Welcome to The Control Room, a Design World hub for helping you make engineering decisions. Here we address complex systems, emerging technologies, and real-world constraints so that engineers around the world can make smarter, more informed decisions.
In this episode, we look at the opportunities and pitfalls for engineering leaders and share practical approaches for leading teams successfully. And to do that, we have a very special guest and influential leader to guide us.
Nashay Naeve, president of the Engineered Plastics Component Business Unit at Tsubaki Nakashima, leads three global manufacturing plants in Michigan, Italy, and the UK, and oversees all operations from Georgia. With experience at Caterpillar, DuPont, and Redwood Materials, Nashay has immense technical expertise and proven global leadership. She mentors women in STEM and manufacturing and offers lessons on fostering and managing resilient, innovative, high-performing global teams.
Watch or listen to the following video, and be sure to subscribe to the Engineer’s Edge newsletter and the Design World YouTube channel to get more of this content directly to your inbox and feed. Below the video is a transcript of the conversation, lightly edited for clarity.
Design World: Today we’re talking about leading engineering teams in the digital age. So my first question is, as digital tools and AI continue evolving, how has your leadership approach evolved alongside them?
Nashay Naeve: Well, so one thing that has been pretty sustaining throughout my career is I really like to empower my teams. I like to challenge them to make decisions and drive change. And I think as the world evolves, this becomes increasingly important.
DW: Another challenge that many engineering leaders face today is that they manage teams spanning multiple generations, from experienced engineers who built their careers pre-digital age to recent grads who are considered AI-native. So how can leaders bridge these differing perspectives and leverage each group’s strengths to nurture a cohesive team?
NN: One of the things you mentioned is leveraging the strengths, and I think that’s really important. Everyone brings something different to the table, and so being able to identify what the strengths are for each generational group or each person as an individual is really important.
I think what’s really interesting in this age is that the younger generation has a lot to offer on AI solutions and even training the older generations on the new tools that we now have available. At the same time, the older generation has a ton of experience and a lot of times they’re subject matter experts in their particular area, so they can really leverage this and train downward as well. So, it really builds something beautiful, where we’re able to share and mold the ideas into something new.
DW: We’ll talk more about team collaboration in a little bit. Let’s focus on AI and talk more about how digital tools affect daily work, innovation, and decision-making. AI is often positioned as a tool to augment rather than replace engineers. From your perspective, where is AI genuinely adding value in engineering work, and where do you see limitations or concerns?
NN: First, AI is evolving so quickly. It’s really hard to tell exactly where the value is added at every step in the journey. But what I’m seeing the best use cases right now for AI are helping us with idea generation or building more clarity on our own ideas.
One of the tools that I use pretty frequently is Microsoft Copilot or ChatGPT to help me build clarity around the ideas that already exist. I also see really good use cases in driving insights from data. Sometimes there are activities where we’re really diving into the spreadsheets and trying to build pivot tables and drive analysis where AI can really help drive those ideas faster. So, it enables us to work a lot faster and with less friction.
DW: Implementing this new technology requires a mindset shift, and many engineers remain skeptical about AI. But as far as workflow goes, it changes what an engineer might do every day, and it changes what leaders expect from them every day. So how can leaders help their teams shift their focus?
NN: For me it’s all about mindset and being willing to change and a little bit flexible too, because as things change, certain tasks might take a much shorter time. And being able to measure the results is the most important. Whether or not a task takes longer or shorter time, if we’re driving decisions based on KPIs and we’re monitoring the results-driven metrics, we’re still able to understand the performance levels.
DW: Nothing can replace an engineer’s experience and human intuition, but the point of these digital tools is to automate, help us gather data quicker, analyze it better and more intelligently and efficiently. But when do you still lean on your engineers’ judgment, and your engineering intuition and expertise, rather than relying solely on the data?
NN: This is a tough one I also struggle with sometimes because I like to make data-driven decisions. That’s extremely important that we’re making informed decisions and we’re looking at it with an unbiased lens. But at the same time, sometimes the data has outside influence. Like if I’m looking at the return on investment for a project, and my focus is very narrow, it might look on paper like it doesn’t make sense, but if I take a broader lens and look at what else it might impact, it might turn out to be a positive ROI. So for me, it’s important to include all aspects.
