“Fragmented communications have disappeared”
Talko Helps TA&T and Honeywell Get Ahead
This is a guest-authored post from Walter Zimbeck, General Manager at an engineering firm called Technology Assessment & Transfer in Annapolis, MD. Walter talks about how Talko has changed the way they work with their key partner, Honeywell, on a high-stakes engineering program.
The past few months have brought a surprising and pervasive change to the way my company works – not through recommendations from a high-priced consultant, but a simple app on our cell phones! I know that’s a bold statement and before I say why, let me first explain our team dynamics.
I lead a 3D printing group at a company called Technology Assessment & Transfer (TA&T). We are doing ground-breaking development in 3D printing, both literally and figuratively. My team produced the first 3D printed ceramic parts to make it to Mars, which are literally busting up Martian soil to detect the presence of life-forming organic compounds. We are also one of the first companies to have our 3D printing process qualified for use in production of aircraft engine parts.
In total, we’re about 25 people with an office in Annapolis, MD and a lab in Millersville, MD. One of our key partners is Honeywell Aerospace in Phoenix, AZ. For the past four years, we’ve been working with Honeywell to adapt our ceramic 3D printing process to make turbine engine blades and vanes faster and cheaper. Given that my day-to-day partner is based in Arizona, we work hard to stay connected and to talk as much as possible amid a sea of seemingly endless emails.
Picture this scenario: We’re working with a dozen people across two time zones on high stakes projects with super tight deadlines. We have six technicians and engineers in our lab in Maryland and six in Arizona who at any given time are setting up, executing and analyzing results of experiments and qualification runs of parts for the latest military jet engines or the next generation commercial airline engines. These dozen engineers and technicians plus their supervisors would ideally be working side-by-side showing each other what they are seeing, and discussing results and plans. But we’re not, we’re a few miles or a few thousand miles away from each other.
Historically, we’ve used a mix of emails, phone calls and texts to coordinate and share. It’s been tough for the team to develop a common picture of status, opportunities or issues. Texts lead to calls, calls lead to email follow up, and so on. It’s a fragmented communications cycle that makes it near-impossible to get all team members in all locations on the same page. To clear everything up, we rely on the dreaded one-hour “all-hands” conference call that always lasts two hours — possibly the most demotivating business process ever invented. And we do them twice weekly in order to cover all the projects!
Several months ago, we started using Talko and quickly realized significant improvements to how we work together. Talko’s simple yet rich platform has made our communications more fluid. We still have the conference calls, but they are now only an hour long because everyone is pretty much on the same page already. It’s made the calls more productive and people hang-up feeling motivated, like they are contributing to the plan rather than just getting caught up on what the team in Arizona is doing.
Talko has replaced the texting and calling we used to do, as well as a good fraction of emailing. Email still has its place, but it didn’t take long to realize that using our voices — particularly since we’re often mobile, in the lab and on the shop floor — helps us get stuff done so much more efficiently. Talko has enabled a more fluid, organized and clear way for us to communicate, which in turn has increased our speed of creativity and problem solving. It has made us more productive.
Fragmented communications have disappeared. It’s amazing to be able to join calls live or not live, and annotate relevant parts of the conversation for the appropriate people, which they can listen to on their own time. No one misses a beat, and we’re seeing fewer misunderstandings. We’ve worked together for a while, but Talko has fostered a closeness and level of trust that has everybody more motivated. It may be hard to believe until you experience the pervasive effect Talko can have on teams, but when you think about it, good communication is the foundation for all of the elements of an effective team — speed of creativity and problem solving, productivity, documentation/archiving, planning, trust and individual motivation.
We had a high-level Government customer visit the other day to see our 3D printing operation. We were walking the shop floor and the visitor asked one of our younger technicians a question about what she was doing. She nailed the response, clearly demonstrating she knew exactly where this step fit in the overall process and mentioned some improvements in the pipeline. After the visitor left, I asked her about this exchange. She opened Talko, searched #build orientation, showed me the several Talko calls that had been tagged or annotated with this #, and said she had reviewed them earlier in the day while she was setting up — that is priceless.
As we charge ahead in this new space — 3D printing of functional ceramic components — we face an incredibly competitive market. What we’re doing is going to massively disrupt an aerospace manufacturing industry that hasn’t changed much in over 100 years. There is a huge payoff, and whoever gets there first is going to get the lion’s share of it. Collaborating closely among our dispersed team to innovate quickly is how we, together with Honeywell, will stay ahead. Talko gives us a big competitive advantage in this regard, and I feel like we have only scratched the surface. The Talko team produced a feature rich product right out of the gate that was easy to get started with, yet we are still uncovering little gems of functionality in the software. I’m 100% confident the enhancements on the horizon at Talko will deepen our use of the product and further our competitive advantage. After only a few months, I can’t imagine going back to the disjointed way we used to communicate.
I also use Talko in my life outside of work — with friends and family for everyday communications, and also with my sister to coordinate my parents’ transition to assisted living. The app helps us get administrative things done faster so we can spend more time just being together and providing emotional support to my parents and each other.
There is another surprising and pervasive effect Talko is having on me. I often go back and replay Talko calls, to refresh my memory. It’s was a bit unsettling at first to hear my own voice and I was instantly self-critical of “umming” and long pauses that slow down the stream. It made me understand, in a way I had not previously understood, the powerful effect your voice style and character has on your ability to persuade and lead. Talko is the only tool in my life that allows me to hear my own voice in dynamic, real situations (as opposed to a rehearsed scenario like a presentation). For the first time, I am able to critique and implement improvements. My voice is getting stronger, which has a positive effect throughout my life.
In both work and life, Talko has really transformed the way I communicate and get things done with the people and teams that matter most. To think that this transformation is all based on the simple notion of getting people to talk more is quite remarkable.
Walter
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Interested in telling the world about your team’s use of Talko? We’d love to help — shoot a mail to support@talko.com and we’ll get that ball rolling.
