Black History Month With Ted Colbert: 2022 Black Engineer of the Year

Thank you. It is my pleasure and great to be here with you as well.

Thanks. So, Ted Colbert. I am the CEO and President of Boeing Global Services. I lead over 20,000 teammates around the world, focused on keeping planes flying safely and efficiently around the world and leveraging a ton of digital innovation. I've been with Boeing since 2009, had various roles in information technology and data analytics. I served as the Chief Information Officer for about six years. And prior to joining Boeing, I spent some time at Citigroup, about 11 years at Ford Motor Company, and time at AT&T Bell Laboratories and internships and part-time work. So, background is engineering, technology, process re-engineering, program management across several industries. All the while doing a ton of work in the community, helping further STEM across many communities in the country and frankly even when I lived in the United Kingdom. So, a lot of fun background, a lot of exciting places to live and to experience industry-wise. You know, from a day-to-day perspective, I'm like lots of other people. I get up in the morning, I start the day off reading something, trying to clear out any email that showed up overnight, and then getting a good workout in just about every day. It helps to clear the mind, it helps to reset the body, and get you ready to go. And then get to a commute or get on the phone or video. So, pretty straightforward. Try to mix in something, some simple learning from industry, a podcast or read an article or something like that along with obviously the normal news. It's part of the day-to-day routine.

Yeah, tons of lessons learned. And I'll just share, you know, a couple with you. You know, the first is fit matters. I've seen lots of folks try to force themselves as a fit into a particular role or a particular company for whatever reason and just fight and fight and fight and it's just not a good fit. And that comes in the form of technical skills or culture. Some cultures take on much more stronger approaches to things like accountability or speed. Some have a lot more patience. Some have cultures with people that are a lot more engaged than others. And you have to, early in your career in particular, experiment a lot with different jobs and learn about what you enjoy, what you don't enjoy, and where you thrive. So fit, I think, is so important. Seeing lots of careers slow down and get derailed by folks not getting themselves in a place where they actually fit in well or that fit well with them. That's the first thing. The second, you know, trying to find your own strengths, or I call them superpowers, in others specifically all the time is a bit of a fool's errand. It's great to observe how other people operate, what they do well, what they don't do well, but to just try to copy and emulate someone else that seems to be doing really well in their career is a derailer for sure. And I'll go back to the point I made before. As we spend time gaining experiences in our career, we learn about the things that we do well, we don't, and when we find the things that we do well, we should put more energy into developing those and continue to work on the adjacent things. The thing that I'd like to share in that is just listen to yourself. You know what gets you up in the morning, you know what excites you, you know what you'll spend that extra hour or two on, you know what it's hard to put down. Those are the things that match with your superpowers and those are things you need to focus on and develop. Just got to follow your gut. And then the last thing I'll say is look, everything isn't forever. I always go back to the Kenny Rogers song, The Gambler. You got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, and know when to run. You know, I've... and it's an interesting balance because I've worked in a couple, at least my experiences with Ford and Boeing, where it is easy to build an entire career in these companies and sometimes people do and it works really well and they're extremely successful and I encourage that. I also encourage people to take stock very frequently about what they are able to give from a value creation perspective in their role and what they're able to receive from a development perspective and are they surrounded by people that are really supporting them and their goals. And you have to exercise some agency sometimes and move on to the next thing. Sometimes everything isn't forever all the time. And again, I've seen that as a career derailer sometimes or people just not living up to their career expectations. So, those are just some of the things I've learned over my career watching and experiencing. And I hope that, you know, that offers something to someone out there.

