"Engineering Management Thought of the Week" Jeff Glass

I was reminded a few weeks ago that one task of a leader is to tone down the rhetoric that naturally arises in an organization.  We have a tendency to grouse, complain, gripe, etc. about all aspects of our jobs that we do not like.  It can get so bad that some organizations develop a culture based more on “gripe sessions” (perhaps more commonly known as “bitch sessions”!) than productive problem solving.  Let’s face it, every organization has problems and since no manager is perfect there are usually plenty of things for an employee to complain about.  The problem arises when complaints and gripe sessions begin to impact productivity and feed on one another.  You have probably seen it happen; “Did you see what Sam Smith did this week!”, “Why is Jennifer Jones always taking credit for my work!” etc., etc.  Nine times out of ten, Jennifer and Sam have no idea there is even a problem.  In addition, as the problems get talked about more and more, they take on an almost legendary status.  No longer is it a single event, but it is something that happens constantly, even if it is only because it has been talked about constantly.  To be sure, there is a balance in this.  We want open, transparent dialogue about problems and issues.  That was the point for my last blog.  And we are all human so we need to “blow off steam”.  But we need to minimize unproductive gripe sessions leading to no resolution and only magnifying the problems! 

This is where good management comes in.  Most (maybe all!) managers have their own issues with their organization to complain about.  So instead of supporting open productive, problem solving dialogue and being a role model for their employees, sometimes these managers jump right into the grip sessions.  They feel they are building camaraderie or esprit-de-cour with their employees by griping about the problems that the organization has, especially the managers that are higher up in the organization.  Don’t do it!  Although you might be building some short term camaraderie, over the long term you are just undermining your own credibility and the credibility of the organization.  In addition, you are hurting the productivity of your group and thus impacting your own performance.  Your goal as a manager in all these situations should be to turn the conversation into a productive “What’s the problem? What’s the solution? What’s the next step?”  By turning unproductive “bitch sessions” into productive problem solving sessions, you have not only enhanced the culture of the organization, but you have participated in continuous improvement – a cornerstone of quality management in organizational processes.  So whatever else you do in these situations, try to tone down the rhetoric and move it to a problem identification and solution approach. 

So what does this have to do with leadership and friendship?  Leadership is largely about motivating employees (including your peers) around a common vision.  You can “manage” employees and simply ignore the complaining and the gripe sessions but you won’t truly be leading them unless you jump right in to the fray, turn them towards productive problem solving activities and provide a vision moving forward.  I bring friendship into this discussion because if you try to be a close friend of people who report to you, this leadership won’t happen.  With the caveat that family-owned businesses are a different animal than most organizations, close friendship and leadership don’t mix!  I know many of you will disagree with this and will talk about cultures where being a good friend to your employees is appropriate but I still hold my ground.  You are losing leadership opportunities and missing out on effective organizational dynamics and productivity if you try to be a close friend to your employees.  Don’t confuse being a close friend with being friendly!  Camaraderie, social activities, trust, sincerity, etc. are all important traits for you to cultivate as a leader.  But draw the line at being a close friend.  I have seen it time and time again where peers have developed strong bonds and close friendships only to have them unsustainable upon the promotion of one of the friends to a management role.  You cannot be objective, carry out the tough decisions, and provide the coaching/performance feedback to your employees if you are also trying to be a good friend.  And although my caveat above is that family-owned businesses are different animals, plenty of family relationships have been torn apart for the same reason.  So cultivate a strong environment of trust and develop relationships based on a positive, friendly atmosphere, but do not cross the line and try to be a close friend to your employees.

And how does this impact the gripe sessions?  This is a prime example of why the close friend card does not work in an employee-manager relationship.  We want to support our employees; we must support our good friends!  When the gripe sessions start and you are managing a group who is essentially a subset of your good friends and you, in fact, agree with most of their complaints, how can you avoid getting involved in this negativity and unproductive grousing?   As a close friend, you will invariably participate to support your friends.  In fact though, as the supervisor or manager of the group, your very presence and participation will escalate the problem.  Instead of being just a simple impromptu complaint session to blow off a little steam, it now becomes a sanctioned systemic problem in the company or organization – “even our group leader says so.”  And you have lost a great opportunity to identify and address issues that employees feel are important.  It sounds so easy to say as a manager or leader “don’t get involved in the complaining,” but on a daily basis, with the stress and frustration that you will likely feel in any management position, it is difficult.  But if you keep your management and leadership role in mind and if you avoid trying to be a close friend to your employees and you instead focus on being a trusting, trustworthy manager, it can be done.

