"Engineering Management Thought of the Week" Jeff Glass

I sincerely appreciated the questions students asked during the last
seminars of our fall semester. Clearly students were engaged and
thoughtful about each speaker’s topic. I can only surmise that the
students who asked these questions (as well as those students who had
questions to ask but were not given the time to ask them!) embody the
most important part of being an MEMP graduate – “be a sponge”! Every
single activity you undertake, every class you sit through (regardless
of how boring), and every situation you encounter (difficult or easy,
fun or aggravating) is an opportunity to learn. One of my frustrations
in directing the MEMP is the missed learning opportunity I see for many
students. For example, professors who are entertaining should certainly
be rewarded and praised for that skill. However, some professors who
lack that skill may, in fact, have just as much, or even more, to teach
you. The intellectual depth of an instructor is not necessarily
correlated with their ability to entertain and if you are not viewing
every activity as a learning opportunity – and even viewing it as your
responsibility and in your best interest to be a sponge for knowledge –
you are missing part of the essence of being an MEMP graduate. Please be
sure to focus on extracting knowledge and skills from every situation
while you are at Duke and, in fact, continuing indefinitely after you
graduate. It may be more fun and whole lot easier to be spoon fed
information, but this will only make you more informed, not more skilled
and only marginally more valuable to your future employer.

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Let’s face it, there are some people you will work with who do not want
you to succeed and are simply difficult. I received a recent e-mail from
an alumnus who noted that he expected his boss to be demanding and tough
(which they were), but he did not realize how much his boss would
actually want him to succeed. On the other hand, he found that his
colleagues seemed to be more interested in him failing than succeeding.
Clearly there are both good bosses and bad bosses and good colleagues
and bad colleagues but numbers alone mean you are more likely to run
into a bad colleague compared to a bad boss (i.e., for every boss you
work with there will be many colleagues you need to work with). This is
good because it is harder to manage a difficult boss than a difficult
colleague! But more importantly, we need to realize that the spectrum of
personalities we run into at work and the reasons that we perceive
someone as bad to work with, do not lend themselves to simple analysis.
The wide spectrum of personalities, cultural backgrounds and even moods
means that this is not an easy subject to tackle. Nonetheless, here are
a few generalizations I believe are true and would like to share:

• Even if you find someone very difficult to work with and feel that
they are trying to cause you to fail, the chances are very high that
they are more interested in their own success than your failure. Their
insecurities or perception of competition may cause them to believe that
your failure is required for their success, but nonetheless the previous
statement still holds.

• Hand-in-hand with the previous point is the notion that most people
seek those things that make them feel good and avoid those things which
cause pain. Pain in the case of work relationships could be
embarrassment, failure, lack of control, uncertainty, etc.

• The final point to consider when determining how to handle this
situation is that we all have somewhat different motivations beyond
these basics. That is, one person might be motivated by public praise
whereas another may actually be upset and embarrassed by it. Some people
may be motivated by working with others, whereas some may obtain their
motivation by working alone.

So what does all this mean for how to deal with difficult people? First,
back to what I said in the beginning; let’s face it, there are some
people you just want to avoid. But I personally believe this is very
rare and these types of people are “few and far between.” Rather,
assuming the person is not simply someone you must avoid, I believe that
the winning strategies involve some of the following:

• Make sure you know yourself – what I mean by this is that we all bring
biases to any situation and we all have our own strengths and
weaknesses. Many times we perceive other people through our own lens.
Constantly test yourself and question yourself and your perceptions to
be sure that they are accurate and that you have a good understanding of
your own biases when deciding someone as difficult.

• Get to know the other person – although this may be difficult, it will
provide a much better basis for judgment than assumptions about the
person’s personality and motivations. It will take time and require that
you develop some trust with the person, but it is certainly your best
platform for action.

• Make them successful – if someone perceives that your actions and
activities are in their own best interests then they will support your
activities! The best communicators and someone who we would call a
“people person” is someone who does this naturally, without any effort
and without anything remotely perceived as disingenuous. Figuring out
what it takes to have this colleague perceive that your actions are in
their best interest will insure they do not hinder your work and, in
fact, will help you succeed.

