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:

Highlights:

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Each person has an expiration date for their role.

Sometimes that’s set by them. They could resign, retire, or apply for a different role.

Sometimes that’s set by their management. They could be promoted, demoted, laid off, or fired.

Whatever the reason is, the fact remains: people are not in their roles forever.

Thinking this way requires a certain mindset: your job as a manager is to manage for dynamic alignment, not static status quo.

As an organization expands, contracts, or shifts strategy, the responsibilities within a specific role naturally evolve. That means the people who fill those roles need to evolve at a similar pace to continue being effective in those roles. If they don’t, a change needs to happen.

Here are a few potential scenarios for when a role is changing.

Synchronized change

The role and the person grow with the same velocity (speed and direction). This is ideal, but doesn’t always happen. Sometimes it can get there with additional feedback, coaching, and mentorship, so don’t automatically throw in the towel.

Ability disconnect

This is when the role expands and requires new skills, but the person in the role hits a ceiling with their abilities. The gap between what the role now requires and what they can deliver widens, and other people in the organization are affected. If the gap cannot be closed, a change is required.

Interest disconnect

Here, the role changes direction significantly and it’s no longer aligned with what the person in that role wants to do. They may become bored, disengaged, and mismatched for the day-to-day activities. They may even begin to undermine organizational culture and performance. Again, a change is required.

The takeaway here is this: roles are not static, and neither are people. The dynamic movements of the role and people doing them are sometimes in sync and sometimes they aren’t. When they get out of sync, that signals something: either you need to help them get back in sync, find another role for them, or part ways.

Ed Catmull (founder of Pixar) on what successful managers do:

“I believe the best managers acknowledge and make room for what they do not know—not just because humility is a virtue but because until one adopts that mindset, the most striking breakthroughs cannot occur. I believe that managers must loosen controls, not tighten them. They must accept risk; they must trust the people they work with and strive to clear the path for them; and always, they must pay attention to and engage with anything that creates fear.”

—

Simon Sinek (leadership consultant and author) on having a safe work environment:

“When the people have to manage dangers from inside the organization, the organization itself becomes less able to face the dangers from outside.”

—

Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft) on how learning is required:

“You can offload a task, or even a job, but you can never offload your learning. The future of the firm is the ability to compound that learning across people and AI.”

This whitepaper was developed jointly by the AIA and AGC to outline best practices for communication, risk management, and team performance on construction projects.

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

Collin