"Engineering Management Thought of the Week" Jeff Glass

It is truly a small world! This is true in both space and time.  I have been reminded of this in several ways over the last few months, including:

• running into MEM alumni in a grocery store and a coffee shop in San Francisco while I was on sabbatical
• running into an MEM alumnus while leaving a Mall near a workshop I attended in Boston
• chatting with someone after a presentation I had given and finding they work with colleagues I had written papers with 15 years ago (this one actually happened twice in the last week)
• meeting the husband of a woman I worked with 20 years ago while she was a masters student

And the list goes on (while on a past trip walking through Hong Kong, while waiting for a flight in the Tokyo airport, etc.!). It’s a small world. Spatially because I can go to cities from Boston to San Francisco and coincidentally run into MEM alumni. Temporally, because I still have connections with students I have not seen in 10 years or colleagues I worked with more than 15 years ago in previous fields. (We had all recently talked about that past work with our new colleagues and have now coincidentally ended up in fields that are once again connected for one reason or another). This is all quite surprising to me. It is a small world.

So why do I bring this up on my engineering management blog? I think it illustrates a couple of important points:

1) Don’t burn any bridges – There will be times in your life when you don’t like your boss or your coworker or even one of your employees. Fine, you don’t need to like them but you do need to treat them with respect. And I don’t mean you need to treat with respect IF they treat you with respect. That’s easy. I mean regardless of how you feel or how they treat you, take the high road. Change something to move away from them but while you are working on what that something is, continue to be professional and respectful. You may be thinking; “even if I run across this person in 10 years, I don’t want anything to do with them so why should I care about burning a bridge?” First, consider that how you treat this person you don’t like will be perceived by others, so any bridge you burn will not be isolated to a single person. Second, people change. And the way you treat this person may even contribute to such a change. So, don’t burn a bridge, you don’t know when you will cross paths with people from your past.

2) Utilize your network – If you make it a habit to develop relationships early in your career, they can last a lifetime. And integrated over that lifetime, they can add immense mutual value. It is not a one way street; you need to be willing to give value, not just receive it, but if you are, there is no predicting when or how you will reap benefits from these relationships. Of course, the intrinsic value of simply connecting with others who have different experiences and perspectives will also be part of that. If you are still in an MEM program, even if it is a distance format, you should be even more aggressive in making connections – it is one of the best times to make connections with people who you have so much in common with. When I have seen former colleagues who I have not connected with in a decade, many times we pick up right where we left off! It is always interesting to inform my upcoming career decisions with their experiences and quite enjoyable too…which brings me to my last point.

3) Have fun! It really is a blast to reconnect with people who you have a shared history with but took a different path. The shared history provides a connection and an experience base that gives you a common language. You quickly and easily expand your knowledge and vicarious experience through such interactions. And there is a good chance that something or someone they know or some experience they have had is just what you need to help with some issue you are facing.

So take time while you are in the early stages of your career. Develop relationships that can last a lifetime and try not to burn any bridges. And if we have worked together in the distant past or you were a student in one of my classes or programs, I hope if you see me on the street in some unlikely place, you will take the opportunity to reconnect or just say hello and exchange a quick update.