Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Insights

Leadership - SPEAKER SPOTLIGHT : Developing Executive Problem Solving Behaviors

Written by BTOES Insights Official | Jul 6, 2020 8:26:19 AM

Courtesy of BPM-D's Edward J. Blackman, below is a transcript of his speaking session on 'Developing Executive Problem Solving Behaviors' to Build a Thriving Enterprise that took place at Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Summit & Industry Awards.

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Session Information:

Developing Executive Problem Solving Behaviors

Introduction: How do we develop executive problem solving behaviors to support and sustain transformations?

Combining Behavioral Science with Lean leadership has resulted in transforming executives and their leadership teams into not only supporting Continuous Improvement, but also daily practitioners of CI. In this session you will learn about the CI journey of a Global Information Services leadership team.

Key Takeaways

  • How to conduct Executive Coaching using Behavioral Science and simplified Kata 
  • How to align with Agile methodologies
  • How to setup Visual Management Systems and Huddles with globally distributed leadership teams
  • How to create a culture of consistent improvement using the Skills Matrix and KPI system

Session Transcript:

Our next kin is Edward Blackmun Edward is the global senior leader of continuous improvement at whirlpool he's a conference keynote speaker and global business improvement leader with executive experience focused on behavior systems Ling leadership systemic employees skill development strategy and operational excellence his transformation.

Experiences includes IT operations HR finance manufacturing health care and retail Edwards our certified is certified in agile as a scrum master in agile coach six sigma black belt and lean in structure in coach he has an undergrad undergrad degrees in mathematics and psychology and a Master degree in behavior science.

He greatly values innovation and is an inventor himself he has obtained backing for two different products and he invented through ideation programs so it's a great pleasure they would like to welcome Edward Black Edward Blackmun to the stage let's give him a hand.

Thank you sir, I appreciate it good afternoon everyone thank you for attending I know I'm the last thing between you and some good food and based on lunch which was fabulous I know dinner will be excellent as well so you already got the introduction.

You've seen probably the abstract a little bit we'll make this a little bit unique is this is a behavioral science and if you will lean combination we found that putting the two together ends up creating something rather powerful background you already heard this not gonna go through that again about whirlpool whirlpool is the largest.

Appliance manufacturer on planet earth we had 21 billion dollars in sales last year about 92 thousand employees locations all over the world here's my only plug please buy our stuff to scope
this in a bit there are different areas or sides of organizations the focus for this talk today is on the if you will the administrative side so HR legal.

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Finance things like that not the manufacturing side okay I started with the organization a few years ago to help out with a few things refresh the CI approach and things like that at the time there was mostly event and project based CI that was occurring.

Very little if you will daily based behaviors that were occurring leaders were very supportive of the approach but they were more at a dissonance not necessarily practitioners themselves okay and while I talked today I'm gonna use the umbrella term ci continuous improvement to describe most of what we talked about depending on an individual's.

Approach and how they learn to improvement techniques over time you might say agile is the approach or leading is the approach or six Sigma's approach for a Venn diagram I'm just going to put all that into the umbrella of CI okay just for simplicity.

So when I started one of the approaches that I was taught by mentor was if you're going to do a transformation take people to what better can look like and see if they actually like it show them their future and see if it's something they actually desire so this is basically the model line approach that we've learned from Toyota it's an internal proof-of-concept approach I've been partnering with
Nationwide Insurance for quite a few years done this quite a few times and toward their gemba.

They're their actual shop floor a number of times as well as target so I ended up taking the leaders to nationwide by the way I saw some of the leadership from the nationwide here as well today they're excellent and a lot of their materials are online they present at conferences quite a bit bit they have a book that's out there on their approach so if you want to learn more.

There's a lot of opportunities for that this is a gimbal lock so what you'll see up here in the upper left
hand corner is what we called memo washy there's actually two definitions for nama washy the version that we're talking about here is business sponsored socializing a lot of what we do involves change management.

Asking hard questions asking people to change their behaviors how they do their work if you build over-pour with them before you make the ask you're much more likely to be successful so we actually sat down with Tom Peter Kevin as well Kevin is here from nationwide and a few of their folks and we had drinks with him first we learned who they were as human beings why they're doing this type of stuff.