In summary, my take-aways for this posting are:

• Do everything possible to dampen the rhetoric and “gripe sessions” in your organizations.
• Listen and be empathetic to employees concerns – foster an open environment – and then turn the discussion around to a “problem identification and solution session”
• Don’t try to be a close friend to your employees; rather, focus on motivating and providing vision for your employees while managing their performance.  You, the employee and the organization will be much better off in the long run.

You can actually apply all of these principles in your peer-to-peer relationships too because leadership is not about how many people work under you in the organization; it is about attitude and approach to your work on a daily basis.  But I will wait to expand on that another time.

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Most of us have heard of open door policies – literally this tends to mean you can stop by and talk to your boss anytime, you do not need an appointment if they are in their office.  I could write a chapter on open door policies and how: (i) as an employee you need to understand your boss more than just taking advantage of an open door, (ii) managers need to manage interruptions and simultaneously support an open door culture (balance – an important word in almost all management issues!), (iii) regardless of a company’s policy and the status of one’s door, it is easy to insure no one stops by and interrupts you even if you don’t mean to insure this. (Side bar: An open door policy is not a real policy but rather a statement about an organization’s approach to employee-supervisor interaction).   But for this blog, I want to focus more broadly on the connection between open doors, organizational cultures and coffee shops.

So the first question on your mind should be “what do coffee shops have to do with this”!  Bear with me on that question, I will get to it.  First, I want to emphasize a few things about open doors and transparent cultures.  Open doors do not just pertain to managers and their employees.  That is, when an organization asks their managers to encourage an open door policy, what they really mean is that everyone needs to have an open door.  Especially in today’s team-based, fast-paced, empowered environment, people need to communicate constantly, concisely and solve problems in real time.  There is no better way to do this than being able to stop by someone’s office or call them for a quick chat (yes, open doors can be translated as open phones, open Skype accounts, open IM, etc. in today’s Web 2.0[2] based environment!)  In the actual physical office environment the negative impact is tremendous when you walk down a hallway and see a bunch of closed doors.  The signal these closed doors are sending is “don’t bother me”.  In some cases this is exactly the signal you need to send.  For example, you are in a meeting, you are on the phone, or you are working on such a critical project that you cannot be disturbed.  But for the most part, the activities that require a closed door should be rare for most positions, especially the last reason of “working on a critical project”.

I can hear what some of you are thinking in response to this:  (i) but I need a bit of peace and quiet to get my work done, and (ii) if I don’t close my door, I get so many interruptions that I get nothing done.  To these comments I say – get over yourself!   OK, that is a little strong but what I mean is that your role as an employee is to enable the organization to be the most successful (effective, efficient, etc) that it can be.  You need to help optimize the entire system we call an organization.  And in some cases that might really mean that you need to have a closed door more often than what I am implying above.  Nonetheless, these cases are rare and in my experience it is a personal preference that ends up being a barrier to optimizing the system because you are more comfortable staying in your office with the door closed.  Push yourself, get out of your comfort zone, consider what the organization needs, help develop the culture that makes your organization the best it can be.  In today’s competitive environment, every employee needs to contribute to organizational success and optimization.  And how can you do that hiding in your office?  You might get your little piece of the puzzle done but are you really contributing most effectively to the organization?  How can you be sure you are even doing the right piece if you are not communicating with others about what the organization needs?

Now I hear some of you saying: But my organization spends too much time “chit-chatting” around the water cooler so I need to hide out in my office to get real work done.  Fair enough and admirable that you don’t want to get caught up in what you perceive as too much socializing.  (Side bar: There is an important, valuable role for socializing in building a relationship of trust and understanding so an organization can be robust and conflicts can be resolved quickly instead of spinning out of control into time wasters and distractions.  Balance is the key word again but some organizations do in fact have a social environment that goes beyond what is best for the organization).  So let’s assume you are right and that is the case in your organization.  How can you help change that hiding out in your office!?!  And don’t tell me it is not in your job description to change it.  If it impacts the success of your organization and you can help change it, then I say it is in your job description.