Oh, you know, I've felt this way for a very long time and I believe there are tons of people that share the thought process with me. You know, I think that first of all, diversity, equity, inclusion are absolute force multipliers for performance. You know, there have been proof points by external companies, third parties like McKinsey and Catalyst, that talk about how companies that have more diversity outperform those that don't. Companies with higher levels of gender diversity and with great policy and practices have lower turnover and have more inclusive workforces that are likely to have better job satisfaction and commitment to the company. Those things in an engineering world are obviously super important. You need to have continuity with your people and when you create an environment that is diverse and inclusive, it creates the conditions to have a safe place for people to bring their whole selves with them to work every day and contribute. And that's where the rubber hits the road is from a contribution perspective. If you're able to create a diverse sort of cornucopia of talent on your team very broadly, you're able to gain all of the goodness that the experiences that all those people bring to the table through inclusion. And when that happens, you end up with much better answers, you end up with broader inputs. And if you have the right analytical machine to assess those inputs, you end up with much, much better output from a performance perspective and you mitigate risk. In the engineering world, groupthink is one of the things that gets us into the hugest amount of trouble when we're solving problems. We've got to use all the tools that we have and the more diverse team that we have, the higher probability we're going to take advantage of all those tools and make great decisions. So I think, and the last thing I'll say is our world is becoming even smaller and every part of the world is becoming more diverse in every single way, shape, and form. And the products and services that are delivered through engineering by great companies like ours have to reflect the diversity in those cultures. I'll give you an example because we use cameras and videos so much. Many years ago, I moved into a new office and we had a conference room next to the office and I just couldn't get the lighting right on the camera. And it turns out that, for those of you who are photographers, you understand how cameras work, because my skin is brown, if I didn't zoom the camera all the way to my skin, all of the lighter colors, all the white in the room just sucked up all the metering on the camera. Well, it turns out that it took our pandemic and our sort of, you know, video collaboration culture, I won't mention any brands, but our video collaboration culture for the camera folks to figure out that they should prioritize improving the performance of cameras for people with darker skin. Because if your background's soaked out in color, you're going to end up looking like two eye pupils blinking for hours and hours and hours. That to me is just a reflection of, you know, diversity. And I suspect, and I don't know for a fact, that the folks developing cameras more broadly for video usage, especially in this type of environment, didn't do a lot of testing across the board or they didn't prioritize putting the metering on these cameras to support a broad spectrum of skin color. I know that's a really weird one to bring up, but that is a real challenge. It's a real challenge.

No, I just said it's a real engineering challenge, just to bring it back home to engineering.

Yeah, so first it starts with me. You know, I obviously have to take the importance of diversity, equity, inclusion important. I have to model that with my own team. So I'll say before getting into the initiative space, even with my own team, when there are opportunities to allow our teammates to share their perspectives or experiences that are spaces to create empathy for each other, I let that happen. As we've had many challenges in our country over the last couple years, I create the space so we can all learn from one another and that develops empathy for one another and that makes us stronger as a team and helps everyone see the world just a little bit differently. You know, more broadly, our company has been working on diversity, equity, inclusion for a long time. And since 2020, we set out even more intense objectives. We got even more organized across the enterprise and laid out a three-pronged action plan to root out racism, advance progress on key measures of equity, inclusion, and strengthen our company's commitment to investments in diverse suppliers around the world. And so our three-pronged plan focuses on advancing equity, inclusion for all, confronting racism, and building and supporting a coalition amongst our communities and suppliers. And so there's a ton of detail that sits behind all of that. We are working through many of the programs that we've had in place in the past and we have a long history of supporting programs that educate, mentor, and develop women and minority communities. We're investing at a minimum $25 million in nonprofit organizations that advance equity by 2023. One of the ones that I'm most proud of is our commitment with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund to support historically black colleges and universities and broaden our pipeline of diverse talent from HBCUs. We had already been recruiting from HBCUs. This program is to be even more intentional about the great talent that we're bringing from HBCUs and that's been working really well. Our first cohort of students now joining the company full-time and doing really, really well. In November 2020, we also, for its partnership with Allen University, $1.5 million to establish a Boeing Institute on Civility at the school and it'll be a national hub for teaching and providing programs aimed at civil discourse in America and across the globe. So excited about all those. You know, I've benefited because the company has allowed me to put energy and investment in these efforts. We have external technical affiliations with many organizations through which I've gotten more involved over the years and go out and actually do some recruiting. There are folks that have worked for me both in this job and my last job that I met at these events. It turns out that they were a good fit for the company and they've come and helped us richen the mix of great talent that happened to be diverse and that has brought value to the company. So very excited about that. I think that there's so much opportunity out here, especially in the STEM field, that we have to spend time in the community developing the pipeline from, you know, K through 12 through college and make sure that the people are supported and nurtured as they transition into the professional workplace, especially in the engineering field.

