Hey, it’s Collin. Welcome to Engineering Echelons, a newsletter full of ideas and insights to help engineers excel at management.

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Highlights:

Highlights:

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It’s easy to measure a design engineer's or BIM drafter’s output: the number and quality of projects delivered. The vast majority of their time is spent executing that work.

Managers, on the other hand, have a lot of disparate tasks that dominate their schedule. These include recruitment interviews, reviewing operations data, monitoring compliance, reviewing and approving timecards and expense reports, balancing staff workloads, and more.

What’s the output of this?

Simply put: the manager’s output is the result achieved by a group either under their supervision or influence.

So an electrical engineering manager’s output is the number of quality projects his team delivered on schedule and on budget.

If he has influence on other teams (say, lighting, mechanical, telecommunications, and BIM drafting), then his output is the number of quality projects delivered on schedule and on budget by his engineers, the lighting design team, the mechanical team, the telecommunications team, and the BIM drafting team.

Why is this?

Because consulting engineering—and many other professional services—is team-based work. And a manager’s job is to oversee, influence, and support teams.

A manager’s individual contributions are important, but those do not create output. The teams executing the project work do.

Ari Emanuel (entrepreneur) on the inevitability of hardships:

“Even if it’s the best strategy, even if you’re right about everything, there’s going to be really bumpy roads. That’s just called business.”

—

Peter Rahal (founder of RXBar) on running a business:

“Running a business is like a river. As long as it’s flowing, it’s great. But if there’s something blocking that flow, you need to fix it. If something’s in the way, I ruminate on it to the point where I can’t sleep. I have to fix it so I can sleep.”

—

Sherlock Holmes on taking meaning from the obvious:

“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.”

Two different mindsets, two different outcomes. Which one do you default to? And is if the right one for your situation?

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Looking forward to hearing from you. See you next time.

Collin