Right and this was a peer-to-peer interaction right so I helped set it up and then I get out of the way and then I have a VP talked to another VP who's in the same shoes and they have a powerful conversation that I don't disrupt right same thing director directory or things.

Like that that is much more powerful than me preaching about how good nationwide is they just get to hear from their peers so we had dinner at Nemo washy the top middle picture is actually the ground floor there if you all scrum. Teams that they use if you're not from the how many people in here familiar with agile scrum about half of you.

Okay there's a lot of versions of it but the version that they use there is it's very effective part of why I like them so much as a model wine is they've scaled this over a long period of time they've been at it over a decade and what I've seen in my career is often people will be sent to help fix frontline right.

Improve the frontline area but then you have supervisor manager director vice-president c-suite right and the conversations end up being fixed down here all the rest of this is good right. let us know how it turns out will attend the report outs right but fix here no no nationwide does this s scale all the way.

Up to the executive level so what you see in the bottom picture there is and the guy has an awesome name guru guru is one of the CIO is there that's his visual management system that's where a CIO and executive practices what he preaches that's where he Huddle's twice a week right with his team has direct reports.

That's the hard part getting all the levels of leadership to practice this daily behaviors that's that's where this beauty comes in so these guys are fabulous it just so happened that I was embedded with a embedded with information services at whirlpool so for new learners you don't take new learners to an environment.

Where they have to do a translation so I wouldn't take information service people. IT people to a manufacturing floor because they have to do some type of translation in their head - okay how does this relate to code right no you take new learners to something that's very similar to their reality so they don't have to do that translation.

Yeah in this case initializer incipio mind me saying is basically an giant IT shop 8,000 people an IT I think and this is public information like one point four billion dollars spent annually on IT right so there was a very nice comparison point to what we were trying to do within the Information Services Department.

Another example target target has had some bad press in the past they had some data breaches and some stuff happened they had a new CIO come on board and it was beautiful new CIO comes on board walks the gemba sees all the ice is areas that he's going to lead and he sees it's one team and this one team is delivering better code better quality.

Faster with happier staff and happier customers then all the other teams in IT. Who doesn't want attributes like that they said why aren't we doing this any everywhere so they took that team as a model line and scaled it and expanded it and they also set up what's called a dojo it's a learning facility there's a lot of ways to do training right a highly efficient training method is to take a thousand people and put them through a one-hour course but it's highly ineffective efficiency and
effectiveness not the same thing they took an effective approach teams.

That want to turn agile going here for a three-month tour duty and they come out high-speed bullion with agile they can hit the ground running with this it's extremely effective approach so if this is one way to develop behaviors should we try it so afterwards another mentor taught me that you'll often face these questions go where you're needed or go where you're invited it's beautiful. If it's the same place doesn't happen very much right and if you're facing this question always always always go where you're invited the other approach is Sisyphean right.

So the the myth about Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill for eternity never make it much progress see a lot of heads nodding unfortunately you can relate okay if you go or you're invited and it's the majority right it doesn't matter if you're successful at transforming the people that are inviting you into their house that starts to create a tipping point and it becomes the majority and it starts to influence the others in the organization right so you will eventually get to those who aren't inviting you in and at that point they'll have this beautiful and scary thing called peer pressure and
at that point they'll be the minority.

So after the model line visits I come back with the executives I've done a few times in different organizations and it's a genuine question what did you see what did you learn did you like any of
it some leaders executives say no I didn't see anything of value there in fact it looks like a step backwards.

Okay no judgment I won't work on producing or transforming your teams in that direction that is not what better looks like to you I'm not going after that goal right other leaders are wait and see right the whole adoption curve some leaders are like why aren't we doing this right now okay let's get started tomorrow so I start working with those folks the folks that invite me in to work right those leaders because I have at that point of vice-president in some cases global vice presidents.

Right huge span of control who are saying yes I've just seen ten years into my future I want that beautiful there's a couple things that can turn you into quick behavioral scientists there are three phrases that behavioral scientists real ones say a lot it's on a continuum the conditions under which and the third one.

you already know we'll talk about that later but the first one is the most relevant to this it's on a continuum right so if that's what ten years down the road looks like don't jump to that ideal state iterate towards it future state one future state two things like that so let's start that jerk to demystify behavioral science a little bit there's a lot to it a lot of fun stuff there are journals that you've probably never heard of that have figured out a lot of these leadership behavior change things that we ask and talk about all the time they publish.

