What the hell am I doing on top of this 5 star hotel overlooking the Philippines ?
I was at the phone with this Chinese guy, walking around in the corridor, anxiously struggling with bad connection while trying to figure out what was going out with our packaging (*insert bad news due to misunderstanding here*). I had joined Equisense 3 months before and was still sorting things out about my feelings and my industrial-designer-slash-design-engineer position within the company.
The CTO went out from the office in his way for a meeting. Passing besides me he couldn’t help himself and told me half-voice:
« We decided you would go to the Philippines as well. »
« Wait. Wait, what ? »
The guy on the phone thought I was talking to him.
Here was the announcement: with two hardware engineers from our company, the three of us would go to visit our main manufacturing partner in Hong Kong and Manila, Philippines, quite soon.
1, 2, 3 flights later…
The day after we were about to head on to the factory and then was beginning the serious game. And I’m supposed to be “so serious”, so why was I feeling kind of uncomfortable once there ? Deep down I knew it. Thing was: the objective of this trip wasn’t clear in my mind.
I was supposed to verify the quality of a couple of brand new first trackers just produced in order to launch the 1500 next ones and then sell them. Quite clear you may think. In reality, I was full of foggy questions. How was I suppose to verify anything ?
Here were coming the negative thoughts: I haven’t designed the product, I had no tools, no “high controlled indicators system running in accordance with professional standards”, no skills, no experience, blah, blah, blah, so no idea about how to verify the quality of the precious device.
So here I stand, in the middle of the night in pyjamas, in the higher room of a luxury hotel, actually without a clue about what the heck am I supposed to really get out of this travel.
Before the trip, in France, I had asked the co-founders to get a clearer response. And when I went out from the discussion, I wasn’t feeling any further ahead. Actually they didn’t look 300% sure either.
I would figure it out later on, a couple of weeks or even months after the trip, with the benefit of hindsight.
“The Splashproof test“
Back in the heat of the action, Manilla, 4:00 pm. My overcautious side was holding me down. Here we were, in the factory, and now ? What do I have to test, and how ? I was kind of stuck and scattered at the same time, basically not very efficient.
But against all odds, half an hour before leaving the place, my “survivor-in-start-up-company” side made me act.
Here was a fact: in France the whole team was uncertain about whether or not we could be confident about water getting on the product and it was a light source of worrying in the background of our day-to-day work (none of any test from any experts laboratory had been done so far, I didn’t even know I could have ask for it before).
So I put a part of my brain off, and I undertook this improvised splash proof test.
I reckon I had no idea of what pressure was getting on the casing and yes I used a not-perfectly-clean plastic cup from their lunch corner as a container. I unscrewed everything, went out to get some toilet paper, put it inside the device casing instead of one of our cherished PCB and I poured on some milliliters here and there in all directions, praying to find out back our toilet paper as dry as the asphalt outside, burning under the sun.
Sometimes simple actions are sufficient to trick you mind.
Well, the toilet paper got out intact.
The scene really entertained the Filipino technicians in charge of helping me and it kind of unlocked the relationships as we all couldn’t help ourselves laughing about it together. We were all happy the tracker passed the funny test.
NB: Not that a square of toilet paper is sufficient to really ensure anything, but at the time it permitted to quickly tick the box of a minimum critical must-do.
In the room, there were this 26 yo female engineer who is almost my age and could be a friend of mine, this head engineer letting things going away without an ounce of stress, operators actually operating like the clichés we can see on TV but going back crazy having fun and running around when it’s time to take souvenirs pictures with us. All humans, all learners like us, all accessible collaborators to work with.
Nothing big in pouring some water on a piece of plastic, some of you might think. Don’t mistaken... this was a first big positive lesson for me. And so I’m learning: when you’re worried, stop being worried and act. So I did.
Finally, is the spending of a 1k€ plane ticket worth the trip?
Sure it does in some ways. It might have been not that obvious at first sight, turns out it was a real gift.
Apart from this anecdote, we could verify that things as a whole were running in the good direction. We could observe and understand more than ever how the product was made and comprehended by this parallel team, how impressive were the machines and factories, how big was the suppliers’ chain as a huge network spreading all over Asia, how processes were organized and interconnected, issues handled and solved… Basically how those men and women from this other little-known culture so far from us were taking care of our own babies.
We’ve been able to concretely sense the “real” role and profile of each people. Back in France, carrying on our remote collaboration, it permits today to target the exact good person you’re in need of. Ever since then, communication with the Philippines’ team is facilitated, negotiation is made with well more trust, and both side we’re keen to be more tolerant and accommodating to each other.
We reinforced relationships, not only with our suppliers and collaborator but also between the 3 of us, as colleagues, as we lived a crazy experience over there (did I mention the high-speed chase after an ambulance with our crazy taxi driver to get out the traffic jam because we were close to missing the return flight ? But that’s another story…)
The CEO told me afterward what was in his mind when he bought 3 plane tickets for us: while 5% only of the goal was about quality checking, 25% was dedicated to creating links between people, and 70% to launch us on the learning curve hacking path.
Admittedly, I’ve been first disturbed once getting over there. But I can have now a calm analyze of all we took away from this trip and I realize the benefit of having tackled the “real world”.
It fed us. In the same way for instance that it’s relevant to allow some time in your week schedule to self-learn a piece of anything and everything.
It doesn’t tick your “tasks of the day” boxes, but brings you clues about the field you’re playing on, perspective to see the bigger picture and knowledge about this exciting but also foggy start-up environnement you’re working in.
Thanks Equisense founders for dropping us half a world away!