So now to the “coffee shop” part.  As many of you know, when I need to work steadily on something which requires a bit of intense, creative thought, I like to go to coffee shops (I know I have seen several of you at Francesca’s on Sunday afternoons – maybe I was working on this blog!)  The noise and distractions generally help me focus – don’t ask me why, probably something about growing up in a household of four noisy siblings.  But recently the distractions were just that, distractions!  I was sitting next to a supervisor and his employee and I was hearing, yes … their annual performance review!  And then a few days later, I was sitting next to a table of several people in a ‘meeting’ where the primary focus was anger about one of the team members (not present) doing a lousy job due to poor management by one of the folks at the table, at least according to another one of the folks at the table.  In this second case, I thought there was going to be a physical altercation after some choice curse words!

So what was my reaction in both these cases – I was horrified!  I thought; How can you give an effective performance review in a public place?  How can a team meeting provide legitimate open discussion in a public place? But actually, the performance review was quite good (empathetic but firm, positive but plenty of constructive criticism) and after the team meeting almost came to fisticuffs (is that a real word still?) they all left smiling and chatting and talking about what they had planned for the weekend!  Clearly I had witnessed (OK, eavesdropped on!) constructive conflict, not interpersonal, negative, inefficient conflict.

So as I thought about it more, my mind set changed from horrified to ‘maybe this is a new paradigm’?  Maybe this is the ultimate in transparency!  We want open doors and lots of effective communication.  We know that transparency, except where limited by law, is usually best for an organization.  As long as we are communicating about substantive issues that impact our organization and not just gossip and rumor, transparency enables buy-in.  Maybe these coffee shop conversations were simply extreme examples of transparency.  These groups were not worried about the public forum because they were saying things that were, although perhaps confrontational, accurate and real and nothing that needed to be hidden behind closed doors.  Hmmmmm?  Maybe this is even part of the new Web 2.0 environment that creates sharing across all types of time and space.  Maybe I should have interrupted and made some suggestions after listening to the performance review or just complimented them!  A kind of “Wikipedia-like Performance Review” – anyone who has good ideas can contribute.  There is a well known management principal called “MBWA” (Management by Walking Around) to proactively get input from your team and develop rapport with your employees.  Maybe the equivalent for all employees, not just managers is, DJWA (Doing your Job by Walking Around)!  And if we throw in the virtual Web 2.0 world that I think is helping to drive transparency and communication, it may even be DJFA (Doing your Job by Facebooking Around).  OK, I am a bit off track – back to the main points:

• Open your office door, maybe even walk around and talk to your colleagues
• Encourage substantive, honest communication, even when it is uncomfortable
• Remember that ‘your job is not just your job’, it is really to make the organization successful
• In all things organizational, balance is a key concept (including how you interpret this blog!)
• Spend more time working in Coffee Shops (oh, that is just for me!)

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[1] This title is a ‘case in point’ for my last Blog – I make more ‘creative connections’ in the summer when the operational pressures decrease a bit.

[2] Wikipedia: The term “Web 2.0” describes the changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aim to enhance creativity, communications, secure information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the web.

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I can hear the collective sigh of relief from the students and faculty at the end of final exams!  In fact, our building, the Fitzpatrick Center, where students fill every seat in the atrium during final exams, transforms from a tense and stressful place to a calm and relaxed place as exams end.  Students smile again and I literally feel the change walking into the building.  I too am happy to be in “summer mode”.  Vacation is a bit strong since I still have meetings for a large part of every day, at least so far, and there are still many administrative tasks to accomplish and deadlines to meet.  Nonetheless, my stress drops too and I spend more time on research and other creative pursuits.  So how about when you graduate?