This stuff back in the 50s right 60s they have a lot of this figured out unfortunately they're nice journals right so people that are in economics don't necessarily read behavioral  science journals right manufacturing environments read manufacturing journals not behavioural science journals right.

So it's understandable that a lot of this stuff hasn't made it out there to popular society yet other than you know a few cool TV shows that you might have seen out there paper science unit nothing like that so behavioral pinpointing what is behavior this honestly is a sticking point for a lot of folks behavior is something I can observe with a camera right if I ask you to think about a red car I have no idea if he thought about a red car or a blue car or is thinking about dinner right.

He can self record it he can tell me what he's thinking right but that's it so behavior is something that you can actually observe the more you pinpoint that behavior the more accurate you are at developing that behavior and transform it another one is response effort analysis this is commonly in business environments equated to an ROI right how much work is it to get the response that I want right that is really going to be key here in a couple slides feedback systems I'll just tell you flat-out from a behavioral perspective most of the time these are non-existent we are very familiar with feedback systems in our car every single day.

We know how fast we're driving right we know when we need to get more gas things like that and yet a lot of what we use to transform behavior transform processes and systems right it's like driving looking out the rear-view mirror that doesn't work so well lagging indicators that are weeks behind dude you're gonna hit a tree not a good idea right matching law I put this one up here just to kind of show off matching law is how you would mathematically predict behavior there are ways to do this.

I'm really geeked out about some of the presentations that happened earlier today in the applications of this to things like Amazon and Facebook and things like that there are there laws that outlaws for a predicting behavior that worked really well for conditions under which right given specific conditions picnic analysis I'll leave that one for your Google search it's really cool performance management this is a lot like hammers hammers can produce works of art right or they can destroy and some of you might be able to relate a lot of times performance management is used to destroy instead of set up people for success performance management is a beautiful thing when aligned with strategy yeah we talked a long time about that one Gilbert so I have a lot of my contact information's on the last slide second last slide.

I have a bunch of books and recommendations Gilbert he has a book out there that's published it's listed in the back guy's a genius he he really knows his stuff there's a thing called a behavioral engineering model and if I can entice you in any way to read his book I'll talk about a couple quotes out there he treats human error as a myth often when we talk about human error we try to say that it's a cause of something going wrong he treats it as a symptom.

There's a whole nother level analysis to go into there's a six box analysis that he likes quite a bit to see whether or not human error is really what's going on or was the individual actually set up for failure and most of the time I'm gonna go with that latter one okay so rubra fication patent-pending so why do we struggle with the CI stuff why do we constantly talk about why transformations fail why is this such a prevalent issue for us it seems to stem akin it.

I'm gonna say part of the reason is because we over engineer our approaches we make them too complicated getting out of the gate okay it's crawl walk run not hussein bolt right out of the gate right it's too much of an ask there's a lot of work in maintaining these CI systems let's see if we can develop a little bit of behavior first and then build on that incrementally right just like the agile approach okay so if you're gonna hopefully know we brought anything really heavy to throw at me.

I'm gonna talk about a couple taboo things I love kata I absolutely love it out of the box a straight out of the book it's wonderful micro author professor author over at the University of Michigan did a great job describing the behaviors that he saw and Toyota trying to implement kata textbooks tat fashioned from no kata to all of the dynamics the system's the learner storyboards all of that that's a huge administrative burden right we have a frame of reference for this stuff let's apply it to ourselves ideal State what does perfection look like current state future State.

One future state two future state three I'll say out-of-the-box kata is ideal state folks we got to iterate or Det work towards it incrementally right build on our successes not just jump to the whole thing nobody for anything okay cool so how can we simplify this this was actually talked to me before the the kata book came out and it's right in line with one of the question sets that's in there I'm actually gonna spend more time on this than I usually do because I think this can scale and help folks right when you leave here it's such a simple framework right right line with kata and if you can get people to do this.

It's powerful so what is your goal questions one and two should have numbers in them what's your goal what's your actual here's the tricky part the difference between one and two is a gap the question we love to ask is what is the problem that we're trying to solve that's your answer the problem that we're trying to solve is the gap between one and two okay the closer you are to have an actual numbers in there the quicker you can get to alignment on something or misalignment and be able to see it quickly three is what is the cause of that gap for is what is your plan to address it and then five.