Also, to your question about when to lean on the data versus really giving the engineers the autonomy or trusting their instinct. It also depends on the risk level. If this decision is a decision that we can’t pivot from, or it’s a very, very high risk, I might want to put a lot more scrutiny on that particular decision and make sure that we do have all the data to support it. But if it’s a low risk or something that is important to make a timely decision, then we might rely more on the intuition versus having all of the data to back it up.
DW: You mentioned you like making data-driven decisions, and you also mentioned speeding up the workload. How do you create a space for your team to foster innovation and creativity, while they’re still under pressure to move faster using all these digital automated tools?
NN: It’s always important to give people space to be creative. When we’re on the daily grind and we have back-to-back meetings, sometimes you just lose the creativity because you’re just so focused in on what you’re doing in the moment.
So, one of the things that I do, especially as we’re setting our annual goals for the year, is I make sure that there’s one kind of personal development goal. We do a three plus one: three business goals and one personal goal. And then I asked them all within that goal, one of the points should be somewhat related to AI, like leveraging AI-driven tools to be able to drive the business forward. So I think just setting the expectation that we do want you to have time to reflect and think and include the innovation is important.
DW: You also mentioned metrics and measuring. How do you measure team success today? Does AI, or the more we implement and adopt AI, change the way you measure engineering success or engineering outcomes while still encouraging innovation?
NN: As of today, I really focus on results driven metrics. And I think this will evolve, but at least my metrics today are still measuring the revenue, how our profitability looks versus what we set as our goal. I think that will probably evolve through time, but as of right now, most of my KPIs are still primarily focused on some of the traditional metrics that we historically have looked at.
DW: Let’s return to team collaboration and nurturing resilient teams, which you’re known for. These days, how do you structure your teams so that you truly can break down communication silos and workflow silos so that engineers can stay connected to the broader business impacts of their work and help you achieve those KPIs?
NN: What I’ve seen is the structure of the team depends heavily on the business. But one of the things that I’ve done to help break down silos is I just restructured the team. So people who didn’t work with others historically are now on a different team. And that enables people just naturally to have more collaboration and break the silos a little bit more. I can share an example of how our teams are structured today and how they were historically.
As you had mentioned earlier, I run three global manufacturing plants. Historically, all of the reporting structures rolled up to the plant managers at each of the plants. So they were run very regionally. And when I came into the role, I decided that we wanted to break some of those silos and manage the business more at the global team level. So I broke out quality and engineering and sales and marketing from the plant and established global teams within that. And that has helped a lot in breaking silos.
When I look at team structure, I also don’t only look at what structure makes sense for the business, but I also look at the personal level of what are the strengths of this individual and how can I make them perform at their best. At the local level, you’re able to collaborate naturally because you sit next to each other, even if you’re on different teams. Bringing teams together for global business meetings once a year also helps to break the silos.
DW: Let’s talk about talent. I can’t read a research report these days without hearing that we don’t have enough engineers. Given that talent situation, besides compensation, how do you focus on attracting top engineering talent and keeping them engaged and growing within your company?
NN: There is definitely a shortage in the engineering talent. In our business, we are really passionate about our work. And so we try to really project that, whether it’s our online presence and just in general discussions. I think that we can share our passion, and then looking for engineers to join our team that have similar passions and are really able to synergize with us is something that we really focus on. The second thing we do is we offer really challenging work, which is also exciting and drives passion, but it enables a lot of room to grow within our company. So, enabling growth opportunities and flexibility is also something that’s very important.
DW: It wasn’t too long ago when diversity was emphasized as an advantage to help attract talent and retain talent. And even though policies and sentiments toward diversity have changed, at Design World, we don’t shy away from the topic, and we fully support diversity. We have an annual Engineering Diversity and Inclusion issue every October to spotlight engineers and leaders like you who are paving the way for others.