Unless you are fortunate enough to work in academia, you won’t have a summer vacation.  Wall Street recognized four quarters in the year and all of them have earnings reports!  Now, contrary to perceptions, to be an excellent faculty member requires at least as many working hours as most jobs in the real world – ask anyone who is going for tenure or maintaining research, teaching and service responsibilities after getting tenure.  Still, the summer is a natural time to rejuvenate the creative part of our efforts and allows a faculty member to step back and refresh the mind.  Research, writing, and presenting all require a different part of the brain than the day to day operational tasks that most jobs are full of. 

So what is my point?  Well, in the real world, you won’t have the natural “summer break” that you have enjoyed as a student.  This is because, as a student, you can think in terms of semesters and you can push hard until the summer gets here and then get some breathing room.  When you get your first real job, don’t make the mistake of thinking you can do the same thing!  In fact I see three things that students get confused about related to this:

• Pushing so hard that you become ineffective because you forget there is no summer break to catch up and rejuvenate
• Expecting things like promotions or raises or new responsibilities to occur on a semester-to-semester time frame
• Feeling like once a project is finished (i.e., just like a class or a degree), you have “succeeded” when actually the next challenge is already waiting for you

So what is the solution?  Well, for the most part, just be aware of the change in environment and time scale when you begin your work.  Also, I think you can do three things to reinforce the changes and mitigate any negative consequences:

• Since “there is no summer vacation in the real world” make one!  OK, you won’t be able to take the summer off or really change your job responsibilities significantly during the summer but you can certainly take a vacation.  Get in touch with your creative side every year by taking some time off – vacations are the standard way but maybe you prefer long weekends – that allows you to forget about the day to day issues.
• Know your limits.  For most of you making the effort to read this, burn-out is a bigger danger to your career than slacking off!  And when burn-out sets in it can take months to recover.  Since you go from one quarter to the next in the real world, find a pace that is sustainable and stick to it.  Make time every week to rejuvenate your mind and spirit for work.
• Manage your expectations.  Don’t expect a company to provide some new exciting challenge or promotion or salary increase every “semester”.  By all means, know your value and do your homework by understanding what is reasonable in your industry.  But don’t expect that something great will happen on a semester-to-semester basis.  And don’t use one or two exceptions you hear about from your friends when it does happen that fast for them to set your expectations. (They are probably exaggerating anyway!)

I don’t know who the original author of this quote is, but I think it sums up what I am trying to say:

                “Always remember, life is a marathon, not a sprint”

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I had an interesting discussion with a recent MEMP alumnus the other day about his experience in the program. He was very happy with his activities, courses, faculty, etc. but he expressed frustration about one important aspect of the program – the team work in many of the courses. Actually, he understood all the important aspects of teams that we always talk about and how important team work is to every company that we talk to! He even understood the peer evaluations, which tend to cause great concern with our students but that is a blog for another day. Rather his concern was that he felt too many of the students were in the MEM program primarily to get the Duke brand name on their resume and to find a job. Hmmm, is that a big deal? The problem as he saw it was that this was many times in direct conflict with the goal of learning as much as possible from the program. And when a majority of teammates are more interested in the brand and the job hunt than in learning, it causes a poor experience for the rest of the team. (Side bar: Note that when one or two team mates are distracted, uninterested or just slacking, this is part of the learning process and is an opportunity for the other team mates to lead and motivate! But when most of the team has this problem it is a different story).

So what? Why does it matter if the majority of the team is not engaged, looking for a job instead of learning the info in the course and simply not participating? There is a good argument to be made that this is not fair to the other students and thus should not be allowed. Maybe it borders on a violation of the honor code, at least in theory? But that is not what I want to discuss here. Rather, it is how poor a decision it is for the individuals themselves to focus on the Duke brand on their resume and job hunting (and thus, in their minds, the grades) at the expense of how much is learned each and every day in the program. Why is it such a bad decision? It is really pretty simple. Coming to the MEMP for the Duke brand and to find a job helps you FIND your first position after graduation but it won’t help you once you are actually in the job. Furthermore, focusing on learning absolutely as much as possible while you are in the MEMP will benefit you for many, many years. It will have a much greater impact on your career in every way – from total earnings to the position you attain. And amortized over an entire career or even a decade or so, the MEM program is a real bargain! If it is just helping you find your first job, it is really expensive and has a negative ROI! Don’t get me wrong, I am all for a good brand and working hard to find a job. But if that is your primary reason for coming to the MEM program and interferes with your learning while here, you should reconsider. Rather, think about how to learn as much as possible in order to provide your career a boost for many years to come. Otherwise, it is really not worth the time and money. Only when you consider the learning and the subsequent career boost for several years into the future can you justify the investment.

