We are very fortunate to have a guest blogger today, Brandon Sights, a graduate of Duke’s Master of Engineering Management program (the distributed version – http://memp.pratt.duke.edu/distance). While having dinner with Brandon recently in Denver, he started recounting all the ways he had used his MEM degree and I could not resist asking him to write them down to share in this post! The anecdotes are very insightful and provide excellent teachings for all early career engineering professionals, not just those who have an MEM degree. There is a lot to cover so today I will post Part A and next time we will finish off with Part B. Thanks Brandon!
How I have used my MEM Degree (Part A) by Brandon Sights
Introduction
I’m sitting in the cab of a tractor in the 113 degree heat of the Arizona desert, trying to figure out what just happened. A few minutes ago, my head was slammed against the pillar and my wrist was bent impossibly backwards trying to keep myself from being thrown from the cab. A few days ago, I had voluntarily slammed my own head against a table in the Chicago-Midway airport when I heard that the problem we are working on now in Arizona was going all the way to Italy, to the chairman of the conglomerate that owns our largest customer. The head of our division was flying to Italy as I was flying back to my home base Colorado. That was how I found myself today at the proving grounds of our largest customer, reeling from both physical and mental pain in a tractor nicknamed “Sweaty Betty,” because the air conditioner struggles to fight the heat outside.
A little over a year ago, I had joined Trimble Navigation as a software and control systems engineer in the precision agriculture division. Now, I am leading the effort to meet the needs of our largest auto-guidance customer. I negotiated my move to Trimble Navigation during the final residency week and graduation from the Master of Engineering Management (MEM) program at Duke. Since then I’ve tackled numerous problems, often traveling to places I’d never heard of before, and immediately being thrown into sink-or-swim situations directly in front of a customer. The last year feels like a blur. Luckily, I have been able to utilize skills learned in the MEM program to plan ahead (to plan is everything), to think on my feet (but a plan is useless), to communicate effectively with different types of stakeholders, to maintain the focus on customer needs, and to appreciate that I’ve found work that suits me.
Self-Reflection
One of the most important skills that I learned in the MEM program was discussed during the very first day of the first residency: Self-Reflection. This was also a major theme of Dr. Ryan’s Management in High Tech Industries course. It wasn’t that I completely lacked this skill before joining the MEM program; I simply didn’t put much weight into my own opinion. Luckily, many of the activities and workshops in the MEM program, such as the Strengths Finder 2.0, Myers Brigg, and team feedback exercises, such as those in Project Management, helped me to understand myself better. In the end, I placed a heavier emphasis on evaluating my choices and actions, and combined that evaluation with the new things I learned about myself to make changes in my career. The largest change I made was moving to Trimble Navigation just after graduation from the MEM program. This change was largely influenced by new insights into what made me tick that I recognized while taking Management in High Tech Industries. For example, I realized that I had two major components of my personality that were not being met before moving to Trimble: Achiever and Responsibility. The job at Trimble promised me the freedom to produce as much as I wanted, whereas my previous job was very stringent on the number of hours that a person could work in a day without violating federal contract law. Also, in my previous positions it seemed nearly impossible that I would soon find myself in a true ownership situation for something that really mattered to the company. Plus, the organization and communication structure were very hierarchical, not a great place for someone with a “just git-er-done” attitude.
In direct contrast, I can now work as hard as I want to achieve a given goal, and my efforts will be appreciated. I have directly responded to emails from the Vice President of Innovation with suggestions and even corrections to his documents, based on topics covered in Innovation Management, such as creating an effective innovation pipeline, and received responses from him encouraging more input and personal interaction. Further, I have quickly found myself responsible for making our largest customer in the Precision Agriculture division happy with one of our most important products. This is another area where I have used self-reflection to improve.
When I first started at Trimble, the auto guidance partnership with our largest customer was quite abrasive, with the rapport between the participants lacking. When I was tasked with leading the weekly auto guidance status meetings from the Trimble side, I originally continued the practice of treating the meeting as a conflict instead of a collaboration. Upon reflection, I realized that this attitude was only harming progress, and so I made an effort to change not only the tone of the meetings, but the whole collaboration, into an open discussion with the focus being a joint effort to make progress and solve problems. I put together a list for the director in charge of collaboration between the two companies of the common reasons why joint efforts between companies have poor results and also made recommendations as to how we could improve the effectiveness of the collaboration, all based on the curriculum in Innovation Management. Communication and effectiveness improved immediately. The Director of Quality at Trimble, who sits in on most of the weekly status meetings between the companies, commented to me that the meetings were the only ones that felt like a team working to resolve issues together. Clearly, self-reflection has made a big difference in my happiness and effectiveness at work.
[In the next installment Brandon will share his thoughts on Communication and Intellectual Property. Stay tuned for Part B next week.]