But still, engineering does struggle with diversity. It historically has, and it continues to do so. So as a leader in today’s dynamic, what specific actions have you taken to help build more inclusive teams? And how has diversity, whether in background, perspectives, or even experience levels, how does that strengthen your engineering outcomes?
NN: I’ve seen it significantly strengthen our outcomes. I host brainstorming sessions with a diverse set of people on the team at different levels, different roles and responsibilities. And what we see is we’re able to really get to better results and better ideas when we bring in the different perspectives.
And within my team, I mentioned some brainstorming sessions. We do them pretty often. Sometimes we call them spirit bombs, where we’re just diving in and throwing new ideas out and new ways of solving the problems. But I also encourage people to debate and challenge me, challenge themselves. It can be really fun, and bringing in the diverse perspectives, you really see it in the outcomes.
DW: To play devil’s advocate, diverse teams often bring different approaches to problem-solving and different communication styles. How do you create that environment in these spirit bombs and debates to prevent it from turning into a source of friction, especially while tackling complex technical challenges and under the pressure of accelerated timelines?
NN: Typically, if I see something heating up within the team or there’s a healthy debate going on, but it’s getting elevated a little bit, we take the time to step back and take a new look at the problem. That really helps people to breathe. And I mean, the ultimate goal is we want to do what’s best for the business. So when people kind of take off the lens of ‘I’m not wrong,’ but we really look at doing things for the business, that helps us arrive at a better end goal.
DW: Most leaders, probably like yourself, often advance because of technical excellence first. But leading and managing people requires a very different skill set. How do you identify engineers who have leadership potential? And what kind of support should leaders be giving to those people so that they can make that transition successfully?
NN: When I look at engineers who have leadership potential, a lot of times I’m looking at people who are willing to step up and own a project, maybe think outside of their current focus, think more at a systems level, and also mentoring other individuals within their teams.Then, you really can test out if they have the people management potential versus being a technical expert — which there’s nothing wrong with being a deep technical expert individual contributor. They’re just different tracks. So, what I typically look for is the engineers who are really willing to lead the project and take on that additional responsibility.
DW: When I went to school, the push was to specialize, whereas now the guidance for young people, as well as mid-career-level engineers in the world of AI, is to expand your skill sets so that you’re more marketable in a variety of disciplines. What’s your take on that?
NN: Personally, I think we need both. We need generalists who can jump in and kind of do anything. But we also need the specialists because there are certain technologies that if you don’t really take the time to deeply understand that particular vertical, you’re not going to be strong enough to take the company to the next level. So in my opinion, we really need a mix of both.
DW: Do you mind briefly sharing how you personally decided you wanted to go into leadership after being an engineer for so long? What was that transition like for you, and how did you make that journey?
NN: For me, one of the things that I was always curious about was more about the business impact of the engineering decisions that we were making and how did that impact our customers. And so that ultimately led me to pursue an MBA because I was just really curious about the business aspect. And then ultimately, when you get into business and you have this skill set, it just makes sense to bring the team. But for me it was really about taking it to a higher level and understanding the business impact and being able to lead in that way.
DW: If you were advising someone preparing for an engineering leadership role that they would step into in five years from now, what would you tell them to focus on today? What skills, what capabilities, what things are they going to need to know and be able to do in order to be successful in just five years?
NN: We talked a little bit about the people leadership aspect and looking at the bigger picture. So there’s three things that I would encourage anyone who wants to take this leap. The first is to really take ownership, whether it’s a project or a special initiative for your company, really taking the ownership of that initiative and moving it forward.
The second is to think beyond the current scope, but think about how your decisions in your role are affecting the business overall. And the last is kind of more on the customer-centric mindset. So what are the customer’s unmet needs? Why are we solving this particular problem?
Let’s keep the conversation going
Connect with Rachael Pasini and Nashay Naeve on LinkedIn with follow-up questions, additional insight, perspectives, more tips, and key takeaways.
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Filed Under: AI Engineering Collective, Commentaries • insights • Technical thinking, Engineering Diversity & Inclusion