I love question five please please please don't remove question five if you adopt this as you leader how may I help you if the team stuck we don't have an actual goal you asked us to fix something we don't even know what direction are going oh I'll help you with that as a leader they can get stuck in any of these we have our goal we know our current state are actual we're at today.

We don't know that cause oh let me help you with that we got the first three down we're stuck on plan we're stuck on solution what to do let me help you with that okay it's such a beautiful conversation often this is referred to as a conversational a3 if you recognize this at all if you're familiar with a3 thinking managing to learn awesome book write the first three questions are the left-hand side of the a 3 question forced the right solution cite the mantra for us in a simplified fashion is stay to the left stay left stay left talk about the problem site before you ever talk about the solution side right that's such a struggle although and when I say that I'm saying all the way up and down the leadership org chart.

Ok we violate it all the time I've been mentored by a lot of folks a lot of organizations over the years Herman Miller is one of the ones that I'm just in awe of they are small office furniture manufacturer I shouldn't say small global office furniture manufacturer headquartered in Michigan they partnered with us when I worked for a healthcare system and they taught us their version of CI so I started out.

I learned project based CI and then another mentor taught me event based CI and then another mentor Herman Miller taught me daily and they all three didn't look anything like one another and when I got the day lay I'm like why didn't anybody else teach me this approach right that's another conversation so daily problem solving.

What does that look like if you've ever done a threes one of the questions I'd love to throw out there is have you ever done in a three in a day why not what's getting in the way of that where are the struggles that prevent that from happening right one of the things that Herman Miller and I'll tribute this more accurately to mr. oba oba thong was their sensei from Toyota they partnered with TM MC
to learn this approach Oba sign would say no no or not on left side so this is tricky if we talk about problem statements and really good problem.

Statements are like one sentence avoiding the words no or not in your problem statement if you've not struggled with this I've struggled with this for 19 years and it's still hard for me for example let's apply it up here when conversations start when you go into a project meeting into a meeting with your leader your team peers use this framework and figure out where they're starting the conversation and put good money down I got a billion dollars this morning from earlier presenter.

I'll put good money down that there starting with number four they're telling you the solution or the plan that they want to implement here's the software where we want to buy here's the consultant that we want to hire here's the training we want to give right here's the vendor we want to work with
solution solution solution you great to solve what problem oh well we don't have that software okay so no we're just reverse engineering.

Our solution right that's that's lazy problem solving right we're just saying no software is the problem that we're trying to no no no we think the software is actually going to automate some function reduce our lead time or we think it's going to improve our accuracy because we're transposing information from one system into another right so we think we're going to do a quality improvement things like that right that's what we're actually trying to go for the example that we use to try to get people to internalize this is a non relevant example so from a behavioral science perspective use non relevant examples when you're trying to teach a model that way people don't get stuck in the example they learn the model instead.

So if they're trying to learn in this model and you're teaching it to IT people don't use IT examples we use sprinklers so the example that we use the non example that we use is number four I want to implement underground sprinklers okay to solve what problem anybody know underground sprinklers that's that's where they come first time right they're learning this approach and that's what they put up in one and to know underground sprinklers but here's the thing that we learned from a boson is that limits your thinking that limits your problem-solving and you know it does and you know it's a bad approach.

And you know you're not at current state right if you can only take one path if my problem statement is no underground sprinklers there's only one path I can take the question number four to my solution underground sprinklers right no that's not the problem I'm trying to solve problem trying to solve is dead lawn it looks bad neighbors are complaining I'm about to get fined things like that right so if dead lawn is the problem that you're trying to solve.

Where can you go with that anyone what's that artificial lawn yes paint the lawn rip up the lawn install rocks right there's so many options that you have if you were at true current state right but if you only have one path you're not at true current state okay a little bit of preaching right sorry you put me on stage I also want to use this so she was mentioned earlier it was a excellent presentation that happened I wanted to say you can also use this in the same mentality as a shingo assessment.

So if you've looked at lean maturity assessments and things like that you can use this framework to assess current state problem-solving thinking behaviors in your organization when you walk into meetings again having discussions what's happening are people talking about number four as they evolve as they mature where their problem-solving ability they start to switch the order around and eventually they start with number two oh sorry sorry this happened again.