Oh, you know, there's some real simple things, at least they're simple in my mind. Number one, I was very lucky and when I finished high school, I started a program called Inroads. And Inroads' objective is to develop and place minority youth in business and industry to prepare them for corporate and community leadership in the future. And so they match young people with internships. And my first internship was Baltimore Gas and Electric in Baltimore. And from there, I ended up in another program with AT&T Bell Laboratories and internships every summer. And then I ended up working full-time, part-time during my senior year at Georgia Tech. The common thread in all of those internships was great, great, great mentorship. I had supervisors that brought me on, gave me really tough assignments, enough that, you know, I could bump my chin just a little bit, fail just a little bit, but learn a whole lot about how to get on in the corporate environment, how to be an engineer in the corporate world, you know, how to solve problems, how to ask for help, how to take risks and be innovative. I'd find a way if I was an engineer, a supervisor, an individual contributor in any company to find out what your company is doing to bring in interns and get one sitting right next to you and spend some time with them and help them acclimate to the environment that you're in. I am not, you know, if you rewind the clock to, you know, when I first graduated from high school, I had my first couple internships at AT&T Bell Laboratory. I'm a totally different young person, totally different, totally impressionable. And those experiences made all the difference in the world. They empowered me to be confident about being an engineer. They empowered me to learn more about what I liked and don't like. You know, at Bell Labs, I worked with a bunch of amazing PhD engineers, amazing people, but I learned very early on that that was not the route that I wanted to go on. The specialization was interesting for them, but my desire and passions were more, or different from that. I knew just from spending time with them. But at the same time, I love spending time with them. So anyway, I think the most important thing is exposure, getting an intern working right next to you, sponsoring programs if you're at that level, and starting from there. That is just so basic. And then the other thing I'd say is if you have access to an HBCU, go teach on campus. Go spend some time with the professors and department heads and learn more about what they are doing and help them understand what's important to us in the corporate world right now.

Yeah, you know, first I'm very, very, very thankful for the recognition from the Career Communications Group as the 2022 Black Engineer of the Year. There have only been a little over 30 folks that have had this recognition and some amazing people that I'm just in awe to be in the same sort of stratosphere with. And you know, the things that all these folks have in common is, you know, they all overcame adversity in one way or another, they all worked really, really hard and demonstrated results, and at the same time, you know, gave back to their communities. And so, it's important to me because from a personal perspective, it's recognition that that balance of coming to work hard every day and giving back actually means something to someone and is a value to our community and to our world. And I hope that it encourages others to do the same. From a people of color perspective, I hope that seeing my story and the other people that have won awards over the years, both mine and the other awards that are given out as part of this program, inspires them to keep moving forward within this field. It is not a field that historically has been overemphasized in communities of underrepresented young talent and people of color and frankly women. And these events help highlight great talent. We see Black people doing really well in entertainment, in sports, all the time, and in other fields and maybe even in politics and religion. But we also have to uplift people of color that are successful in engineering, you know, science, technology, and math, because it creates a space for young people to see themselves potentially doing something like the job that I do. And it gives them hope that if they work hard and commit themselves to, you know, their craft in a mission, that there are opportunities out there to get. And so I hope that by being in this role as the Black Engineer of the Year, I can do as much as I possibly can to be a role model for those folks, give them the confidence that they can be great leaders in STEM, and know that there's a pathway with both getting things done and giving back to the community that matters.

Thank you.

