What does it really take for an engineer or other technical leader to quickly earn trust, influence decisions and lead at the executive level?
Welcome back to Speak Up, the number one ranked business communication podcast, where we help high performing introvert leaders including you, social introverts turn your ideas into influence and improve business outcomes.
Because being brilliant does not automatically make you influential.
I am your host, Laura Camacho, your career accelerator and executive presence strategist and godmother.
By the end of this conversation with Chang Robotics CTO Ross Barnard, you will know how technical professionals can successfully transition into executive leadership roles.
Why communication and alignment are critical in high growth technology companies.
Ways AI, robotics and automation are changing manufacturing, healthcare and the future of work.
You're going to love it.
So, Ross, welcome to the Speak Up podcast.
It's great to have a CTO of a robotics company on the show today.
And introvert to introvert, we're not going to have any...
Nice.
It's like, how are you doing?
We're going to go into you are a young CTO.
You must be an engineer.
You're in one of the most technical fields there is.
Like how do you transition from being the engineer who gets things done to being a CTO of a company?
Like, how did you do that?
Yeah, well, thanks for having me, Laura.
It's not an easy journey, as I'm sure it is not for most people, but you start out and you kind of do the grunt work and grind through it and eventually you get an opportunity.
And that opportunity comes about at a different time for different people.
But mine came about when...
I had an opportunity.
I was doing project management and engineering.
I'm a civil engineer by background.
And I had an opportunity to go to Singapore and start an office there.
And so I kind of put myself out there and said that I would go.
And so I moved out to Singapore for two years, started an office there.
And we were.
We kind of had a anchor client over there where we were building a manufacturing facility for concentrate.
And that process really started for me of growth in terms of my communication potential and my ability to lead different teams and integrate them.
And that evolved over the course of that two-year period, with probably about 11 different design entities in multiple different locations, five different countries.
And you really just kind of have to step out of your comfort zone to get there.
Yeah, there's nothing like being in a foreign country to do that to you.
I found that myself when I moved to Venezuela in my early 20s and found that there's a lot more to communication than just translating the words.
So was that Singapore experience with Chang Robotics or another company?
It was with my former company, but interestingly enough, two of the people on the project were our founder.
One of them was our founder, Matt Chang.
And then the other was Kate McAfee, who's our president.
So we've worked together for a really long time between multiple organizations.
Now we're growing the business together.
But we all experienced that same project together.
Okay, so they already trusted you.
So would you consider Chang Robotics to still be a startup company or feel like it's more mature?
Yeah, we were founded in 2017.
And we are still kind of in a startup mentality, I would say.
We are about to hit, I'd say an extensive growth period.
So we're collaborating with universities, hiring out of Multiple universities.
We have an office in Jacksonville, Florida.
We have an office in Denver, Colorado.
I'm in the Denver office.
I lead that office there.
That's where we're growing a lot of our engineering.
But yeah, we did have a rapport before that project, but that project really gave us the opportunity to grow.
Well, since you're in the actual robotics business that people are saying are going to take away jobs, some companies are afraid of that.
How is the fear factor in your clients?
I'm sure the decision makers are fine, but do you find that relevant or not at all?
It's not an issue, the robots taking over the jobs.
Yeah, so in our business in robotics and automation, we bring in robotics and automation to help people and customers in their factories, specifically in manufacturing and healthcare and consumer products and food and beverage e-commerce.
We hit all those sectors.
And yeah, it's a real concern for people and you have to be able to talk, not just to the CEO of whatever company your customer is.
Right.
But you also have to be able to talk below the C-suite and talk to the people on the ground.
Whether it's engineers, senior level engineers, junior level engineers, or on the factory floor, we've got to be able to talk to operators and people operating equipment, people operating forklifts, because their concerns are real too, and they drive the organization.
And one of the things that we hear commonly, especially in mobile robotics, is well, this is taking our jobs.
And In some sense, there's an element of truth to that, right?
Automation is going to change the workforce.
And this has always happened in the past where anytime we have technological advancement, there's some jobs, that becomes obsolete.
And then there's other jobs that are created as an opportunity.