We're a Google suite company not a Microsoft Office so when it gets what is it called converted into Microsoft Office this happens so indexing with 1 1 1 1 11 is absolutely of no value at all so so this should be one two three four five perhaps everything I just said makes a little more sense now so the the fourth one plant is where a lot of conversations will start one problem solving behavior is beginning as people evolve they start to use actual oh this is where we're at today then they start using and this is our goal and then they start getting into cause and things like that thank you ideal state is they start with the goal.

First before they get to the actual right so think about it this way our house is on fire this many times right now okay how often do you want it on fire that's a silly question is it zero oh okay thank you now I understand great if we start with the goal first we can actually start being strategic and are probably why did this work it so I can talk for a long time on this one I just got the five minute mark so I didn't move along to what was called dog food eating one of the earlier presenters to your own dog food yeah you can apply this to see.

I just like anything else number problem solvers that we want based on scientific approach right I'll say connecting this strategy is really powerful we do a thing called a perfect day exercise this is what it looks like so there's a journey up the mountain right that you're trying to take ideal state current state future state one two three and four we use the five KPI categories of safety quality delivery cost morale and then we try to get people to line up on those on what is ideal state for safety what is ideal state for quality things like that you do it at a team level department level organization wide level when you have HR compared their journey map to legal to finance to is wow.

It's amazing to start to see how they don't line up and how you can work together on that I think it was like my second month at whirlpool I was asked to flight on New Mexico and work the executive team down there and here's a journey Mountain session right mapping trying to develop their strategy here's the part I want to emphasize a little bit the picture on the right is the president our Mexico region describing this is a highly participatory event you can do this from one hour up to eight hour sessions.

I've done before it works really well but the beautiful part is you see where you're not aligned on your behaviors so Toyota's priority order of the five KPI categories is safety quality delivery cost people slash mer one two three four five right the question becomes what is ours and so we asked that question of this team and they said oh yeah that sounds good let's do that one I've never had a team of executives line up in under five minutes no and they're no no and they were there conflict adverse like alright I'm gonna tell you what.

I think you're thinking you tell me if I'm wrong head of HR you're gonna put people slash morale first head of manufacturing you're gonna put delivery first where's the head of Finance cost is first and finance person see something something something right finances first and it was fascinating all of them stuff you're right people is first you're right quality sources right deliveries first right and then then they went at it one another and they started to storm storming norming performing right they started working through those stages they had a visit visible visual mechanism to be able to see where they did not align that's where some of the beauty came in and they started attacking the journey map instead of one another it worked really.

Well so I'm out of time we started your own dog food so he started to teach the other CIA leaders that are better through the outer the organization to be able to do this with their orgs as well visual management systems this is a global vice president's visual management system started as a blank wall.

Wwe got the Kanban set up thank you and the Health metrics they start set up so there's a lot of beautiful videos out there Nike ITU by a video is excellent on how to do a bias they had a very nice
marketing budget for their video don't jump to their ideal state right see if you can put a Kanban up just what is your project portfolio right put your portfolio on the wall figure out what stages it's and not working progress done use the agile stages to do doing done whatever you want and start to get alignment and huddle around that on a regular basis isn't built you start to change.

The behaviors then you start to increase the complexity as people actually get value out of it these have fallen flat as people don't get value out of this they're not ready yet that's fine we'll work with other areas this is evolved these are actually some old pictures we have a whole room set up now we actually spend a little bit of money and transform the maintenance room to turn into an abaya because we wanted to start the line up all the divisions across the entire globe on this really.

Well did this for IOT as well Internet of Things because of the backlog associated with it I want to give this a little bit of press real quick skills matrix is a beautiful way to show respect to your employees what are the skills that we need in our organization nationwide I have actually collaborated on this a few times now they do some great work around this - there's four levels fluency levels there's Dreyfus.

Levels there's all these types of things, I like this because the highest level attainable here is not extremely proficient it's coach I've successfully coached others on this skill what is the type of culture that that creates when your whole skill development program is based on coaching that's sustainable and generalizable so I'm out of time I'm over on time there's a break after this I'll do the same thing as a previous presenter if you want to do QA things like that it's totally up to you if you want to stay I'm very happy to answer questions yeah because we have a break now we have a little bit more flexibility so this is great.

