Thinking Oustide The Cubicle

by Gerard H. (Gus) Gaynor

The test of the engineer's work is in the marketplace. The thrill may be in the development laboratory or seeing the product come off the production line, but the test is in the marketplace — does the customer buy, or not?

World business dynamics have changed and will continue to change at a faster rate. To meet the challenges posed by these changes, engineers need to think outside their own job-specific environments — think outside the cubicle.

How do we do that?

The first step is to look at what's going on in other cubicles, other departments. Our work relates to other engineering and functional disciplines. It's a system, a system in which (whether we like it or not) business performance takes precedence but needs to coexist with technological elegance.

Thus, outside-the-cubicle-thinkers need to...

	Increase their breadth of technical competence
	Develop competence in integrating business and interpersonal skills

I became an engineer because...

Thinking outside the cubicle may not be for everyone. It takes courage and self-discipline, as well as motivation. Original motivation is especially important: it's for those who became engineers, not just because they had interest and aptitude but, more important, they had a passion for the job. They could sense the excitement that comes from expressing their creativity with a tangible outcome.

For these people, engineering is a vocation, a calling — not a job.

Success as an engineer requires dedication — like that of an Olympic athlete. It's a mindset that transforms the way we think about our work. We are engineers, but we are more: the engineering profession includes a business component that we can't ignore.

Engineering myopia

In 1960, the Harvard Business Review published what has become a classic article, "Marketing Myopia." Author Theodore Levitt raised many marketing issues facing corporations at the time (such as forgetting about the customer), but he was equally concerned about how organizations defined their businesses.

For example, Levitt said that there were automobile companies, steamship companies, railroad companies, and airline companies — but no one was in the transportation business. Each of these organizations centered on a specific mode of transportation with no intention of integrating all the modes in relation to people or product.

The engineering community may be said to suffer from engineering myopia. We think our business is technology — but it's much, much more. The business of engineering is business performance. If we redefine our profession, give it a broader base, we can more readily take advantage of growth opportunities.

A wide-angle view of the profession

FIGURE 1. MATRIX FOR THINKING OUTSIDE THE CUBICLE
Vertical - TIME & TECHNICAL COMPETENCIES
Horizonal - BUSINESS COMPETENCIES & TIME

One way to look at integration of technology and business competencies to overcome engineering myopia is shown in the Figure 1 matrix. This matrix is a modification of the managerial grid published in R. R. Blake and Jane S. Mouton's book, The Managerial Grid, in 1964. In this version, the vertical axis shows technical competencies and the horizontal axis business competencies. Both axes also include a time component. We can use this matrix as a tool for determining where we are and where we hope to go.

The most significant positions of this matrix are described in the following paragraphs.

Position 1.1 ­ Low technical, low business competence

As engineers, we come out of school with competence in our primary fields of interest. As the years go by, if we are in the right environment, we gain competence, and it is hoped, knowledge of some other technology disciplines begins to rub off on us.

Position 1.7 ­ High technical, low business competence

Progressing to this position requires more than continued work in the engineer's primary field. Competence in one's field falls at about 1.3. To reach 1.7 on the technology orientation scale, the engineer must understand the needs of related disciplines, gain a minimum level of proficiency in those related disciplines, develop a breadth of knowledge and experience, and be able to push the technology envelope from a systems perspective.

Position 1.7 is reached over time as the engineer gains experience, works on projects that challenge current thinking and knowledge, and becomes capable of integrating those experiences — synthesizing lessons learned.

Position 7.1 ­ Low technical, high business competence

Engineers in this category probably work in areas where an engineering background is essential. But they're not designing micromechanisms, engineering new polymer systems, or doing theoretical stress analysis.

They are in sales, customer service, possibly project management, and nontraditional engineering positions. They have high interpersonal skills, which enable them to put together pieces of the business puzzle. They provide the means for you to 'bring home the bacon'.

Someone in positions 1.1 through 1.7 may have a brilliant concept, but it takes someone with a business orientation, along the position 7.1 to 7.7 continuum, to make it happen.

Position 7.7 ­ High technical, high business competence

Engineers in position 7.7 have an optimal balance between technology expertise and business orientation. Even if they are not technological experts, they fully understand the limitations of a broad base of current as well as future technologies. They know what technology does for the business. They also understand the business requirements and the people involved in the business — internal and external, customers and suppliers. The future is always in view.

Position 3.3 ­ Medium technical, medium business competence

This position is the absolute minimum to which an engineer should aspire. It represents an engineer who is skilled in some technology and who has a nominal understanding of the business milieu in which the organization operates.

