The advantage of an engineer's perspective:

 

Competent and ambitious engineers advance their careers by moving into positions where they are leaders with the responsibility to manage resources and achieve objectives. When promoted you soon realise two things. Firstly; the performance that helped you break from the pack will not sustain you in your new position. Secondly; the levers of power, if you can find any, are less effective than you expected. You need to change.

 

People will suggest changes. Often advice based on a much loved recipe passed down through generations of managers. Likely to be heavily influenced by classical management theory developed in the first half of the last century, or the many variants that emerged in the second half. The last thing you need is yesterdays thinking and technology masquerading as something new with the claim that it will be more effective to-day.

 

The topography of the world defined by classical management theory is familiar, recognised by rigid structures, a profusion of management symbols, and organisations populated by specialists that beaver away in little boxes. If this model was ever valid, or served a purpose, it no longer does, and the weaknesses have been exposed; its time has passed.

 

As an engineer you have the skills and competence to accelerate the evolution in leadership and management, and to put into practical form the type of systems that are needed for the 21st century. Systems that will help society climb out of the invented muddle that has put people into boxes in "family trees", constrained by command and control; that creates latent systemic inefficiencies, which consume scarce resources; introduces delays; fails to secure knowledge; has broken the link between the work people do, and the reason for their work; and hinders innovation. The disconnection between this enforced pretend world,and the real one in which we work and live, is a root cause for the common malady of frustration.

 

Let us acknowledge and deal with the reality that the world is complex with many interdependencies that create forces, which assist or thwart progress. As an engineer your perspective on the world, and your training, make you the ideal person to design systems that can cope with the world as it exists.

 

[John McLoughlin, 08 April 2010]