Leading an Effective Engineering Organization

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Leading an Effective Engineering Organization
Leslie Martinich Competitive Focus
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EMC BOK

• Market Research, Technology Updates, and
  Environmental Scanning
• Planning and Adjusting Business Strategies
• Developing Products, Services, and Processes
• Engineering Operations and Change
• Financial Resources and Procurement
• Marketing and Sales
• Leading Individuals and Engineering Project Teams
• Professional Responsibility and Legal Issues

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Topics

• Leading
• Managing innovation
• Aligning your team with your companys direction
• Gaining support for your teams projects
• Topics we will not cover
• Operations management
• Project management
• Financial management
• Professional responsibility and legal issues

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Leading Engineering Teams

• Different strengths, preferences, skills,
  propensities
• Different communication styles and preferences
• Provide people with opportunity to do meaningful
  work, to make a difference

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Problem Solving and Creativity

• Differences in ways of thinking, solving
  problems, creating
• Adaptors and Innovators
• Working within a structure vs. working outside of
  a structure

continuum
Adaptors
Innovators
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Activity

• Your company has two projects. Decide which one
  your group wants to take.
• Your company is one of the top 3 widget firms,
  and has 15 years of success in widget engineering
  to build on. Typical widget development efforts
  take 6 months. Your firm expects to continue its
  leadership for the next several generations of
  widgets. It has a budget in place to support the
  next 10 years of exploratory efforts.
• What are your strengths and dispositions?
• What are your priorities and what do you hope to
  accomplish?

• Team A is responsible for delivering the next
  generation of widgets.

• Team B is responsible for exploring new
  technologies and figuring out what will be the
  product to replace widgets in the future.

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Utilizing Talents

• Apply talents to appropriate tasks
• You need all types to complete the puzzle
• Give people opportunities to do meaningful work
  and make a difference (and that varies with the
  person)

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Communication Preferences

• Face-to-face
• Big picture
• Talks through alternatives and decisions
• Quick decisions can correct mistakes

• Email
• Lots of data
• Thinks through alternatives and decisions
• Time to analyze the data

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Communication

• Listening
• Management
• Colleagues
• Staff

• Understand your audience
• What is important to them?
• What are their goals?

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Leading the Team

• Understand your own and your team members
  strengths, dispositions, problem-solving styles,
  communication preferences
• Next Topics
• Managing innovation
• Aligning your team with your companys direction
• Gaining support for your teams projects

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Industry Assessment

• Industry Structure

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Industry AssessmentCompetitive Forces
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Innovation
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Innovation Phases

• Early Phases
• Period of chaos and uncertainty
• Need flexibility and adaptability
• Later Phases
• Focus on efficiency and process
• Focus on cost

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Phases Overlap

• As one technology matures, innovations create
  another technology

Mature
Innovation
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Example News Distribution

• News Industry
• Media distribution
• Changes in distribution
• Print
• Online
• Pod Casting
• ???

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Example Photography

• Digital photography
• Photo processing -gt Printing
• Consider players
• Polaroid
• Kodak
• HP
• Ink providers
• Sony
• Canon

Mature
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Industry Assessment Innovations

• What forces are changing in your industry?

Platform changes Technology changes Supply chain
changes Market changes ?????
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Where Are We?

• Choose your industry
• How do you define your industry?
• What is the industry structure?
• What competitive forces are operating?
• What innovations are shaping the future?
• Where are you on the S-Curve?
• What is the basis for competitionfeatures or
  price or relationship or something else?
• Given the answers to the above questions, what
  are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and
  threats?

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Industry Assessment
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Leading the Team

• Understand your own and your team members
  strengths, dispositions, problem-solving styles
• Managing innovation
• Next Topics
• Aligning your team with your companys direction
• Gaining support for your teams projects

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Leading Your Team On the Right Path
Analyze Industry Direction
Devise Action Plan to Get Team on the Right Path
Analyze Teams Position
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Strategy Alignment

• What should your team be doing?
• Where should your teams focus be?

Where we are now
Where we need to be
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Paired Comparison Whats Important
A 10 (50) B 3 (15) C 6 (30) D 1
(5) E 0
Weighing the relative importance
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Pareto Analysis What are We Doing?

• Where are you spending your efforts?

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Leading Your Team On the Right Path
Analyze Industry Direction
Devise Action Plan to Get Team on the Right Path
Analyze Teams Position

• Where are we spending our time
• What SHOULD we be doing?
• How can we get there?

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Team Alignment

• Choose your teams industry
• What is your teams (or firms) current focus?
• Where is the industry going?
• What SHOULD you team (or firm) be doing?
• What can you eliminate or reduce or redirect in
  order to allow your team to do what it should be
  doing?

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Leading the Team

• Understand your own and your team members
  strengths, dispositions, problem-solving styles
• Managing innovation
• Aligning your team with your companys direction
• Next Topics
• Gaining support for your teams projects

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Gaining Support for Your Teams Projects

• Internal selling
• Leading Up
• Managing Up

• Understand communication preferences of
• Colleagues
• Executive staff
• Your staff

• Acquire needed resources
• Improves chances for success of your projects

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Selling Your Ideas

• Selling up
• Figure out who has the decision-making power
• Initially ask for input and suggestions
• Restructure your proposal to include input
• Selling down
• Solicit input and listen!
• Selling laterally
• How does your project benefit other stakeholders?
• Remember personal needs and interests

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Negotiating for What You Need

• What are the goals and objectives of the
  organization?
• How does the issue at hand fit into the goals and
  objectives of the organization?
• What are the goals and objectives of the
  individuals involved in this conflict?
• What are the additional interests of each of the
  individuals?
• If we cant negotiate a resolution to this
  conflict, what is our best alternative?
• What are some possible solutions or resolutions?
• How can I elicit additional information?

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Negotiation Planning
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Make a Proposal

• Your team needs to focus on X
• What is your plan to gain support for X?
• Who are the members of your audience?
• What are their communication preferences?
• How are you going to communicate with them?

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Leading an Effective Engineering Organization

• Understand your own and your team members
  strengths, dispositions, problem-solving styles
• Managing innovation
• Aligning your team with your companys direction
• Gaining support for your teams projects

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Working Together

• Understand the people on your team
• Provide meaningful work
• Understand your industrys directions and trends
• Align your teams efforts with the organizations
  goals
• Gain support for your teams projects

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Questions

• Leslie Martinich
• leslie_at_competitivefocus.com
• www.competitivefocus.com