Mr. Credible
“We all wish we had superpowers. We all wish we could do more than we can do.” - Stan Lee
Boom, There it Is
I have a super power. Well, two actually, but the first is most relevant to the recent turn in my career.
It’s a bit of an acquired super power - not the sort you get from a radioactive spider - which means I had to go about it the usual way and the acquiring took a bit more time. Years, and years more time.
This super power is rooted in my broad, even eclectic, experience and the resulting expertise I accumulated across many technical subject areas.
A broad perspective, diverse skill set, and the ability to hyperfocus within the frame of the big picture lets me see things others miss and find creative solutions to move projects and products toward the ultimate goal, whatever that may be. Incidentally, this skill is why I floated from team to team at the beginning of my tenure with Oculus, and how I ended up building the mechatronics group and five bustling laboratories all focused on inventing the future of highly technical manufacturing. Our mandate was to solve the hardest problems facing some of the smartest scientists and engineers in the world related to measuring, calibrating, and manufacturing the newest generation of virtual reality devices.
My ability to see and build links across the related sciences, technology stacks, and team members, allowed me to hold a complex vision for the project or product. Then I could share that vision across the teams to inspire all the diverse individuals to add their best effort to the cohesive system.
Yet, I haven’t always recognized this as a superpower. Early in my career, I adhered to Gladwell’s rule and spent well more than 10,000 hours programming - I got to the point I was concerned my skill set was too specialized and I dreamed of getting more broad. So, I did. Then I became concerned I’d gone too far in the opposite direction and began to worry my broad experience and diverse skills weren’t specialized enough and my CV was looking a bit too varied.
Finally, I got some clarity during some particularly challenging projects. I worked with a lot of experts - some of the best in the world in their particular fields - solving challenging, even what seemed to be impossible problems. The lightning bolt hit when I realized my broad expertise and skills were what I was using to bridge the gap between the specialists’ areas of expertise.
I had found an answer to the ongoing conundrum of whether or not I should just focus in on single skill and become a specialist once more or keep pursuing projects that leveraged everything I’ve got, plus a few new skills I’d like to add.
Origin Story
Besides my own, varied life experience, my broad knowledge base stems from growing up in a family chock full of interesting skills and unique specializations, including…
My grandfather who taught people all over how to build those giant, super-high-voltage electric transmission pylons, and how to string cables from one to the next that were larger in diameter than your fist. He even knew how to work on them while powered up, carrying half a million volts potential, without getting crispy fried in the process.
My dad who was a technician at a motor research organization. You know those super slow-motion videos you see of cars crashing into walls to verify their structural integrity? He did that.
My Dad on the left, setting up a high speed camera calibration test.
Human analog dummies filled with sensor packages went for short rides ending in abrupt stops so my dad and his team could test vehicle safety structures. Stickers were carefully placed to facilitate tracking with high-speed cameras, and the cars were accelerated with precision linear motors - the kind you have to call the local electric generating station to get a few extra megawatts to run.
They crashed cars into walls, poles, corners, other cars, and other varied obstacles under lights so intense the car would get roasting hot in the few seconds each experiment took to run. There was even a high speed test track and a jet engine strapped to it allowing cars, trucks, and busses to get hit with intense crosswinds as they traversed the track. Sometimes they even survived and didn’t get rolled right off the track.
Ah, the fun that can be had when your workplace is built on an old WW2 airport.
It was a demanding job with a lot of variables that required absolute accuracy. Also, crash testing cars is awesome when you get to watch without having to do any of the actual work.
Growing up, I got to see early computers, with big reels of tape whirring and changing direction at incredible speed. I got to play with car parts and electrical components with parents who encouraged, or at least overlooked, my sometimes risky explorations. I built tanks containing heated bubbling acid to etch my own circuit board designs, experimented with x-ray tubes, and built functioning lasers.
Somewhere along the way people in the family learned how much I enjoyed taking things apart to understand how they worked, and a steady stream of things like old mechanical calculating machines, broken cash registers, vector graphic storage displays, old computer circuit boards, and circuit blocks filled with weird vacuum tubes and transistors showed up.
My mum worked as admin for a researcher and typed his scientific research and reports. After the job ended, she maintained contact and they became pen pals of sorts - she used to ask him how to encourage my interest in science and what I needed to do to build a career in a scientific field. He replied that I needed to take a lot of maths...which did not thrill me as much as disassembling and rebuilding her machines, or learning to code computers.
Master of Some
People tell kids to follow their passion and figure out how to make a career of it, but what do you do if you’ve got more than one? I’ve followed all of my passions at one time or another, sometimes at the same time, sometimes focusing on one for years at a time.
I’ve worked with software - architecting, coding, optimizing, and directing game and app development - and hardware - designing, prototyping, and creating parts and products - and I’ve lead the design and creation of bespoke manufacturing, testing, and calibration equipment to manufacture others’ products.
After nearly 40 years I’ve become the tech Jack-of-All-Trades, and mastered several. I’ve designed and built virtual worlds masked on silicon chips, and helped create the hardware that allows users to visit those fantastic virtual constructs.
But it wasn’t any of my individual areas of expertise that became my superpower - it was the skills I developed from learning about all of them. I was able to use this unique capability to lead big projects with multiple technical fields, scientific disciplines, and working teams, and leverage my broad perspective to fix complex problems to move the project forward. I’ve gotten to do things that kid in the midlands disassembling his grandparents’ vacuum cleaner on the back patio couldn’t begin to imagine.
Not to be overlooked, all this experience fuels my creativity as well, and drives me to keep looking for answers to hard questions.
We’re Putting Together a Team…
There’s a reason our imagination has been captured by super heroes for such a long time. Everyone likes to imagine how amazing it would be to fly, bend steel, climb walls, or be invisible, but those aren’t the sort of exceptional abilities we’re talking about here - besides, climbing walls isn’t going to be terribly helpful in your 9:00 am meeting.
The average person’s superpower is a lot more subtle and more useful in the society we’re inhabiting. So, how do you find yours? How do you recognize others’ abilities and help them use it for good?
It starts with valuing other people’s skills and abilities. Yeah, your engineering skills are super important on this project, but the office manager is the reason we’ve got power, coffee, and the lease on the lab is current. Sure, your PhD in Computer Science is critical, but without the skills of our marketing team we’re going to have a tough time moving these widgets we created.
Looking for and appreciating others’ superpowers, that thing they’re especially good at and bring to the organization, is the first step to building a super team that can scale buildings in a single leap or get that product to market under deadline. I’ve found that looking at others to find and acknowledge their abilities makes it easier to see your own, and recognize how they fit into and advance the team’s overall capabilities.
If you’re not sure how to recognize or use your superpowers, reach out. Your critical friends, the ones you can count on to give you honest feedback, are the best place to start. Find a mentor to work with or get a coach who wants to help you grow. Listen to their criticism and what they praise about your skills and work. Then, get ready to work - nobody flies their first time leaping off the building.
Every super team has a variety of abilities and individuals who’ve figured out how to use their powers to complement each other - they become more than the sum of their skills. They treat each other, and their individual powers, as equally important to the success of the team. Then they get to work saving the world.
Let’s figure out your superpower, assemble the squad, and get busy.
P.S.
That other superpower - the second one. Enthusiasm.
No, really. Though, I realize that sounds out of stereotype for a Brit.
I use the previously described perspective to build a vision for where the project is going and then inject positive energy into the team to spark incredible work. I infect the group with my enthusiasm, help them see their superpowers, and organize them so their gifts work together. Then I help them realize the role they play in achieving the vision, and they do.
