion rice balls (onigiri)... Chef's kiss.
And while nothing compares to the pure convivences of Tokyo's Konbini's (convenience stores), I have experienced delight in a new gas station called "Casey's" that's walking distance from my in-laws home. They have pizza by the slice, cool drinks and more variations of Resees than I had ever imagined possible.
Ok back to fires, blood and potential engine explosions...
So do we start with the fire or a goat... Definitely the goat.
A large portion of my career at Johnson and Johnson was dedicated to the advancement of various ultrasonic technologies used in minimally invasive surgery.
We basically take a long, thin titanium blade and vibrate it 50,000 cycles per second to create a standing wave at resonance. Invisible to the naked eye, this tool can safely cut and coagulate tissue... allowing surgeons to make fine transections without bleeding. Search "Ethicon HAR1100" to see one of the devices I supported!
But enough nerding out... you're here for goats and fire.
Naturally if you design a device indicated for sealing large blood vessels, you have to prove said claims clinically to receive FDA approval. And while we do a large serious of bench top testing prior to launch, animal testing is a aspect of MedTech R&D... unless you'd like to volunteer your grandma as tribute...
While I'll be somewhat nondescript to not reveal proprietary test methods for JNJ Energy devices... here's what I can share.
Depending on the exact device and intent of testing, we will often do animal labs with dogs, pigs, or goats... where we put them under anesthesia and perform live surgery.
One evaluation involves sealing various undisclosed vessels/arteries, elevating the animals blood pressure, and waiting a certain amount of time to make sure there is no seal failures. Think Pulp Fiction adrenaline needle to the heart but the animal doesn't sit up and start spazzing out.
I had been working on optimizing a Harmonic algorithm to ensure accelerated transection times with robust sealing, and after months of work it was time for our big lab... this one was on a goat. Things were tracking well and I was hopeful that we'd see a promising outcome when old man Murphy showed up in the worse possible way.
As we began the blood pressure challenge, a carotid artery (the one between your head and heart) bursts, shooting blood across the room. There's a lot of back pressure on that one so I'll let you imagine how far blood flew.
Here's the lesson...
This was my first big clinical lab, it was "my design" and it failed violently. I responded immediately, texting the Project Director, Lead Design, and Production Lead that they should get down the lab asap as we've had a critical failure.
All hands on deck... our project was on fire.
Have you ever done this at work? Respond viscerally following that fight or flight response.
Naturally the extended team all end up in the lab, word travels fast in R&D and not in a good way when your progressing a "must launch" product. The head of marketing dropped by the water cooler, chatting with our Project director, "I heard your device is killing goats"... Not a good look with senior leadership.
Here's the twist.
I hadn't read the testing procedure. This wasn't "my lab" it was Pre Clinicals, and they were responsible for the outcomes. Based on variability of tissue and animals, a statistically significant sample size was chosen that allowed for a certain amount of seal failures without failing the lab.
While blood on the wall was a pain to clean up it was a non issue and we passed the lab.
But my response was a problem as both my team and I had to rebuild our reputation to qualm the storm I had created.
Yes I was young, insecure, and afraid of failure... But there were definitely things I could have done differently to bring the team in gradually.
Better Approach:
- Breath, take 3-5 minutes to think and assess what I did and didn't know.
- Talk with folks in the rooms running the lab to see if this had occurred before.
-
Engage Project Director, Lead Design, and Production Lead truthfully with out the artificial sense of urgency.
- Ex: "Hey _____, I wanted to let you know that we experienced a Carotid failure a few moments ago. I'm working on gathering more data from the Pre Clinical team as well as exploring generator data for any indication of what occurred. If you have some margin, you're welcome to drop by the lab otherwise I'll send an update by end of day. Thanks for the support!"
-
This message is the difference between
- A Project Director needing to publicly exit a stakeholder meeting, briskly walk down the to the lab churning on anxiety for 12 minutes, and then dropping into a frantic room trying to regain control of the situation.
- OR
- A Project Director, firing off a "thanks for the update, I'll be down at noon" message, fitting the situation into their priorities, and entering the situation ready to hear any new findings.
Sometimes we make life harder and more frantic than it needs to be.
Last night there was a fire that burned down a neighbors home. No one was home so while financially and emotionally devastating there was no loss of life. What initially troubled me was that there was an over abundance of Fire/Police support (12 fire trucks) yet everyone was walking instead of running.
Now I'm sure initially there was a rush of activity to check for occupancy, turn off gas lines, and get the hose set up... but it was disconcerting watching firefighter move so slowly as someone's life was up in flame.
But I began to question why.
As I paid more attention, I noticed a more measured approach. They would spray water in the hole in the roof for about 1.5 minutes till the blaze qualmed. Then they would check the main floor for a bit breaking through soffits to gain better access and let the smoke fade. Then as the flames picked back up another 1.5 minutes of water.
I realized there goal was simple.
Everyone is out of the home. The fire and water damage have made the property a total loss. Contain the situation so it doesn't spread to nearby homes. Mitigate risks to firefighters to enter the home gradually with limited water/smoke/flames to find and extinguish source without a roof collapse.
In some ways there was an emotional detachment from the flames, and they were just working the process until the job was done. Meanwhile the owners cried, held each other and slowly watched as what they had built together burn down 1.5 minutes at a time.
The ability to detach and think clearly reduces the probability of calamity.
A closing example.
In last week's Sunday Sips we celebrated what is going well for us in Chicago... including our 2016 Honda Odyssey.
Well only 10 days into cruising, we hit our first situation. It started throwing crazy errors. Blinking check engine light, Oil Change needed, check ABS, check FCW, check LDW.
We were 30 minutes from home with 4 kids and 2 grand parents with another 30 minutes left to reach our destination.
We pulled over and ever time we turned the car on and off a new error popped off.
Naturally emotion wants to lead the situation.
Thoughts of, "Oh God, I thought this was an incredible car for our family and I bought a lemon" or "We pulled our 401k and now we're burning it on this." We had the pressure of inpatient grandparents, and too many opinions for various text messages that were firing off.
Felicia made the choice that we should just start driving home... which is a risk as the blinking check engine means stop driving immediately.
As if I was subconsciously guided by learnings from the goat and fire... I took pause and asked myself... what do we actually know?
We know that the car is telling us to check the error codes, so what if we found a mechanic... just to check the code. We could cordinate ubers and all that noise later if necessary. Get more data, think, then act.
I pull open goggle find a mechanic 2 minutes from our current location, my wife pulled a U-Turn and we roll up to a shop. By luck or pity they let us pull into their garage to quickly scan the error code (no wait on a Saturday afternoon). Turns out it was a missfiring cylindar with a broken spark plug.
The whole repair was only 40 minutes, $350 and we still were able to make the trip up to Wisconsin for Felicia's Aunt's Birthday. On top of that we found a reliable, well priced, competent mechanic to support future repairs.
Breath, think, act.
Much better than act, hyperventilate, and then anxiety churn on all the worst possible outcomes.
So the next time your check engine light pops on, or there's a fire in your life... or a bleeding goat...
May you take pause and begin by trusting your ability to work the situation.
May you emotionally detach from the possible outcomes so you can see all options with clarity to act.
And as you get better at this, may you bring others along in this approach.
And as always friend... keep changing the world!