So this leads to the obvious question for the future: How do we insure that as many students in the program as possible believe this concept and really are here to learn? This will make the program stronger and the experience better for all those involved. Any ideas? If so, please post a comment.

P.S. On another note, please be sure to join our MEMP group on Linked-in if you are a Duke MEM alumnus. And keep your eyes out for an MEM Programs Consortium Linked-in Group for MEM alumni of Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Northwestern and Stanford to all join together to really expand our networks. That should be opened soon!

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Dear Graduating MEMP Students,

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” George Bernard Shaw

It is graduation weekend at Duke and you have taken a big step toward fulfilling this poignant quote! You are creating yourselves through your educational choice of the MEM program as well as the numerous activities that you have undertaken while at Duke (and the list is very, very long!). One of the big questions I suspect is on your minds during this hopeful and bittersweet time is – “Am I prepared for what lies ahead?”

And I cannot help but think: Of course and of course not!

Of course, because of the wide variety of fantastic mentors you have studied under who have many years of business experience. They have imparted knowledge to you and provided you with applied, experiential learning. But of course not because we can always be more prepared! We must always strive to learn more each day and to apply what we have learned more effectively. Never, ever should you be satisfied with what you know!

Graduate School is all about transitioning from a close ended environment of learning and problem solving to the open ended environment where problem definition becomes as important as problem solving. This is particularly true in technology-based business studies where there are few black and white issues, and where everything is evolving.

Paraphrasing A. Whitney Griswold (great educator and former President of Yale): ‘Education is not a quantitative body of knowledge but rather it is a taste for knowledge… a capacity to explore, to question and to perceive.’

My hope is that your time in the MEMP at Duke has provided a platform for your future endeavors. It should have helped you begin to develop your intuition about business, organizations and management but more importantly, it should provide a base which gives you this capacity to explore, question and ultimately understand. And this understanding will provide the basis of your future decisions and choices. And I want to emphasize that the most important decisions and choices are NOT the big ones that happen every few years – the job change or the move to a new company. You cannot predict the future so big decisions like these are not the issue. If one turns out to be wrong for you, you just change it! Many of our most successful role models for the MEM program have told us about the times that they took on the wrong job or joined the wrong company and changed their direction. Or when they thought a decision to change jobs or locations was not going to be a very valuable experience and it actually propelled their career forward.

So instead of these big decisions, it is the decisions and choices you make every day that build the platform that determines the quality of your life! How you answer questions like: What issues and challenges do I take on this week? Where do I spend my precious time? Which colleagues do I spend time with to absorb their knowledge? What challenges do I take on? When/how will I approach my boss about this problem? How much time do I spend at work today? When do I take time off with my family? … etc. etc.

One of the most important of these questions is: What will I learn today? Do not ever let this question become: Will I learn something today? Continue the theme of lifelong learning and the initiative you have shown by coming here for the MEMP and you will always be prepared for what happens next.

We have given you all a parting gift to reinforce this concept of continuing to learn – the book “Predictably Irrational” by Daniel Ariely (who we are fortunate to have here at Duke on the faculty in the Fuqua School of Business and the Department of Economics). Absorbing this book will help you understand, and hopefully improve, these daily choices you make. It is a wonderful set of stories and experiments that open the door of understanding to some of the rather odd choices we make – odd when examined with the yardstick of logic and rationality but quite common when measured with our biases and, in general, our humanness.

Thank you for another great year in the MEM program. And I thank your families for the support they have given you to get here. I wish you an exciting, challenging, rewarding start to your career. Keep in touch and remember:

“The person who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow is uneducated the day after” – Newton D. Baker

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We spend a lot of time in Duke’s MEM Program learning about and practicing effective presentations. There is no doubt that this is important for your future career since you will be asked to present in many different situations – from updates for your managers to persuading customers/clients. And for those of you who are in the MEM Program now or recently graduated, you have probably had readings about tapping into or developing an extroverted personality while at work in order to maximize your career potential. I wholeheartedly believe all of that is true. However, do not ignore your writing skills!

