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A New-Age
Perspective
The "Engi-Preneur"™ or Entrepreneurial Engineer
By: Michael
Wilkinson
President
Introduction
Thank you for being here today and welcome to
Tech-Con 98.
What an honor to kick off the weekend, to
speak and to share with you a little bit about your career and the
challenges we face as engineers and those involved in technical
development.
Recently, Paragon Innovations signed a 16-week
contract with a large manufacturing company to design a reference
platform for a microprocessor. The company uses the reference
platforms to demonstrate the speed and quality of its chips. Two
weeks into the program, the customer called and said priorities had
shifted and now needed the boards done in four weeks.
Sound Familiar? Our initial reaction was
typical: there ain’t no way. It just can’t be done. But after
some dialogue with the customer and discovering what the real issues
were, we were able to solve the potential crisis. We came through,
delivered on time, on budget and ended up with a happy customer as
well as repeat business.
I’m sure for all of you, it’s a familiar
scenario. You have your roadmap and your priorities. Then someone
else in the organization makes a change that scraps your roadmap.
So how do you handle this? Do you dodge the
dilemma? Do you take on the extra workload and scrap other projects
and priorities? How can you create a win-win situation, build
influence and opportunity? Through all this, how do you advance your
career?
It’s all possible and it’s all part of
being a new-age engineer or Engi-preneur™. It’s a new role that
takes technical excellence and blends it with entrepreneurial
insight. It involves characteristics such as adaptation, creativity,
communication, and responsiveness.
THERE ARE FIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE
ENGI-PRENUER™.
THE FIRST IS INITIATING COMMUNICATION.
I learned this while doing some part-time work
as a high school student. I was working with two diverse groups: a
bunch of engineers in hardware and another bunch in software. And
they never talked to each other. I quickly found out that I was real
valuable because I could communicate software to the hardware guys
and then turn around and talk hardware to the software guys. Before
I knew it, I was helping orchestrate product development. I was THE
communication catalyst between the two groups.
Communication is a first step for
Engi-preneurs™. It has to be initiated and integrated horizontally
and vertically within organizations and with customers. It builds
awareness and understanding. It encourages approval and buy-in. Yet
the challenge is often communicating PERIOD. Why is it that
engineers don’t talk to each other, much less to other groups and
key influencers?
Perhaps we’re conditioned not to
communicate. How often have we sat in meetings and reviews and been
met with blank stares and silence? Is it them or us? Probably a
little of both.
In today’s world, initiating communication
also means to communicate like business folks and not engineers.
What does that mean? It means to:
- Use technical data as supporting material
and limit such details during mainstream discussions. You might
as well be talking to the moon when detailing power-supply
filtering or timing analysis to a team of sales and marketing
personnel. They’re not interested.
- It also means to talk the language of your
audience. If you’re meeting with sales or marketing, talk in
terms of features and benefits. Talk about how changes,
revisions or updates affect deadlines and product performance
and overall specs.
- Communicating like business folks also
means to exemplify understanding and concern. Show that you are
part of a bigger team, that you’re on their side and want to
accomplish the same objectives.
- And finally, ask questions. Too often, that’s
hard for me. It’s perceived as a sign of weakness. I’ve
struggled with asking questions because I grew up believing that
engineering was the top of the food chain. As far as I was
concerned, all other corporate activities hinged on engineering
efforts. I’ve been able to expand my thinking. Product
development is a continuum of processes that must work together
to succeed. And engineering is part of that. We don’t know
everything about everything. Almost, but not quite. Asking
questions builds rapport, adds greater insight and provides
development intelligence.
THE SECOND CHARACTERISTIC OF AN
ENGI-PRENEUR™ IS PACKAGING YOUR POTENTIAL
I’m talking about "touting your
talent." This is not bragging or strutting feathers. It’s an
orchestrated effort to make sure you and your group are recognized
for what you are and for what you do.
What I’m saying is I think we’re tired of
being perceived as the closed-door subculture of corporate America.
