"Engineering Management Thought of the Week" Jeff Glass

Is there a difference – heck yea! There is a difference in both how you communicate to others (i.e., how you tell your employees they are responsible for a problem that has occurred or for a future issue) and in how you think about them for yourself. So what is the difference between blame and responsibility?

•  responsibility is empowering, blame is discouraging
•  responsibility looks forward, blame looks backward, and most importantly,
•  responsibility acknowledges that external factors may mean success is simply not possible whereas blame implies that if you had done something differently, it would have succeeded.

To expand a bit on this last point, I cannot stress enough how managing an organization or a group within an organization is too complex to assume that good people are always successful. Even if you assign responsibility for a failed result, it is different than assigning blame. The external environment changes too quickly and in too many ways for anyone to always be assured of success. Ask the best managers you know about the failures they have been involved in – it is highly unlikely they will be able to say “I have not had any”. Good people, doing the right things, the right way can still end up with a failed result. Again, the environment changes too quickly and in too many unforeseen ways to ensure success all the time. This why I like the business phrase:

“Never confuse process with outcome”

Reward good process, even if it leads to a failure or your people will never take risks, including calculated risks with great potential. Likewise, a good outcome can come more from luck than good process so beware of getting too excited about a lucky win.

Even world class leaders of businesses have failures. Most of these folks have been spectacular throughout their careers to get to the pinnacle of these companies (Fortune 500 CEO’s have essentially competed with thousands of people during their career to get to their positions!). Examples of brilliant managers who have “failed” include: Bob Nardelli from Home Depot, Hank McKinnell from Pfizer, Carly Fiorina from Hewlett-Packard and Richard Grasso from the New York Stock Exchange. All of these managers were extolled for their accomplishments before their very visible and public failures. And what about those we still think of us as extremely successful. Steve Jobs dropped out of college, was fired from the company he started and went through a significant period of failed strategies at NExT before it found a profitable niche.
My wife tells me this distinction between blame and responsibility is particularly important for women leaders. Women tend to take the blame for things more readily than men. I have heard this from coaches who have led both male and female sports teams too. When something goes wrong, men tend to point to their team mates as the problem whereas women tend to apologize for their own actions. Of course, it is not possible to characterize gender differences except in a very general “on average” way but this still may be of some use as a manager.
The bottom line: As a manager and leader, readily take and assign responsibility, not blame.

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There was a very interesting article in HBR (Jan-Feb 2011 issue) titled “The End of the Middle Manager” by Lynda Gratton.   It notes that traditional middle manager roles are being automated such that technology is “replacing” the middle manager.  Roles and skills based exclusively on monitoring, providing feedback, and generally keeping things running smoothly are increasingly being taken over by technology coupled with self-managed teams.  So what’s a middle manager to do?  Develop what the author calls “signature” competencies that are rare and valuable.  In addition, develop new areas of proficiency or adjacencies throughout your career.  Right on!

This is consistent with Engineering Management education for engineers and with the advising we have provided to numerous students in our program.  One of the concepts we are constantly pushing with MEM students is that you are engineers expanding your education into engineering management.  So take advantage of the engineering skills you worked so hard to build.  Combine your engineering background with the newly acquired business, management and leadership training to become an expert in a unique combination of skills that can not be duplicated without your unique background.  This requires embracing your engineering training while understanding how a particular organization will value that background without pigeon-holing you into a technical niche that you are not passionate about.  This may take some time.  For example, I often hear students say “I do not want to be a programmer” and thus they avoid any company that hires into a programming role, even if the company is a great organization to work for and has all the right opportunities, products and processes of interest to them.  Bad move!  Getting into an organization that has this kind of potential and developing an expertise or signature competency while you rely on your core engineering skills is exactly the opportunity you should be looking for.  So starting as a programmer with the company while proving yourself and finding the right areas of focus for your expanded “engineering plus business” expertise is a good approach.  Microsoft is an example of this but I have heard the same story from alumni in many companies:  “I started out as a hands on engineer [a.k.a.: programmer, lab assistant, quality control technician, etc.] but within a year, my team leader was asked to move to a new area and the company asked me to coordinate the project because of the broader skills I had developed with the help of my engineering management education.”

I strongly recommend that you find the engineering and business areas you are passionate about and put them together.  Become an expert in something that the organization values.  Of course, you will still work your way up in the management hierarchy but you will do this with the added benefit, security, clout, etc. of also having an expertise.  For example, assume you are a biomedical engineer and have an interest in medical devices.  Perhaps you should become an expert in the medical device development process, including FDA approvals.  This requires a heck of a lot more than just engineering skills and is very transportable to different companies.  Or perhaps you have studied wireless communications as your technical area.  Learn the adjacency related to the licensing of wireless bandwidth, maybe focusing on developing countries.  This probably requires understanding some policy, some law and, of course, some technology.  You have just increased everything from your job security to your salary potential.

The HBR article goes on to mention that the areas which will be highly prized in the decade ahead include: the life and health sciences, energy conservation, advocacy, social and micro entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, and coaching.  These resonate with me too but there are also hundreds, even thousands, of other areas in which companies will need expertise.  The key is to pick something you love and something you are good at; then work like heck to become an expert.  Add your management and leadership skills on top of this expertise and you can’t lose.

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