Engineer to Leader: Colleges Teach Management?

Stuff just keeps repeating, and repeating, and repeating, and repeating, and......

Did you ever wonder why history keeps repeating itself?

Not just the history of our nation or the history of nations of the world... but did you ever notice how some aspects of your career keep repeating? How certain aspects of your professional life keep repeating?

Have you ever taken note of what aspects of your professional life keep repeating?

Is it the:

maximum level at which your career can advance?
type of boss you can work for or can't work for?
type of colleague you can't abide or work best with?
type of project you excel at or you crash on?

If there is repeatability in your career either positive or negative then this may be a sign that you aren't making these particular choices in your life, your apparent choices are really nothing more than personal programs that run themselves over and over and you're along for the ride.

But have heart... you're not alone. We all are driven, in part, by our "internal programming" and it often keeps real choice from showing up in our lives with both positive and negative results.

And what causes this repeating pattern you might ask?

Actually there are several causes.

The first cause is that the patterns we currently have, at some point in our lives really did work and maybe some of them still do. In the past, these patterns helped us to succeed and without anything to replace them we assume they will continue to help us succeed. And so we continue to use the same patterns.

The second cause is that all around us is a culture, a philosophy, an underlying "dialogue" that convinces us that we are to behave in a certain way. Whether it is to purchase a bigger house, or to trade in that old tube television set for a flat screen, or to buy music one song at a time over the Internet instead of buying 12 at once on a CD, or to eat fast food because we haven't time to cook and eat, the underlying dialogue is there.

Whatever the message it is a low-level noise that continues to move us toward a specific outcome.

And one of those low-level dialogues that consistently shows up in American business environments is what it means to be a leader, or manager, or what it means to be "in charge".

I never cease to be amazed at how powerful this underlying whisper is in our business environment and even in our schools. This week I conducted a class at the University of California at Santa Barbara, UCSB. I teach there regularly in their Technology Management Program (TMP). The TMP is part of the curriculum in the UCSB Engineering School. The title of my course is "So you want to be a technical manager?"

I usually give my students a case study to work on, as I again did in this class. The case study is a true situation that happened to me when I was director of engineering in a software company. In the case study, I had just been hired and I "inherited" four software programs, managed by four different program managers. Two programs were on schedule and in budget, one was months behind schedule and over budget, and one was behind schedule and out of money.

I gave my class the case study in which the program was behind schedule and out of money. The contract also had a subcontractor that was behind schedule and out of money?

Now my basic philosophy is that we should alter our management style depending upon the situation we are attempting to manage. One of the parameters I use to make this decision is the risk of the project and another is the expertise of the manager compared to the expertise of the team members. (There are six parameters that I use to determine the optimum management style. I call the process "Contextual Definition").

I laid out to the class the conditions of the situation as I found them when I joined the company.

In the the actual business situation the expertise did not rest with me, it rested with the team I inherited. Likewise, in this case study, the expertise did not rest with the students since they were assuming my role as director of engineering.

Because of the specifics of the situation a management style that was more participative seemed in order. How can a manager who doesn't understand the workings of the project nor the technology expect to step into the management role and "dictate" or "direct" what needs to be done.

I laid out the situation to the students and their task was to manage the program back to health.

Now a very interesting thing occurred. They opted to show they were in control instead of building a team that worked together. They resorted to the Donald Trump approach... "You fix this OR ELSE!"

There is no doubt in my mind that this is a fear-based management approach. In fact, they all indicated in one way or another that they were afraid they didn't know how to fix the situation and since the team didn't deliver up until taking over the program they're best approach was to brow-beat the workers into doing a better job.

The message here is that even business and engineering majors in their early 20s have already been conditioned to feel so insecure when leading that they have to take an authoritative position.

In my situation, when I took over the project, I used a more participative approach and got both my team and the subcontractor to contribute their own time to finish the project, something that, I'm sure, would not have happened if I had taken an authoritative approach.

In the face of uncertainty, the underlying management dialogue or noise is that leaders "get tough" and tell people what to do... or else.

Instead, in the face of uncertainty, I teach our young managers to build a team, and go there together. The contrast between their natural response and what I teach and what had worked for me was an important teaching moment.