And so what we're creating today is a smart, intelligent factory.
That Factory of the future is kind of a common word that's thrown around in the industry.
And we're introducing this automation to supplement more technically minded people in the factory, in the workforce.
So real-time data that's coming at them that they can make decisions off of quickly, that they can interface with their operating production lines or packaging lines or whatever they're working with.
And they can make dynamic choices.
And, in some cases, the software that we're implementing or the controls are helping them make those choices very quickly.
But we still need people to operate those equipment.
We are not yet in a what is referred to in the industry as a lights out scenario.
In other words, there's no humans involved.
You can just turn off the lights and we're just going to manufacture stuff 24-7, 365.
We're not there yet.
Is it true that companies are reshoring manufacturing?
Is that a trend?
Is that really happening?
Absolutely.
I would say that the current administration's policies around manufacturing.
They're obviously very heavy pro manufacturing for the United States.
The tariffs that have been implemented.
There's companies out there that are thinking about okay well, do I?
Do I continue to offshore or do I actually have to bring in?
And we've actually had.
We actually had a Chinese customer come to us recently wanting to onshore into the United States.
So what are the communication challenges?
You mentioned all the different roles that you have to communicate with in a company.
Like how do you pivot from one to the other?
Like you as a technical person, what are you thinking when you're addressing one group versus another?
One thing is we have to get alignment with the people that we're talking to.
And this doesn't just apply to robotics.
It doesn't just apply to manufacturing.
This is just a skill set that I've come across through my career that I've found beneficial.
I don't know how many times I've sat in a meeting and there's people talking and they're getting their points across, but everybody hears something different.
Yes.
Especially today in the world of kind of Teams and Zoom meetings, right?
And hybrid, I think, is the worst.
As far as getting alignment, it's the most challenging, I think.
Absolutely, yeah.
And so people will say things and then if in your head you're like not really sure I understood what that person said, a lot of times we'll be reticent to say Ask the clarifying question, right?
Because you don't want to feel like oh, was I just not listening, or am I the dumb one in the room that didn't get it?
So I think through my career I've learned that it's way more beneficial to ask the clarifying question.
Upfront, regardless of how silly you might think it sounds and get that alignment.
Wait, wait, I'm sorry.
Did I understand that?
Did you just say X, Y, or Z?
Because I heard X. And here's another thing.
We have all these note takers now.
I get so many note taking emails that I don't even read them anymore.
Right, right.
I'm actually trying to teach my team to okay.
Well, the note taker is great, but I want you to really digest what were the important action items and commitments for accountability out of that meeting.
It's so true.
Let's pivot a little bit.
What are the kinds of decisions like your vision really as a CTO versus say, a senior director of engineering?
You know, the senior director of engineering is a very pretty substantial role.
But as CTO, how does the scope change for you and your whole way of thinking?
How is that different?
Yeah, great question, Laura.
So we're in a time of just incredibly fast-paced technological change.
And if you were to be following kind of the AI realm today, which we're all a part of, whether we liked it or not, there was a post recently on X by a gentleman who works in the software industry.
He's since been on multiple mainstream media outlets talking about this post.
Oh, is that the one about that the AI was going to take over everything right away, all the jobs?
I don't.
His point was something big has happened.
Yes, I read that too.
I read it and say because I don't remember very much about it.
But so you tell me it was a big deal.
Yeah, it was.
It is a big deal.
It appears to be a big deal, I guess I should say, because ChatGPT, which is owned by OpenAI.
They just released their new model called Codex 53, which basically it's AI software coding.
You type it in, you don't have to have any coding experience.
You type it in and it will create the websites for you.
And there's been... miraculous things that have been done.
People are posting about this all the time on YouTube and X and other platforms.
But the thing that is new and revolutionary about what just happened and why this person posted something big has happened is is because this is the first version of I'll call it AI coding that helped create itself.
Right.
And he said he didn't need to correct it even or to reveal it.
It's iterating.
It's literally testing.
It's like, I'm going to build this based on what you told me.
Right.
And previously, that's where AI would stop.
And then you'd look at it and you'd say, there's still a lot of problems with that.
