Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/735567
38 The PCB Magazine • October 2016 train, engage, and retain your best employees at all levels: • Identify and hire the right people. Wheth- er it's through an employee referral program, aggressive recruiting, targeted advertising, or a combination of the above, casting a wide net will ensure you have a robust talent pipeline. • Take care of your staff. Ensure that they are a diverse group and not just clones of you. Mix it up a bit (incorporating different personalities, experience levels, backgrounds, etc.) to craft the best team. Most importantly, encourage and enable an open culture where constructive feedback and different opinions are embraced and encour- aged. By embracing a positive and safe corpo- rate culture, ideas can be hashed out on their merits, allowing the best to emerge. 4. Remove the bad apples. This is a team, not a family. With your family you have to deal with your sister-in-law because she married your brother—there's no other option. In contrast, teams are carefully assembled by owners and managers. As in sports, if a player is no longer good for the team (either by choice or by capability), it's time for a trade. Further, trades are often best for the poor teammates in the long run. People deserve to work where they will flourish into their best selves—so leaders should not shy away from tough decisions when some are not in the right place or not living up to their potential. 5. Tackle the hard things first. It's critical for leaders to recognize and un- derstand their most critical tasks of the mo- ment and focus on them. The key word here is focus—to avoid the distraction of the million other things that are easier, more interesting, more fun, more whatever. Then grind away at that most important thing. The results? You finish the most important thing. You discover your other tasks, if still rele- vant, are easier to do once you've accomplished that first thing. And you find that day in, day out, week after week and month after month, your best efforts have been spent on the areas most valuable to you and your organization. 6. Take care of yourself. If you are not eating well, sleeping enough, or exercising with regularity, your perfor- mance—and that of your team—will suffer. You owe it to yourself, your team, and your stakeholders to perform at your best. So ensure you are appropriately balancing your work and health—emotional as well as physical. While far from an exhaustive list, these six keys have helped me grow in my career in the fast-changing field of the electronics industry. I hope they are of value to you as well. PCB John Mitchell is president and CEO of IPC—Association Connecting Elec- tronics Industries. SIX LEADERSHIP LESSONS FROM 20 YEARS IN THE ELECTRONICS INDUSTRY Sending a password or secret code over airborne radio waves like WiFi or Bluetooth means anyone can eaves- drop, making those transmissions vulnerable to hackers who can at- tempt to break the encrypted code. Now, University of Washington computer sci- entists and electrical engineers have devised a way to send secure passwords through the human body—using benign, low-frequency transmissions generated by finger- print sensors and touchpads. "We've now shown that finger- print sensors can be re-purposed to send out information that is confined to the body," said senior author Shyam Gollakota, UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering. Secure Passwords Can Be Sent Through Your Body, Instead of Air