• Resolve it yourself – of course, if the situation deteriorates
significantly, going to your boss is always an option. In fact, that is
part of your boss’s job. However, there is absolutely no question that
if you can solve it on your own then your boss will be happy and you
will have proven that your skills are more valuable to the company. On
the other hand, if it is hindering progress for the company and you have
tried but cannot solve it on your own, talk to your boss clearly and
objectively. If at all possible, propose a solution.

In conclusion, remember that organizations are all about relationships.
You will have to manage multiple relationships in almost any job and the
better you become at this, the more successful you will be. A last
resort is to avoid problem people, but this is unlikely to be an optimal
solution and may not be possible. I believe that most instances of
problems with relationships at work are misunderstandings and/or style
differences. Finding common ground on which to work with your colleagues
will pay off large dividends in your career. If you want to read an
interesting HBR case study on this topic, see “When Your Colleague Is a
Saboteur,” by Bronwyn Fryer, Harvard Business Review, November 2008 and
the associated commentary by three experts.

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To end the year, I would like to reflect back on our past students and
thank them for the culture they have created in the MEM program.
Whatever success the MEMP has enjoyed, has been a direct result of the
students who have come before you. Their thoughtful input, tireless
efforts to improve the MEM program and positive, proactive approach to
solving problems has been a cornerstone of the MEMP. These students have
identified problems, brought them to our attention and then helped us
solve them. Many of you in the current class have kept up this
tradition. There are three characteristics that tend to stand out in
these students and that are also very important in a successful career –

Their ability to:

1. identify and prioritize problems; then spend the valuable time they
have on the most important and highest impact problems faced by the
entire group of MEM students.

2. understand when their individual perception is different from most
other students and thus their opinion is not the opinion shared by the
group.

3. approach problems in a positive and constructive manner, including a
proposed solution, followed by the flexibility to develop new solutions
with additional input from both students and staff.

Thus, I encourage you to develop habits which will be valuable in your
jobs by developing these same abilities. This includes approaching
issues constructively and with a positive framework. One of my
frustrations in this area involves the course evaluations which our
students sometimes provide. Course evaluations are critical for the
program and have caused us to make major changes in courses and
instructors. But making emotional, belligerent comments about a
professor simply has little value. These types of comments are many
times discounted because of the way they are delivered. Providing
constructive criticism and ways that a professor can improve the course
while balancing your comments with what you learned from the professor
has much greater impact. It is also much better practice for what will
make you successful when trying to provide feedback to others in the
real world (you will have a Harvard Business School reading in your
management class discussing this in more detail). Admittedly, only a few
students in each course tend to make this mistake but I would like us to
strive for perfection!

So I will end this final Thought of the Week for 2008 by sincerely
thanking the students who have come before you, as well as current
students, who have had a positive impact on the program in any way; from
simply demonstrating the positive attitude and work ethic in your
courses to taking on a big extracurricular project for future students.
Keep up the good work. It is a pleasure to be associated with you and I
know I will be hearing about your future success for many years to come.

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My apologies for the length of time since my last correspondence and
thanks to those of you who reminded me about this. I guess it is a
“thought of the MONTH” right now given my schedule! Thus, this one is a
bit long to make up for the length of time 🙂 …..

Every year I interact with MEM students on various research projects.
And every year I am VERY surprised at the difficulty that students have
in conducting research, even some of our best students who think they
are doing very well! In this case I am not talking laboratory research,
but rather “paper research” – the gathering and analysis of information.
In today’s information age, everyone can Google a topic and find some
information related to their key words. However, finding the best, most
appropriate and highest quality information is a different story. In
addition, analyzing that information is another important issue. There
is not much I can say to teach you in this short blog about conducting
high quality research. I can only strongly encourage you to think deeply
about any research project you undertake and consider the various ways
to find information and to analyze it before utilizing it in a report or
presenting it for a project. Google, although it is a great way to
start, it is only one quick, superficial way to search for information.
You should get to know the library databases and how to utilize them
while you are here. The point is not to become an expert in a specific
set of databases that Duke’s library may have, but rather to develop the
skills and processes to conduct research no matter what databases you
have access to.

