Principles of Engineering Management
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Principles of Engineering Management
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Re: Principles of Engineering Management
#2Many of these, could be principles for life.
Re: Principles of Engineering Management
#3> Optimize work distribution
> Managers have a portfolio of work that the business needs and people with work preferences. Optimize the dual objectives of delivering value to the organization and giving individuals problems that build their skillset, impact, satisfaction, and/or advancement. Performance is contextual; set people up to shine.
I find this so important. A good manager has a good mental map of the business's short-term and long-term goals, and a corresponding map of each person on the team's short-term and long-term goals (and strengths/weaknesses) . This map requires constant updating and refining. The magic happens in finding the right fit between all of that.
Re: Principles of Engineering Management
#4IMHO, we should add “Be Human first, everything else comes later”.
Re: Principles of Engineering Management
#5IMHO, we should add “Be Human first, everything else comes later”.
100%. I've worked for a lot of bad managers and 2 good ones. 1 of the good ones wasnt a great human but an incredible teacher. The other was an okay teacher but an incredible human. The later I'm still in contact with and we've stayed in touch for 5 plus years.
A lot of what I'm looking for in a boss is just someone who kind and understanding. It's shocking how low that is on most managers agendas.
Re: Principles of Engineering Management
#6> Optimize work distribution > Managers have a portfolio of work that the business needs and people with work preferences. Optimize the dual objectives of delivering value to the organization and giving individuals problems that build their skillset, impact, satisfaction, and/or advancement. Performance is contextual; set people up to shine. I find this so important. A good manager has a good mental map of the busine…
I'll comment that this is also something that you can partially delegate to the team.
A healthy team has a good understanding of one another's strengths and weaknesses just from working with each other. A manager should be trying to collect that feedback, as well as use their own, then work with each member of the team to determine what opportunities they need, to either demonstrate a strength, or work on a weakness, and then create space to socialize those needs. With the team aware of what one another needs, they're able to all be on the lookout to identify and highlight those opportunities.
Once the items the team definitively owns are being optimally allocated by the team, the manager can look for opportunities outside of the team's domain. They don't even need to be for specific individuals, but things that the team would be able to reasonably help with; then pitching them to the team, the team can self-organize to determine who it's an opportunity for (and then further break it down; maybe person A needs the opportunity to lead a cross team initiative, but person B needs the opportunity to dive deep into a technical implementation, style of thing).
Re: Principles of Engineering Management
#7[deleted]
Re: Principles of Engineering Management
#8This is such a great read! 100% agreed!
Re: Principles of Engineering Management
#9IMHO, we should add “Be Human first, everything else comes later”.
100%. I've worked for a lot of bad managers and 2 good ones. 1 of the good ones wasnt a great human but an incredible teacher. The other was an okay teacher but an incredible human. The later I'm still in contact with and we've stayed in touch for 5 plus years. A lot of what I'm looking for in a boss is just someone who kind and understanding. It's shocking how low that is on most managers agendas.
Maybe it's not just about the managers but also how do employees treat the relationship with their managers. i.e. it's a two way street
Re: Principles of Engineering Management
#10Quite naïve. Nothing has been said about what employees need to follow. It is like, everything they can do is perfect, the manager is always the one who needs to work on the relationship, and there are no criteria to select / stop working with employees (i.e. those rules will work with any team).