Where do you and I fit in this matrix? Where do we want to be? Position 7.7 doesn't happen quickly, or suddenly, but we can make it our goal.

It's important to remember that improving business competence is not done at the expense of the technical. They reinforce each other. As knowledge and experience in each is gained and integrated, effectiveness increases because the focus is where it should be:

	Where you add value
	Where you eliminate the false starts
	Where you begin to understand your organization and, most important, your customers
	Where projects meet customer expectations, as well as time and cost estimates

What does it take to reach position 7.7? Practice, practice, and more practice. A 3-day training session won't do it. It's a never-ending learning and experiential process. Engineering studies tend to reinforce reductionist thinking; now we need to focus on integration, putting the pieces back together and looking at the whole, developing a system perspective.

Although individuals give birth to ideas and play a major role in implementing them, success requires collective action from many disciplines. No one person can master all the disciplines required to develop a new product or a process. Even Edison relied on the talents of others. As you plow new ground, you will require input from many disciplines.

Moving along the business orientation axis

What does it take to progress along the business orientation axis?

  Transcend traditional boundaries

• Emphasize system performance results rather than functional performance.
• View the enterprise as an integrated system.
• Pursue value-adding activities.
  

  Think strategically

• Strategy is the framework that guides our technical and business options.

  Develop a business perspective

• Understand the internal and external business dynamics.
• Foster organizational vitality, resourcefulness.
• Leverage resources through the business infrastructure.
• Build a sense of urgency.
• Balance change and stability.
• Rock the boat! But, know the limits.

  Create new opportunities

• Raise expectations of yourself and others. Raise the bar.
• Create a challenging environment.
• Contribute more to the organization.
• Help define the environment.
• Be a constructive maverick.

  Communicate and collaborate

• Understand how people think and how they communicate.
• Understand their behavioral relationships.

  Become an innovator and entrepreneur

• Product and process development are not exact sciences; equations, procedures, and information technology are insufficient. We need to manage the process and the substance, with both a feedback and a feedforward (anticipation) loop.

Moving along the technology axis

Progressing from Position 1.1 to 1.7 on the technical competence axis depends to a great extent on your personal orientation.

Much has been written about the half-life of an engineer; most of it is myth. Engineering fundamentals are the same today as they were in 1950 and before. It's the tools that are different. Substitution of computer-aided design tools for drawing boards and India ink drawings on linen has not changed the fundamentals underlying dynamics, mechanics, optics, fluid flow, electromagnetics, and so on. The new tools can make us more effective.

Most engineers develop careers through some specialty. We come from departmentalized academic disciplines to departmentalized organizational disciplines. We're either mechanicals, electricals, chemicals, civils, aeronauticals, and so on. Our first work assignments will most likely be in some subdiscipline of our primary one. Where we go from there depends on us.

Increasing technical competence is a matter of opening our eyes to see what others are doing. It's a matter of interest, observation, and imagination. An electrical engineer doesn't need a course to show an interest in mechanical design. The reverse is also true. We're engineers, not technicians.

The choice is ours

Setting our sights on Position 7.7 means thinking differently. As we work to increase the breadth of our technical competence and our business integrating competencies, our work effort must become systems oriented. We come to understand not only the technologies of the system but how those technologies meet business requirements.

Thinking outside the cubicle can be an exciting and rewarding experience. It's an adventure, an expedition with all of an expedition's unknowns. The expedition may lead to new combinations of technologies. It may plow new ground or at least plow it differently. It may mean mental chaos, because there will never be enough time, and because we're using untried guidance systems.

We will find ourselves...

• Living with greater uncertainty and risk
• Becoming frustrated with the bureaucracy ... and learning to manage that frustration
• Thinking differently — more creatively, more broadly
• Ignoring some of the rules to get things done
• Accepting quantitative analysis but playing our hunches
• Exercising our newly found freedom for organizational benefit
• Developing a high level of confidence to dig around in uncharted areas
• Initiating some intellectual curiosity and excitement
• Becoming what an engineer should be

An adventure like this may provide an opportunity to use untapped potential, because it gives us a different view of our opportunities. It will certainly be challenging and personally rewarding.

Try it. You'll like it!

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Gerard H. (Gus) Gaynor, Editor-in-Chief of Today's Engineer, is principal of G.H. Gaynor and Associates, Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota, a consulting firm in Management of Technology. g.gaynor@ieee.org