Dear FWA colleagues,
First week of 2019 is ending so it is really good time to make some resolution for 2019 with retrospecting back 2018 as everyone normally does. I just want to look back my starting days of FWA (roughly 100 days) and share with you my thinking for new 100 days.
When I started to involve FWA, I tried to learn, to engage, and analyze.
First is to Learn. I learned a lot in past several months - product, business, mindset etc. from all of you – Leopold, Kai, Tao An, Willem, Ronny，TPMs and all others which I may not list the names here. For sure as a new FNer, a lot of learning as well from FN community. That is new experience to me. During the course I tried to be as open as possible, as released as possible by putting away my old experience and judgement, as agile as possible to adapt to the new environment and new context. Sometime the ego might come out and I talked too much or showed impatience to you – if it happened – I would like to say sorry to you.
Second is to Engage. I would like to be in FWA troop,and I would like to help set up the troop with true customer focus mindset, but also with comradery and supporting each other along FWA journey. I tried to refrain myself from stepping too deep into daily project execution, but sometimes when the engagements became mandatory, I would do for example 5GGW very early time of defining architecture, Fastmile and WPON testing issues, 5GGW load/build issue, and someof P7 preparations, and field issues. Instead I was spending more effort on the task – GROW. That is one of top priorities in past months for me to work with Kai and other leaders: identifying the talents, talking to them and their giving side managers/leaders, bringing them on board, making all feel we are ONE FWA troop, not FN, MN, NSW, LTE-A, LTE-N, Nokia, Alcatel-Lucent any more, and keeping the talents to be with us and contributing to our product and business quickly. And it may seem trivial, but important: improve our office, lab environment to allow our members stay comfortable and we have WSPs(WorkSpacePrime) – Liping, Dongxu, Xu Jing, Gong Dan and others(thanks you all) to support many different tasks. Now we are more than double, and nearly triple our teams. The GROW work is not done yet as we need continue to develop the team, and make more contribution. But I am personally quite happy with the talents we have being brought in. Why we spent so much effort on this? As I have shared with Kai before, as Chinese old saying goes, “the smartest cook cannot make good food without good raw material (巧妇难为无米之炊)”. We are progressing well on this and the team is well ready to take challenge for 2019.
The third thread for me for last 100 days is to Analyze. I was impressed by the team when I first joined FWA – talented people with fighting spirit. But the challenge is there: from very first P7 on Sep 2019 to many P7s in the future(almost one for every 2~3 months) and our products are out of door to be installed and used by our customers. It is imperative for us to change and transform ourselves to be capable for new challenges. At the same time, we had TL9000 internal audit. Among several NCRs, and quite many items were discovered for us to improve for our own benefit even though TL9000 may not require that. And we had quite many complaints on testing areas, then we initiated a Test Improvement Campaign starting by a whole FWA poll to see what are the problems for our testing area, and what are the suggestion we may take. We are still analyzing and evaluating the improve methods systematically, but it become clear that some of the tools, system, and the MoO need to be simplified and digitalized, some of flows need to be more smooth, the blockers needs to be removed, and critical resources need to be offloaded(SAE, Development PM, testing leaders etc). We are working on this, step by step, some small steps were taken, but more will come.
So that is my first 100 days. Then what we will do fornext 100?
#1, still the product delivery and business value. Again, we cannot move our eyes off the ball – that is the only thing if we just keep one thing in mind – how to deliver, how to grab new business, how to make our customer happy to pay us and pay us more. We have to beat our top line as new BU.
#2, Accormadating of more changes (to our tools, system, support infrastructure, and MoO, etc). We need the team to align with this quickly. We make the decision in very cautious way; but if we make the decision, we expect the execution to be fast: no waving, no compliant, no defense, just execution. (for sure we will retrospect, revisit and change if needed). I know sometimes change is hard, especially when we change something which are proved to be good and successful in the past, but we have to change to live with this changing world and environment.
#3, as R&D, the first thing is quality delivery and innovation. We need build our product and system right meeting customer needs with high quality, with new/differentiated innovations and with high standard of Nokia brand. But that is not all. We cannot build our products by our own without deeply understanding the customers, we have to do beyond that: synchronize more with our PLM, listen more to the customers(from field issues, customer feedback, tale from field, or visiting to customer). We shall make sure we do the right thing. It does not mean we cannot make mistake - we will and have to make mistake to learn, but we need control the price of making mistake, correct the mistake quickly, and learn from it not to make the exact same mistake for the second time.
The goal is clear – customer value/business outcome and a grow troop with comradery. Let’s work together to achieve our DESERVED achievement, and I believe we will be recognized and valued someday for sure.
Jason
Together We Made It, Tomorrow We Will Make More.