Vanguard Magazine

42 FEBRUARY/MARCH 2018 www.vanguardcanada.com game ChanGER See the full interview online Q What is your role in your organi- zation today? Today my role is the President and CEO. I'm responsible for the overall strategic direction of the company. Also, doing the jobs that no one else wants to do! Q What was your most challenging moment? The most challenging moment so far has been keeping in front of all the changes happening in the company. Be- cause we're very small, and we're grow- ing very quickly, that means we have to continually reinvent new processes, new methods of communicating with the team, and new methods of tracking our projects. We've nearly doubled in size every year since our existence. And so really the challenge is keeping on top of every- thing and making sure that the processes and procedures we have in place are the right ones. That's an internal challenge. Our external challenge is to constantly continue to understand the industries that are using our product and what spe- cific needs they have – informing how we can best help them achieve their own missions. Q What was your aha moment or epiphany that you think will resonate most with our reader? One was early on when we started talking to aerospace engineers who are building safety-critical systems. Once we started talking to them, and really understood the problems that they were having, im- mediately multiple solutions came to the team's minds. And so, I would say one "aha" moment is really understanding the problem that these industries are having, and how these problems will get even larger in the future, which they will unless new tools are developed that bet- ter enable them to do their work. Q What is the one thing that has you most fired up today? What fires me up a lot today is really working very closely with our custom- ers and really understanding the issues that they're having. I gain a lot of ener- gy from people looking at our products and saying, "yes, I need that, this defi- nitely solves a problem for us, and what else can it do." They start suggesting a problem that they have that we can try to solve. And that is very gratifying. It's also a bit problematic because we want to make sure that we execute our own strategic vision, but seeing the accep- tance and the validation from the market is really very invigorating. Q What is a habit that contributes to your success? Every morning, I try to write out in very minute detail, 15-minute incre- ments, or 30 minute increments, what the day's going to look like, what I need to accomplish, what appointments do I have, and what gaps do I have where I can spend time thinking. So timeboxing everything, writing down my daily time- line of things I want to get done has re- ally been very helpful in organizing my thoughts and focusing on the important decisions. Q What people or organizations do you believe best embody the innova- tion mindset? Well, I do think that QRA is a very in- novative company! We try to embody innovation in everything we do here. Looking out in the wider world, I would say groups that inspire me are people that do things that are more mission-focused and who really are aiming to make a big difference, and so they innovate a lot, not just on their product but also on their delivery, also on the business model, and also on things that we normally don't as- sociate with innovation beyond just the technology – innovation within the busi- ness model of how they deliver value to the customers, etc. I gain inspiration from that. Q What are some of the biggest im- pediments to innovation in your industry sector? There is a lot of institutional inertia built up due to the scale of Aerospace & De- fence organizations. It's a very difficult world to actually get into. The supply chain has a huge amount of institutional momentum that's been built up over the years in terms of people, processes and technologies. So, it can be very difficult to make one small change without causing a bit of chaos. Q What technologies, business models, and trends will drive the biggest changes in your industry over the next two years? It's going to be design verification. It's going to be at the early stage of the proj- ects and programs. We already know to- day that most errors that are present in large projects happen at the very early stages, at the requirements stages, where there are built-in contradictions, or in the early design stages where they're design- ing models of what they're going to build, before they actually cut steel. The biggest change and the biggest innovation is go- ing to come in tooling and analysis – en- abling engineers to build with confidence. Q What is your parting piece of advice? I guess I would say the biggest parting piece of advice is the advice that was given to me. Try to identify the problem you're solving. Try to solve a problem that's worth solving. JorDan KyriaKiDis CeO & CO-fOunder Qra CorP

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