Technology and technical excellence are mission-critical activities
and we’re at the helm. As a result, we must take on the added
responsibility to think and act as captains of the ship. So how do
we package our potential or tout our talent? THREE WAYS: PRO-ACT,
PRO-DUCE AND PRO-FESS.
- First, let’s talk about Pro-act. It’s
about looking ahead and looking inside. Who you are, where you
are and where do you want to be. So, where are you? Happy?
Comfortable? Miserable? Have the dreams kind of faded? Maybe you’ve
just settled for the status quo, gotten tired of the bureaucracy
and burned out on politics and popularity contests. I’ve been
there. I woke up one day to the fact that no matter where or
what I was doing those elements were going to exist. The good
news is that we can overcome all of that. That’s where
adaptability comes in. Look at your strengths and weaknesses and
what you want out of your career then make a change. That may be
a change of perspective, a change in position or it may mean the
start of a job search. The point is that I can’t change anyone
or anything and neither can you. I can only change me, my
attitude, my perspective and my situation. My destiny-my
career-is in my hands. So what am I going to do with it?
- The second way we can package our potential
is to Pro-duce. Deliver the goods. Deliver on time and deliver
on budget. Figure ways to "wow" your audience. At
Paragon Innovations we do that by giving customers not only the
product they asked for, but complete, word-by-word, step-by-step
project documentation. We have every piece of the puzzle written
in a notebook. It includes everything from schematics and source
control drawings, to code, test procedures and release notes. We
even put this on CD-ROM in a web-like form for easy customer
reference. In this new age, producing isn’t about just doing
your job; it’s giving your customers more than they expect.
- The third way we package our potential is
to Pro-fess. It’s letting the world know that you and your
team make an impact that ripples through the company or
industry. I’m talking about sharing your success. Document
customer successes and feed those to internal communications
groups. Ask your Intranet or newsletter editor to include briefs
or stories profiling those successes. Increase your visibility
to communications champions internally and externally. We’ve
recently implemented a complete marketing campaign that includes
media relations. We’re telling the success stories of
outsource embedded design and development. We have customers
like AMD and Hitachi telling reporters about the benefits, the
Paragon approach, cost savings and results. You could do the
same and help your company gain exposure that ultimately
increases sales. Of course, do not forget to inform those
closest to you – your boss, suppliers and peers. Informing the
masses helps you prosper individually and corporately.
SO WHAT IS THE THIRD CHARACTERISTIC OF AN
ENGI-PRENEUR™?
DELIVER ON YOUR PROMISES
The Engi-preneur™ is committed to the
promise. It’s a hell-or-high water mentality based on keeping a
promise and keeping your word. This seems so obvious, yet most
projects never meet their deadlines. Some don’t even make it
through development. How many of you have found yourself unable to
deliver on time and on budget? And I’m sure you all have good
reasons and justifications. The sad state of affairs is that nobody
cares. And nobody wants an excuse. They want the project completed
and they want to know whom they can depend on to get it done. What
can be done so that projects meet the deadline and we avoid
disappointing the customer and putting our careers in jeopardy?
- Meet the deadline. Do what you said you
would do or figure a way to make it happen. Determine how to
make the customer happy. Remember the 16-week project I
mentioned earlier that suddenly turned into a 4-week
deliverable? We were pushing the envelope to design, develop,
manufacture and ship the product in sixteen weeks. When it
turned into four weeks, we almost cried. We saw crisis all over
the place, lost revenues and an unhappy customer. We solved the
problem by getting everybody together. We included customer
representatives from engineering, sales and marketing and we
talked through the issues and realities. By the end of the
meeting, we all had smiles on our faces. Turns out, they didn’t
need all the product or design in four weeks. What they needed
was a visually relevant circuit board for an upcoming photo
shoot. It was a different ballgame with better options. Within
four weeks, we dummied a circuit board and documentation for the
photo shoot while also designing and developing the real units
for delivery. We delivered on our promise, solved a problem for
the customer and made ourselves look like heroes. We figured a
way to meet the customer’s needs.