These skills will be extremely valuable in the future. When your
supervisor comes and asks you about a particular topic of which you know
very little, this set of skills will make you an “instant expert” and a
very valuable employee. Of course, I am using the term “expert” loosely,
but as they say, “in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
What I mean is, many times employers will be searching for new
information and new areas. If you are the employee that can quickly
gather and assess information about such areas, you will be seen as very
knowledgeable and a great resource. But not if you are only relying on a
simple Google search. This research can be divided into four major
components: Objective/Strategy (or “define the problem”), Data
Gathering, Analysis, & Insights. Thoughts on each are below (thanks to
Professor Holmes for his ideas here!):

OBJECTIVE/STRATEGY – DEFINING THE PROBLEM
A ship with no heading is sure to reach its destination. Far too many
people begin research without having a clear objective or without
understanding the problem they are trying to solve. Approach research
just as you would any project. What question are you trying to answer?
What time budget is the research worth? What resources do you plan to
employ? How will you know when you are finished? Are you trying to be
comprehensive or simply pull representative, best-effort information
with the time allowed? Once you know your objective, plot a strategy for
conducting the research. Objective implies WHERE you want to go where
strategy is about HOW you will get there.

DATA GATHERING
Continuing from the strategy development phase, map out a very short
plan of how you plan to achieve the objective. There are essentially 4
quadrants of conducting research, so determine how much time you want to
invest in each quadrant (where you may omit certain quadrants altogether):

– Secondary-Internal: Secondary research which your
customer/organization already has on file

– Primary-Internal: Interviewing or surveying your customer/organization
for their ideas

– Secondary-External: Secondary research found outside of your
customer/organization (e.g., on the Web and other resources)

– Primary-External: Often the most important and least used quadrant, it
involves interviewing or surveying experts outside of your
customer/organization.

Many times the secondary external investigation will be you “bread and
butter” so I want to expand on this area. The process can be time
consuming and tedious. This is why most people do not do it very well.
(Side note: Similarly, the primary external category is very difficult
because it usually involved cold calls but that is a blog for a
different time). So I recommend:

1. Start with a simple search using key words you know (Google of course)

2. Use MANY different permutations of key words you have in mind and
examine the results

3. REFINE YOUR KEY WORDS – carefully read the documents and web info
that you gather and find those that are directly relevant for your
needs. Determine new key words from these documents and REPEAT the steps
above.

4. After determining the best key words from this process, it is time to
really expand your search activities. Start with the electronic
databases at whatever virtual library you have access to. Generally,
your company, your university via alumni benefits, and public libraries
will provide you access to databases. This step is nontrivial! It takes
many attempts to find the best databases and the best way to search
these databases, even when you have the right key words.

5. Expand your search by looking for professional societies and trade
organizations in the topic and going directly to their web sites to look
for information. This is also a good way to find experts for primary
research.

6. You should now have a set of documents that is truly rich in the
information you need. But there is one more step (with multiple
iterations) that you should go through before moving to the Analysis and
Insights stages of the research. While reading the documents you have
collected, evaluate the references within those documents and determine
which are relevant to your project and collect them too. Many will not
be found in a simple key word search and you must find them based on
their title, author, etc. Of course, you can then do this again and
again in a “branching tree” manner so that you collect several
generations of documents (that is, look into the references of the new
documents and then the references of the second generation documents and
so on).

7. Now you are finally ready to conduct the analysis and develop
insights! Remember that in the data gathering phase of the work, you are
developing a library of relevant material for your OR for your
boss/colleagues. It provides supporting data for any conclusions that
will be made. But it is only valuable if it is directly relevant to the
project! Providing a big stack of material that is peripheral to the
project or has relevant material hidden deep in the documents is not
very valuable for anyone.

ANALYSIS
Use tools you have learned in your engineering, marketing, and strategy
classes to turn data into information that can be consumed by your
customer. Data gathering creates pages of information about competitors.
Analysis creates a matrix showing how various competitors compare based
upon certain factors of importance, for example.

INSIGHTS
Many people can be trained to gather data. Most engineers can provide
thoughtful analysis. Few people can turn analysis into insights.
Continuing the competitive intelligence example, insights involve
consuming the competitive matrix and determining which competitor is the
one that should be watched most closely and why. Insights are about
absorbing information and analysis and delivering strategic comments
that answer the question that is driving the research in the first
place. Better yet, insights anticipate the next step in the process and
answer it!

In summary, learn how to manage, absorb and utilize information well in
todays “information age” and you will be more valuable to your organization.

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