Although presentation skills, oral persuasion skills, and general verbal communication are at the top of the “skills needed for advancement” list, if you do not have decent writing skills, your career will stall as well. In today’s world of quick e-mail communications and text messaging, it is easy to think that the quality of our written communication is not important. A message sent from an i-phone or a Blackberry will look like a ransom note if you are careless! Capitalization used randomly and accidentally throughout the message, as well as misspellings are hard to follow. So you should keep two things in mind. First, even in these quick text applications, if you are constantly misunderstood or if people have to decipher your messages because you are a poor writer, your effectiveness is diminished tremendously, especially given the number of these communications in today’s corporate environment. Second, and in my opinion more importantly, the number of more formal (compared to e-mails and text messaging) memos and reports that you will need to generate as you climb the corporate ladder is very high! And the most significant point is that these more formal memos and reports will be read by people above you in the chain of command. This means they will be judging your competence based on your writing. Another thing to keep in mind is that given enough time, you may be a good writer, but I can promise you one thing about your future job as a manager – you won’t have enough time to do all the things you are expected to do. The old adage “if I had more time I would have made that report shorter” is certainly a truism that will apply as you try to write a concise, clear report or memo.

So my primary point for this blog is simply to emphasize that you should not neglect your writing skills because they are an important part of your portfolio of skills. As far as advice on how to write effective memos and reports, I am not an expert so I will mostly leave that up to our workshop instructors or your ability to do your own research about the effective written word. Suffice it to say here that the problems I generally observe with writing among students and employees include poor flow of the ideas in the document, run-on sentences and paragraphs, more detail than is needed by the audience (i.e., detail that is irrelevant for the task at hand), and no title/date/author context information in the document. So my advice in the writing area is the following:

• Study it like any other skill you want to develop, read the expert opinions on good writing, and make informed judgments about how you will write a document of any type.
• Spending too much time writing any type of a document, including e-mails and text messages is a bad idea, but knowing when to spend enough time to insure clarity of thought and quality of writing is very important.
• Use paragraphs and subheadings effectively in your documents! It helps avoid losing your reader, especially if they are busy people like your bosses will no-doubt be.
• Always include an executive summary for a document that is more than two pages in length – it may be the only thing that gets read.
• Be concise. Although I have run into a few instances of students who are so concise that the content of their writing was not clear, generally the content is not clear because there is much too much detail in the writing. Know your audience and make sure that you only include detail they would be interested in.
• It is a rare writer who can jump right into writing a document without starting with an outline. The outline will help you in organizing your flow and ideas before you start “data dumping” onto the page. A clear logical flow is critical to any written document.
• Remember that each paragraph should have its main point as the first sentence, followed by supporting information. The next paragraph should be a new topic and organized the same way. It is hard to develop an organized flow from lots of detailed information. Take the time to do this and I refer back to the previous bullet about an outline.

I think that is all I have to say about the written word. It is a skill that will take lots of time to develop and you won’t get it by reading a single blog post but I hope this helps you understand its importance. So please take the time to learn to write better than me! (erh uh “better than I?”)

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I was struck by one of the comments that a seminar speaker made earlier this semester. Some of you may recall that Dr. David Brady, who has started several companies, manages a multimillion dollar research program, has numerous patents, and is considered one of the true gurus in his field, discussed his choice to go to Cal Tech for his Ph.D. He was absolutely convinced that based on an article published at the time, optical computing was going to be the “next big thing” and was right around the corner. Of course, we know what actually happened – optical computers are still nowhere to be found. And yet, this decision led him to the top technical graduate program in the country and on to incredible success in a variety of fields and activities. Despite the fact that he chose his graduate program based on a technology that did not pan out, he went on to a spectacular career based on that choice and the subsequent chain of events. This reminded me of the oft forgotten fact that “you can’t tell the future.” Despite your effort to choose a specific career path, it is likely that key aspects of your career success will be determined by unforeseen and unexpected circumstances. Embrace it!