Yeah, you know, and this has come from lots of experience over the years, lots of learning from mentors, lots of failing. Obviously, you know, you learn from mistakes that you make over the years. And you know, fundamentally, I believe as a leader, empathy is a first core value. Empathy is a pathway to taking advantage of the diversity of my team. As a leader, my role is essentially like being the conductor of an orchestra. You know, an orchestra has many different instruments and sounds, a diversity of shapes and sizes of instruments and colors of music. And your job is to bring all that together and create some harmony and create a sound that is of value to the business and the customers that you're in. And in order to do that, you have to empower the orchestra. You have to give them space to learn and to experiment and to fail and to learn again. And you also have to hold them accountable. You know, if that clarinet in the first row is tweaking all the time, you know, you give them a chance to change or what their reed or whatever, but if it's not working, you go from first chair to second chair. You know, so you've got to have a lot of empathy and empowerment but also a lot of accountability along the way. I believe matched with that is being clear around expectations of the people that work with you and around you. One of the biggest challenges I see with helping drive performance is that expectations aren't clear in both directions. And whenever I'm embarking upon a new transformation and I have some degree of clear sight about the vision, because it's not always completely clear, I make sure that everyone on my team is aligned to that vision and they are clear of my expectations. And without giving the entire speech, but at some point in time or another, I'll sit down with everyone and say, hey, look, this is where we are going. And if you don't want to be on this roller coaster with me, please let me know before we all strap in, because we can find somewhere else for you to go be effective and be valued. But if you get on this roller coaster with me in this car and we start going up and down and it gets challenging and you jump off, it may be an easy jump off and it may not be such an easy jump off. And so that is, but that's about expectation setting. It's about being clear we're going to do something big and you got to be ready for it. You got to want to do it just as much as I do. And it works. It works. I've had people opt out early on in transformations and I've had people recommit themselves. So setting expectations, I think, is the other part. And then as I mentioned before, keeping balance is really important and balance in all things. I mean, as a leader, one of my... we demonstrated this a lot during the pandemic. As a leader, you first have to take care of yourself. That means your health, that means your family, that means your mental health and well-being. You can't take care of others until you take care of yourself. And then you think about your team and what you've got to do to support them. And then you think about your organization and company. And so you have to look at leadership in all those dimensions to be really healthy of how you're taking care of yourself, how you're taking care of the people that work for you, the people that work with you, how you're working with your stakeholders, and be very intentional about all those things. And intentionality, I just say as a wrapper around everything that I just described.

Yeah, good.

Yeah, I think that, you know, mentors early and like you said, even beyond are important. It's an opportunity for you to have a bilateral relationship that's very purposeful. You know, and typically from the sense of a mentee, a mentor is typically stretching you beyond what you think you're able to do, planting seeds of possibility within you, giving you feedback that is candid and constructive and helpful. I, one of the biggest pivot points in my career was becoming, we'll call it the Chief of Staff for the Chief Information Officer at Ford. And he stretched me into some really hard work. He said, Ted, it's time for us to refresh the strategy for the IT organization and I want you to go lead it. And I'm just like, I don't, I've never done a strategy thing in my life. And so he put his leadership team in my hands and, you know, I went off and did a bunch of research, got some help, scheduled some offsites as we do, and pushed through updating that strategy. And I still have an artifact from that event to this day. It turned out really, really nicely. And of course, I stubbed my toe along the way. And of course, I upset some of his leadership team along the way. But those are accelerated experiences that allow you to gain even more self-awareness at an early stage in my career that helped me become a better leader in the long run. That's what a mentor does. A mentor not only just talks to you a lot and provides frameworks for being a great leader, they dunk you right in the middle of really tough situations. I had another mentor that came on as a new manager in my area and had heard how great of a leader I was and he said, well, I'm going to find out about that. And he just overloaded me with all these really, really difficult projects. And at first, I was obviously pretty annoyed by the fact that I was doing like three times as much work as my peers, but I also saw it as an opportunity to demonstrate my ability to multitask, my ability to delegate, my ability to prioritize. And that was the real test. And so again, accelerating experiences earlier in my career to make me a better leader in the long run and providing feedback along the way. So great mentors set you up for that. And I've done that for people that have worked on my team as well. You just have to believe in people, give them some space to learn, and sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes we stretch people slightly too far and we've got to reel it back so that they don't really hurt themselves and then move them on to something else that might be a better fit. But I think in the engineering world, that's so critical because our world is changing so much. Engineering traditionally was much more about physical products, traditional Newtonian-based mechanics, right? And today we're bringing together the physical and the digital and there's so many opportunities to leverage both to innovate. I just heard someone recently say, all this focus on software, do we still need mechanical, electrical engineers? I'm like, are you kidding me? We absolutely do. We just have better tools for mechanical and electrical engineers to analyze data, to use generative design, to use artificial intelligence to help them make decisions. But you still need great mechanical, electrical engineers, for example. And mentors will help bridge all the changes that are happening in the world, especially experienced engineers and new engineers. That interaction from a knowledge management, knowledge transfer perspective is so important.

