Here comes the sun

“That was amazing.”

I heard it so many times Friday afternoon, I stopped counting.  It was the feedback we received repeatedly as 150 families went home for the weekend after stopping by our “Bring your Daughter to Work Day” at Bombardier’s BAN facility in Montreal on August 5th.

The idea came to fruition at our newly formed Women in STEM lunch meeting in April, following a speaker panel event in March. One objective of the group is to encourage young women to get in and stay in the pipeline for long-term STEM careers. Though girls perform on par with boys in math and science in elementary and secondary school, women remain severely underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, with the greatest disparities occurring in engineering and computer science. Minority women are even further underrepresented.

What blossomed into our final event was everything you could expect of a team comprised of so many engineers and professionals. We were great role-models. The exhibits were focused on learning, problem solving, testing and building things. As he was leaving, Boris Meislitzer told me, “We could have stayed here for hours. There was so much to do.” And I was glad to hear that, because personal passion was truly at the heart of the exhibits, and I know that’s why they were so engaging. Though I am being credited with success, my job was ultimately pretty simple because our women are fantastic go-getters. To build up a volunteer base to lead the 15 technical exhibits and to fundraise to support logistics was simple because we have great people. I realize that sometimes our people aren’t reaching their full potential, and that’s why leadership is so critical for us. I simply shared a vision and supported our people to execute.  

When I first started at Bombardier in 2011, I was tasked with supporting deployment of the Achieving Excellence System among a great team including Julie Duchesneau and Emilia Villegas, who were key in making this event a success as well. In those years, we struggled with building up teams on the “3P’s,” behaviors critical to becoming a high performance organization. People, Passion and Patience. “We will never score a 5 out of 5,” people said, “it’s just not going to happen, especially in engineering.” Well guys, I will challenge cop-out answers like that every time. If you were there with me on Friday, I know you will agree with me on this:

We overflowed with knowledge, empathy, attention to detail, quality and excellence. We came together with no explicit expectation of compensation or reward. We had fun, we were on the same team and we shared a clear vision. People, passion, patience; we nailed it, on every level. We had cross functional alignment, support from all business units and grass-roots leadership. We made an impact, every one of us. It was the Bombardier I want to be a part of everyday. 

As he was leaving with his daughter (who I’m pretty sure is the next Elon Musk), Lawrence Oberfeld stopped me in the hallway just to say how inspiring and hopeful he found the event after a morning filled challenges, “This event really cast sun on the shadows,” he said. I’m sure you’ve all had days like that. There's no shortage of challenges within an aerospace company, so let’s agree to be that sun for each other a little more often. 

And finally, they were correct, all those parents leaving on that very sunny afternoon, “That was amazing.”

Here comes the sun