The unpredictable nature of your career can be one of the most exciting and enjoyable aspects of your career if you approach it with the right frame of mind. Of course, one should begin with the end in mind as Steven Covey would say, but one should also, and in my opinion more importantly, seize opportunities as they occur and be open minded about the future. We heard a similar story from Mr. Harrison during his seminar last semester, the global supply chain officer for Proctor and Gamble, who told us that he initially had no interest in moving overseas and taking an international assignment. Yet after doing so he found that it not only secured his future career and the role he has as a Corporate Officer of one of the largest and most innovative companies in the world, but he also enjoyed it so much he could have been happy living overseas for the rest of his career. Of course, instead he came back to the U.S. for one of the top positions in Proctor and Gamble and has thrived and enjoyed that as well. So for all of you who are starting out in your careers, please be open-minded about the positions that you take. Do well, exceed expectations of your boss whenever possible, and think broadly about potential opportunities rather than considering them to be predictable or specific. “The person who will only follow one path will soon find themselves at a dead-end.”

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I have recently had some discussions with hiring managers, seen some blog posts, and talked with some students that have all led me to the belief that there is a misperception about an engineering management education among some students. The misperception involves what you should expect from your first job right out of an engineering management program. It seems that some fraction of MEM students (perhaps a small fraction, but certainly not insignificant) have the misunderstanding that because they have a degree with “Engineering Management” in the title, they will likely obtain a job as a manager immediately out of school despite having little or no prior work experience. Although there are certainly cases where this has happened, it is rare and, in my opinion, not beneficial for you or the hiring company.

It may be obvious why I say it is not beneficial for the hiring company but I think the reasons it is not beneficial for the graduating student or just as compelling. Simply put, you are much better off joining an organization as a team member or individual contributor role where you know you can excel than jumping into a managerial role before you understand the culture, policies, even vision of the organization. No matter how applied your engineering management degree tries to be, translating this education into a real organization, with all its idiosyncrasies, still requires great effort. The likelihood of success if you jump into a managerial role without prior experience decreases dramatically. That means that you are risking your performance for the sake of saving a small amount of time. Since performance (in all its facets, including the relationships you develop, your ability to communicate, etc.) is by far the most important indicator of future responsibilities and promotions, this risk is significant. In other words, if you work hard to be an exceptional team member and individual contributor when you first join the company and get some early wins and stand out from your peers right away, in 5 years you will find yourself with more responsibility and a higher level position than if you jump right into management from school! (Assuming you even have that opportunity!). I have heard too many companies say that they were turned off on a particular student because the student did not seem to understand that they need some experience and some time in the organization before they can be a good manager. You could lose the opportunity to work in a great organization if you take the approach that you need a managerial position right away. Of course, indicating you ultimately want to go into management is great; just be clear it is not an immediate expectation and that you realize you need to prove yourself first.

So, if you should not expect a management position right away, why get an engineering management degree? Because:

• The skills you obtain will allow you to demonstrate much more quickly that you are ready for a managerial position
• 99 out of 100 managers expect you to have the skills and knowledge taught in most engineering management programs BEFORE you are a manager
• You will be able to make better decisions for your organization
• The skills and knowledge from the MEM enable you to apply your engineering skills much more effectively to your organization thereby enabling you to take on more responsibility more quickly throughout the early stages of your career.

I have spoken to literally hundreds of managers since being involved in engineering management programs and it is the very rare manager who does not indicate that these programs are exactly what are needed for their technical employees. Of course, HR departments may not be as aware or insightful about such a program and thus you may be required to exercise your skills of communication and persuasion when talking to various HR representatives. In any case, you are still being hired for the technical and problem solving skills you obtained from your undergraduate curriculum, but with the expectation that you can apply them much more effectively. And ultimately, of course, develop into a manager – presumably more quickly and effectively than your peers who are learning engineering management principles “on the job”. So if you are heading for an engineering management degree because you want to have more impact on your organization, more responsibility more quickly and in general advance your career opportunities, then you are on the right track. If you are considering or already undertaking an engineering management curriculum because you want to change from being a technical contributor to getting a management position right out of school, before you have any experience, you may want to reconsider.

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