- The next recommendation for delivering on
the promise is to create an early-warning system. If a tornado
is approaching your neighborhood, you need to know ASAP! Those
sirens are going to save your life. In the same way, if a
project falls off the radar screen or is delayed for any reason,
somebody needs to identify the storm clouds and fire up the
sirens. You must designate one person to be responsible for
providing an early warning. Prevent calamity and crisis with a
little planning and prevention.
- My only other comment on delivering the
promise is to be careful about what you promise. Don’t
over-promise. It’s fatal. Early on, I’ve made the mistake of
over- promising. I think I did this for a couple of reasons. I
really wanted the job and I really wanted to avoid conflict. It
didn’t take me long however to figure out the problem with
broken promises. Clients got mad, my technical team got mad,
even my wife got mad because I was never home. I sabotaged
myself for failure. Today, I try to set realistic expectations
by defining project parameters up-front, defining who is
responsible for what by when and discussing the steps to take if
schedules slip or parameters change. It’s really all about
taking in the "big picture."
THE FOURTH CHARACTERISTIC OF AN
ENGI-PRENEUR™ IS TO UNDERSTAND ALL ASPECTS OF THE BUSINESS.
Your eight-hour day must translate into
company performance and profits. How are you perceived? Are you a
revenue source? Are you a revenue drain? How can you broaden an
understanding of your job or department for organizational impact?
The Engi-preneur™ understands the paycheck
food chain. That is, recognizing and understanding all the people
and processes involved in products and services. It starts with the
idea and initial concepts and flows through to technical design,
manufacturing, sales, marketing, distribution and customer service.
All of these impact, in part, when and how you get paid. We can
build the greatest mousetraps in the world and they will probably
not succeed. We cannot create in a vacuum and ignore the flow of
business activity. It’s imperative that we tune in to the big
picture, and play ball with the team we have.
THE FIFTH-AND LAST-CHARACTERISTIC OF THE
ENGI-PRENEUR™ IS THE CLOSED-LOOP SYSTEM
If I asked for a show of hands from everyone
here who felt like they were either unappreciated or underutilized,
I bet the majority of you would raise your hands. It’s epidemic in
our industry. Why? Because we have been operating in a world of
old-school thought, an example that has isolated our activities and
achievements form the rest of the organization.
In a closed-loop system, activities and
achievements are created, executed, evaluated and re-tooled
accordingly. It’s a new world that offers new opportunity. It
creates excitement and potential advancement.
A closed-loop system allows for a continuous
reality check. It is the framework for the other four points I’ve
discussed. It’s the plan of action. It’s the infrastructure that
gives the
Engi-preneur™ a leg up in being creative and
corporately relevant.
I have been able to create a plan –a
business model – that says engineering can be innovative, done on
time, on budget and responsive to customer needs. A closed-loop
system really works by:
- Creating the plan – The how-to's of
communicating, adapting and integrating our efforts into the
corporate mainstay.
- Executing the plan- That’s doing what you
say you will do: delivering product, working with other groups
and people, extending boundaries beyond your cubicle and
extending yourself into other parts of the business.
- Evaluating the plan- Most importantly, the
closed-loop system includes evaluation. I can’t stress enough
the importance of evaluation.
Evaluation is the most important – and most
forgotten or forsaken – step in the whole process. Without it, you
end up in an infinite loop doing the same stupid things while
expecting different results. We must evaluate, determine what is and
isn’t working and adapt, change and grow.
Are you willing to break out of the techni-mold?
Do you feel up to the challenge facing the
new-age engineers? Let me end by saying this:
new-age engineers are really no longer engineers. In fact, they are
not even just entrepreneurs.
The Engi-preneur™ is a virtual chief
executive officer. You are balancing and juggling projects, people,
problems, products and profits.
You are the virtual CEO. You must
- Initiate communication
- Package your potential
- Deliver on the promise
- Understand all of the business
- Operate in a closed-loop system
Whether you work in a large company or a
mid-sized outsourcing outfit like ours, you are being called upon to
be -"THE"- person who has the answers.
Welcome the challenge. Take the lead. You will
find success, not only as an engineer or an entrepreneur, but also
as an Engi-preneur™ – the one person who unites technical smarts
with business brains.
Thank you.
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