Leading an Effective Engineering Organization

1. Leading an Effective Engineering Organization Leslie Martinich Competitive Focus

2. 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

3. Topics • Leading • Managing innovation • Aligning your team with your company’s direction • Gaining support for your team’s projects • Topics we will not cover • Operations management • Project management • Financial management • Professional responsibility and legal issues

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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.

7. 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)

8. 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

9. Listening Management Colleagues Staff Understand your audience What is important to them? What are their goals? Communication

10. 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 company’s direction • Gaining support for your team’s projects

11. Industry Assessment Partners Competitors Suppliers Your offering Customers Distributors Alternatives • Industry Structure

12. Industry Assessment:Competitive Forces Potential Entrants Industry Competitors Rivalry Among Existing Firms Suppliers Buyers Substitutes

13. Innovation Why? Strategy What? Products, technology, solutions Who? Markets, demographics How? Processes, manufacturing Where? Distribution, channels When? Value chain, timing

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

15. Phases Overlap As one technology matures, innovations create another technology Mature Innovation

16. Example: News Distribution Is the firm in the “newspaper” business? Or the “information” business? Or something else? • News Industry • Media distribution • Changes in distribution • Print • Online • Pod Casting • ???

17. Example: Photography • Digital photography • Photo processing -> Printing • Consider players: • Polaroid • Kodak • HP • Ink providers • Sony • Canon Mature

18. Industry Assessment: Innovations • What forces are changing in your industry? Platform changes Technology changes Supply chain changes Market changes ?????

19. 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 competition—features or price or relationship or something else? • Given the answers to the above questions, what are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

20. Industry Assessment Partners Competitors Suppliers Your offering Customers Distributors Alternatives

21. Leading the Team • Understand your own and your team members’ strengths, dispositions, problem-solving styles • Managing innovation • Next Topics: • Aligning your team with your company’s direction • Gaining support for your team’s projects

22. Leading Your Team: On the Right Path Big picture, Innovations What ARE we doing? What SHOULD we be doing? Strengths, Fit Analyze Industry Direction Devise Action Plan to Get Team on the Right Path Analyze Team’s Position

23. Strategy Alignment • What should your team be doing? • Where should your team’s focus be? Where we are now Where we need to be

24. Paired Comparison: What’s Important A = 10 (50%) B = 3 (15%) C = 6 (30%) D = 1 (5%) E = 0 Weighing the relative importance

25. Pareto Analysis: What are We Doing? • Where are you spending your efforts?

26. Leading Your Team: On the Right Path Analyze Industry Direction Devise Action Plan to Get Team on the Right Path Analyze Team’s Position Where are we spending our time What SHOULD we be doing? How can we get there?

27. Team Alignment • Choose your team’s industry • What is your team’s (or firm’s) 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?

28. Leading the Team • Understand your own and your team members’ strengths, dispositions, problem-solving styles • Managing innovation • Aligning your team with your company’s direction • Next Topics: • Gaining support for your team’s projects

29. Internal selling Leading Up Managing Up Understand communication preferences of Colleagues Executive staff Your staff Gaining Support for Your Team’s Projects • Acquire needed resources • Improves chances for success of your projects

30. 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

31. 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 can’t negotiate a resolution to this conflict, what is our best alternative? • What are some possible solutions or resolutions? • How can I elicit additional information?

32. Negotiation Planning

33. 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?

34. Leading an Effective Engineering Organization • Understand your own and your team members’ strengths, dispositions, problem-solving styles • Managing innovation • Aligning your team with your company’s direction • Gaining support for your team’s projects

35. Working Together • Understand the people on your team • Provide meaningful work • Understand your industry’s directions and trends • Align your team’s efforts with the organization’s goals • Gain support for your team’s projects

36. Questions Leslie Martinich leslie@competitivefocus.com www.competitivefocus.com