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

Here’s what I’ve got for you this week.

• New and noteworthy news

• Something to consider

• Some insights to delve into

• And more…

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Alright, let’s get into it.

Noteworthy Headlines

Economic Growth Depends on Electricity, Not Oil (WSJ)

Quote:

• “An economy dependent on electricity will be different from one dependent on oil. It will require mammoth investment in generation, distribution and transmission. It will challenge regulators and political leaders, as the supply and price of electricity become as politically potent as that of gasoline.”

US Infrastructure Grade Improves (ENR)

Highlights:

• US infrastructure was graded as a “C” by the ASCE, the highest grade since 1998.

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Management Perspective

I had coffee with a design professional recently, and we discussed an issue bothering him at his company. During performance reviews, numerous designers were asking about compensation. Specifically, they had been performing well and wanted to know what it took to get a meaningful raise.

Out of those conversations, the same answer was provided:

“If you want to make more money, you have to bring in work.”

Nothing about design. Nothing about quality. Nothing about mentoring. Nothing about recruiting. Just bring in work.

The obvious problem with this is that if you incentivize your employees to be sellers and win work, who will do the work?

The answer: no one. Or at least not many people who are qualified to do the work.

That’s because everyone qualified to do the work changed from doers to sellers to make more money or changed employers.

It’s a recipe for disaster. And it’s not the fault of the designers. It’s the fault of leadership. Leaders are incentivizing an important behavior (selling) while neglecting another important behavior (doing).

In the words of Charlie Munger:

“Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome.”

How can these leaders remedy their situation? By creating career paths that incentivize the different important needs of the enterprise.

Many companies have technical career paths, business development career paths, recruiting career paths, operations career paths, and so on.

The frameworks are flexible. What’s not is the basic needs of a project. A project comes in the door, gets done, and goes out the door.

All parts of that process are important, and you need qualified professionals all along the way.

Management Insights

Ed Catmull on the dynamics of culture:

“Healthy cultures and healthy companies are not stable. They are ever-changing. And that change requires that leaders need to remain vigilant and nimble and, above all, that the make sure that core values are protected.”

—

Will Larson on developing teams:

“Adding new individuals to a team disrupts that team’s gelling process, so I’ve found it much easier to have rapid growth periods for any given team, followed by consolidation/gelling periods during which the team gels. The organization will never stop growing, but each team will.”

—

Tom Rath on the impact other people have on your life:

“We are, to a large degree, the product of what others have contributed to our lives.”

Management Resource

Beautiful vs. Practical Advice (Collaborative Fund)

Jason Zweig said it best:

“While people need good advice, what they want is advice that sounds good.”

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Or…

• Let me know if you’ve found something worth sharing.

• Let me know what challenges you’re having as a manager.

• Let me know what challenges you see other managers having.

Send me an email at [email protected]

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

Collin

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