Yeah, I think, look, you know, we've talked a lot about mentoring and diversity and the common foundation of that, it's really all about people. You know, great engineering shows up because people know how to take all the things that they've learned, all the skills and principles that they've learned about our field, and apply them to really tough problems. That happens really well through great leadership. And great leadership knows how to take advantage of the skills and experiences that their diverse team brings, keep them all included, drive them and allow them to be empowered to get work done, but hold them accountable when they make mistakes, but encourage them to learn and move forward. And so, I've tried to do that in every job that I've had over the course of my career. I've tried to work for people that operate in that way and frankly stay away from those that don't, because they don't tend to be in the most productive and forward environments. And I hope that all the engineers out there realize that by taking this approach, it opens up even more opportunities. You solve problems faster, you get to the next big challenge, you solve big problems. And that's why we all became engineers. Engineers are problem solvers and that's what I enjoy doing. And I've enjoyed that from being an analyst or an engineering intern to being the CEO of a $15, $16 billion business. So I hope that I left you with something that is encouraging and exciting about our fields and you have some tools to go off and be great engineers.

Yeah, so I've enjoyed our conversation and my thought for the community today is to think about one thing you can do, just one, to help with the diversity and inclusion within your organization. And that one thing could be bringing on an intern or bringing on a new talented individual at maybe the mid-career level into your environment and making sure that that intern has a great mentor and someone that can help them acclimate to the environment that you're in. And maybe that mid-level career person has a buddy that helps them acclimate to the environment. You'll find that you'll get a great talented person and they'll make a difference to how you all make decisions, the innovation that you bring to your products. So my one piece of advice or one action is to look around your environment and think about how really diverse it is and go and find one person to bring in the environment and mix it up a little bit and see what you get from that. It'll be a test to your leadership, but it'll matter. And that can be done by anyone at any level.

Yeah, sure. I mean, you can always go to our website, boeing.com. There are pathways to get to Global Services. There are pathways you can learn more about what we've been doing around diversity. We published a report last year that will give you a lot more detail and frankly serve as a template for companies, big companies, medium-sized companies, to go and execute around. I spend a lot of time with nonprofits. I mentioned the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, they represent all the public HBCUs in the country. You will also, the other group that I chair the board of is New Leaders, that's about creating great principals and administrators in schools in the country. Great, great program, has made huge impact on our public schools around the country. And then there are other organizations like the National Society of Black Engineers or the organization that recognized me this weekend, Black Engineer of the Year, is uplifted by a group called the Career Communications Group. Black Engineer of the Year is one of their forums. They also have a Women of Color forum, they have a Hispanic Engineering forum, etc. If you go to their website, you'll see all the effort they have. These companies are big. It's a great place to come and spend time with thousands of people from different schools. It's a great opportunity to be in an environment where you have a huge community that you can get access to versus going all around the country to these different places. So lots of resources there and hopefully one of those may help you out.

Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. Take care.