I've got to correct that.
And you might use AI to correct it.
But now it's saying I'm going to build what you told me and I'm going to test every individual function of what you told me to make sure it's acting the way I would expect it to act by surveying other products.
It's pretty remarkable.
And I've seen a couple test cases of this, even internally in our business.
Okay.
It's pretty wild.
Yeah, I mean, we're in a new frontier.
So, as a CTO, to answer your question, as a CTO, To stay competitive in business we have to keep up with the technological change.
And that may be physical hardware that people are creating.
It might be new software that's being developed up just AI coding but At the end of the day, we have to be incorporating this AI into our product offerings for customers, because that's really what's going to be driving productivity growth for them.
And sometimes the application fits.
And sometimes AI is advanced enough where it will make sense.
Other times it doesn't.
And so trying to stay ahead of that curve at the rate of change is very challenging.
And the only way to do that is to have a really good team of people that you trust really surveying the market and testing out.
You have to have an R&D component to your business.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
So it's like the cognitive load of keeping up, which has always been, especially for software engineers or technology people.
It's been growing and growing and growing.
And now you're saying it's a team.
No one person can be on top of everything in the technology world.
I think everybody listening wants to keep up somewhat with how technology is being used in their area, whether it's healthcare or HR or accounting.
Now we have actually AI, maybe taking away certain tasks, but it's also adding certain tasks the task of keeping up with what's going on.
Absolutely.
And it's bringing new applications that you know.
Sometimes an initiative might not have been a good business decision for a company because of the cost.
Right.
Everybody's looking, business CEOs and CFOs, they're looking for return on investment.
Of course.
Now with AI, maybe we're opening up a lot more projects, right?
Through, okay, now this would have cost X amount of dollars to do before.
And it would have taken me five years to get a payback on that.
But now that I have this labor efficiency of how quickly people can move through sift, through data and use AI to benefit outcomes or control outcomes, various automation
Well, now it makes sense.
Now I can get it to a three-year or two-year ROI.
And so I'm going to go invest in that.
And maybe that's driving the economy, right?
So There are, there are some benefits as well.
And then you mentioned multiple sectors.
Like everybody, you know, everybody in the world is looking at how this is affecting their jobs and their daily lives.
So we have actually a subsidiary of our company called Curabotics.
And Curebotics is devoted to healthcare automation.
Okay.
And one of the products that we offer is essentially a nurse bot that will go around the hospital and it can deliver linens or supplies, or meals or nourishment, snacks or medication to patient rooms.
We've actually implemented this at full scale at the hospitals and we're in senior living facilities.
So it's, it's really touching everywhere and it's, the technology is just improving.
Yes.
It's so interesting.
So what are you looking for in the leaders that you hire that can handle this?
Like, how do you know that somebody's not talking about the functional part of the job, but the communication, the agility?
What do you look for?
How do you assess that?
You know, I think soft skills are really important these days.
That was the right answer.
Yes.
Good.
Especially if we're looking at anyone's senior level to bring into the business.
There's got to be a really good sense of communication capability, but they've also got to fit our culture and everybody's culture.
Everybody's work culture is going to be a little bit different but at the end of the day, we want to be working with people that want to work with us, and the limited friction.
So that's really important beyond the kind of functional technical side.
We're in the midst of hiring right now, straight out of university.
So we've been at a bunch of career fairs recently.
And I'm even turning my eye to that on new hire candidates because...
I want somebody that I can put in front of my customers and that are going to be able to have, carry the conversation with them, make the customers comfortable, be able to interface with all those different personalities and roles that you're going to see on the manufacturing floor or in a hospital.
When we send people out to do deployments of robots in hospitals, you've got to be able to talk to nurses and have a rapport with them, because training and use of the system is also part of what we do.
Are you also talking to investors?
Like, are you getting people to give you all money?
Is that another conversation that you're having?
We do.
We have something called the Chang Robotics Fund and it's a venture capital fund where we are bringing in family offices, angel investors, some venture capital investment as well.
But we're getting people to invest and we have a portfolio of companies that we have in the fund and we will then allocate that money and invest it into those companies.