Edward because this is real practice right it's a leader here who's implementing and showing the reality of implementation because so many times they get presentations that look so nice and it's so far from reality that we live in right so this is real on the ground than that and I love that so just want to make sure that in the audience.

Here if there any questions practical questions about the journey that they have gone in through you know the good the bad and the ugly what what questions do you have if you have questions to edit there's one here if you couldn't yes sir let's wait until the microphone gets here so just let me know your name title company just so we have context my name is pronounced so outside of peer
pressure's that you mentioned in that is usually very easy to use for leadership sort of engagement have what other tactics have you used to accelerate or reinforce lean behaviors in leadership.

Many so peer pressure is a beautiful or an evil thing it can be used in either direction right you mile line approach is excellent right target had only one team in their entire organization that was doing agile and then there was a leadership change and they had their KPI is ready to be able to share that and that helped reinforce the message recruiting.

I remember when I was interviewed for whirlpool I've been doing this for 19 years now alright so I'm a little bit better starting to see the types of folks that I want to work with and things like that and they were very tolerant on my questions but one of them was this is a behavior change right tell me at what level you think behavior.

Change should stop loaded question what probably shouldn't oh okay so what that means for us is if I'm working for you. And you're a global executive you're gonna give me time every single week on your calendar and I'm gonna coach you one-on-one right TMM see the organization that helped coach Herman Miller. 

They have three prereqs to coach any organization one no one will ever lose their job as a result of an permit otherwise it you just killed it right to you never make money on anything that we teach you we only ask that you teach others and that's they taught us in health care which is beautiful three threes heart three filters out a lot of people your CEO your highest person in your organization she gets coaching too.

So if the leader of the organization isn't willing to allocate their time to it how far are you gonna get you can make a little progress so that's Toyota they're able to make demands like that I what I tell people is the same thing as everything everyone else it's on a continual coach at the highest level you're given permission right and what people will start to see is that person is getting better KPIs
and they start to go home on time at night instead of 7:00 o'clock every night and working weekends right so they get better results in less time and their staff start getting happier and they're happier.

I don't know how that happened but I want that too we have time for one more question if there's any any other questions in the audience yes right there could you could you state your name and who you work with hi everybody Fabrizio Falcone Johnson & Johnson hi I have a question about the hard doll we have seen a global executive doing the art dolls like performance management meeting twice a week these are being cascaded to also down oh it's only on the leadership level yeah they're there all over and this is just like the last question do them where you're given permission right so I was getting permission to do it at the executive.

Level so I know that if an executive is doing it the word of mouth on that story gives me a lot of leeway when I work at any other level right yeah so if I would start working with directors managers supervisors frontline staff and there's. A little pushback and no I don't have time for this or no I don't really think this is applicable you know that's Toyota you know things like that oh okay well your global executive is doing this twice a week so I don't know if she's gonna buy your reason here right if they can make that time I'm pretty sure everybody else can.

So he started with the executive and he's helping the buying and cascading if you have if you have permission to do that if you don't have permission work at the highest level possible yep thank you very good Edward thank you very much.

About the Author

Dr. Mathias Kirchmer,
Global Leader of CI - GIS,
Whirlpool.

As a Global leader of Continuous Improvement at Whirlpool, I am responsible for developing the CI strategy, coaching problem-solving behaviors, and transforming systems for executive leaders and their teams within Information Services.

By education, I’ve earned a Masters degree in Behavioral Science, along with undergraduate degrees in Psychology and Mathematics. Recently I’ve returned to obtain a doctoral degree focused on Industrial & Organizational Behavior Management.

By training, I’m certified in Six Sigma Black Belt by the American Society for Quality; certified in Labor Standards by HB Maynard; a Lean (Toyota Production System) Instructor/Coach; a Kata Coach; a certified Scrum Master; and an Agile Coach. 

By experience, I’ve led and improved Continuous Improvement in healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and education for 18 years.

In addition to my daytime career, I’ve taught courses as an Adjunct Professor in Mathematics, Psychology, and Business. 

Finally, I greatly value innovation. I've obtained backing with companies and invented two products through ideation programs.