Most of these are very early startups.
With the intent of growing those companies.
And the reason we decided to launch this fund is because, being in the automation and engineering realm of the industry, we have a lot of people approaching us with different, various ideas and we have a really good sense about what will work.
And what won't.
So because we do it every day in manufacturing facilities, food and beverage facilities, in hospitals, et cetera.
It's like, well, we've tried these different technologies.
Here are the problems we've had in the past.
Hey, this person's bringing a really novel idea to the table here.
That would really solve some of those pains that we have, right?
Those pain points.
And so if it is a good idea that we think solves a problem in industry, like actually out on the floor then we'll invest and we will support that company with our engineering as well.
That is so creative.
Instead of taking money for exchange of ownership, you're just creating a fund that people can put their money in like a venture capital fund, right.
Or a private equity fund.
Yeah, absolutely.
They do get a equity ownership in those businesses when they invest.
But yeah, absolutely.
I mean these startup companies as most startups, and the US has the most startups out of any country in the world, by far.
Okay.
And these companies are looking for capital.
Usually you have to run to Silicon Valley to find it.
There's also a good kind of funding scene up in New York, but you know the Southeast doesn't really have it.
And so in Jacksonville, Florida is one place we are trying to cement that as a kind of Silicon Valley of the Southeast by investing in these automation and technology companies and helping them get off the ground.
So you're investing in companies that you don't own at all.
That, just that you know.
Like Laura Camacho has this great thing and you're like she clearly is going to make us a lot of money.
We are investing in companies that are completely separate from us.
Well, congratulations.
That's very creative.
And.
This conversation has gone very different direction than normal podcast interview, but that's great, because we have a person who's talented in a different way from our usual guests.
So what do you think?
That our audience?
A very smart, very attractive, mostly introvert leaders.
You know directors, vice presidents, a few company owners.
What would you tell them?
What do you think that they need to know about communication or about the robotization of work?
Like, what is your word to us?
Yeah.
So I'll give one more example of something that I've found really beneficial in my career for communication.
And that is when I started. out of college as an engineer, I would put down every possible word.
I would fill the PowerPoint slide with as many words as I possibly could find to make sure that I covered all the detail of the technical elements of whatever finding I was trying to convey.
And what I learned over time is that's not a very effective communication.
Way mal.
Right.
And I kind of watched some of my mentors and peers as I went through my career.
And what I found to be very common and effective is...
Really just one, like a one sentence message per slide.
Yep.
If you can't convey the slide, if a person can't get like what is the one sentence point of your slide by just looking at it, then you didn't.
You're not ready.
Exactly.
You're not ready.
So we actually talk a lot with our engineers, as well as our project managers, about put it at the bottom of the slide.
What do you want to say?
I see you have this, you know nice 3D model that you created and I see a lot of words, but what is the message?
Well, good.
That's excellent.
That's a great tip to close out on.
So thank you, Ross Barnard, Chief Technology Officer of Change Robotics.
It's the most innovative company, I would say.
That's out there right now, or at least in the top 1.
So thank you so much for sharing your viewpoint.
And I'm sure everyone has enjoyed this.
Thanks so much, Laura.
Thank you for having me.
Wow.
Well, I bring you guests with extremely interesting points of view.
And just to pull out some themes from this conversation.
I love some of his reframes and new definitions, such as executive presence is the ability to create clarity under complexity.
The future belongs to translators, not just experts.
Communication is now a technical skill.
Senior leaders reduce ambiguity.
Clarity is a competitive advantage.
And my favorite, simplification signals mastery.
So if you have valuable ideas, expertise and stories to share, but you're still holding yourself back from speaking up consistently and showing up confidently and putting yourself out there in a bigger way, you're probably also holding yourself back from bigger opportunities.
And that's why I built Speak Up Summer Camp.
It's a private podcast experience created specifically to help listeners sharpen their communication skills, grow their confidence and learn how to speak with more clarity, authority and impact.
So if you would like to get on the wait list, which is open through the end of May, there is a link at the top of these show notes.
Have a glorious day and I will catch you in the next episode.
