This is something they never teach in engineering school. I wonder do they teach that in business school? I wonder is there any school actually gives systemic training on the art of Machiavellian.

By Carl Selinger, June 2010, IEEE Spectrum
Sometimes it takes more than technical prowess to get the job done

I set up the meeting in order to set up Ron.

It was a rare time in my career when I intentionally used power and politics to solve a problem—a Machiavellian approach I didn’t learn in engineering school. Ron, my coproject manager, was jeopardizing the project. He was uninterested, his time was divided among the other things on his plate, he wasn’t getting his tasks done. He had to go.

The project involved showing information and entertainment on TV monitors viewed by passengers awaiting departures at New York and New Jersey airports. As a business concession, it proved very popular, like airport stores and food services. The team assigned to the project was responsible for installing TV monitors in the terminals, overseeing the programming, and accounting for advertising revenues from the three busy airports in our domain.

In my role in the business development area, I initiated and launched the project as part of a larger network of airports around the United States, and I was ready to lead the operation. However, our customer services division naturally wanted one of its managers to play an equal role. To avoid a turf battle over boundaries and credit, the heads of our departments decided to have Ron and I be comanagers for the first year.

Over the course of that first year, I produced monthly reports with grudging input from Ron. I would itemize the growing number of installations and the revenues received. Time and again, Ron’s deliverables, such as current passenger levels and other information specific to our airports, were delayed. These delays were noted to management, to the point where Ron wanted to stop doing reports on a monthly basis.

As we neared the one-year mark, I told my manager we needed to address this problem in the working relationship. I was willing to run the entire program—which was the original intent—but Ron was not agreeable, and my manager didn’t want to confront the problem directly: ”Can’t you just get along?” So I took matters into my own hands.

Step one: I asked Ron’s manager, Joan, if she’d like a briefing on first-year operations. She welcomed this, so I set up a meeting for just the three of us, to minimize the number of people who had to learn of Ron’s shortcomings.

Step two: I prepared a simple agenda that Ron approved. I would go first, presenting my areas—the overall administration of the business agreement and installation of the TV monitors, both of which were going well. Then Ron would discuss his areas. The last item on the agenda was to identify any issues that needed to be resolved.

Step three: We held the informal meeting in Joan’s office. I gave my briefing and answered her several questions. Then it was Ron’s turn. Despite the passage of a year, several key items he was responsible for were still delayed. Not all the delays were his fault, but they seemed to surprise Joan—and managers don’t like surprises. She asked Ron increasingly pointed questions: ”Why was this being delayed?” Why didn’t you tell me there was a problem?” She was not happy with his excuses. I sat quietly. Joan finally turned to me and said, ”Carl, I think Ron and I need to talk about this, so if you’ll excuse us, I’ll get back to you.”

The very next day my manager and I got a short e-mail from Joan asking me to take over the project with their continued support. Ron stayed involved and was more effective in his limited support role.

Projects usually run better that way. Sometimes it makes sense for two people to share leadership—if the responsibilities neatly divide into two areas that don’t overlap, for example, or if neither person has the time or resources to take full charge. But often it doesn’t work—especially, as in this case, when a bureaucracy simply wants to protect or extend its turf. At times like that, it takes politics and power, as well as technical expertise, to get things done. Do what you have to do. To paraphrase Machiavelli, you don’t avoid such a war; you merely postpone it to your own disadvantage.

In the global economy of outsourcing, design knowledge is slowly become a commodity. Low wage workers in third world countries will eventually learn your know-hows and technical skills. The only want to stay competitive is be creative. That’s what really set excellence apart from the mediocre.

by Rob Evans – ED Online – May 28, 2009
You can’t assume that you’re playing at the top of your game. Take an honest look at your own work and ask if it’s the best you can do.

Life if full of unassailable assumed truths, and it’s an often disturbing but always constructive exercise to challenge them. Let’s start by questioning an easy one from everyday life: are you a good driver?

Your instinctive answer is undoubtedly yes, and you would receive the same answer from anyone else you ask. But there are obviously loads of hopeless drivers on the roads. It just so happens that you, or anyone that’s asked, isn’t one of them—supposedly. It’s a self-reassuring assumed truth.

You can challenge yourself with lots of assumed truths. Do you treat people fairly? Are you broad-minded? Does the West dominate innovation? Again, the instinctive answer to them all is yes. But your lack of an objective view should create doubt. The last one is a trap, though you get the idea.

Here’s another: are you creative? Most of us have sufficient self belief to say yes. If you’re an electronics design engineer, it’s unquestionably true, because design is a creative process by definition. The real and challenging question, though, is if you apply that creativity to the benefit of the final product being developed. Watch out for the instinctive “yes” answer here, because that assumed truth needs scrutiny.

What Creativity Really Means

Creative engineering that adds value to a product isn’t the beautiful sweep of a cluster of bus tracks on a printed-circuit board (PCB), nor is it a succinct chunk of code that’s stunning in its simplistic elegance. This design panache might make you feel all warm and fuzzy, but it’s only creative from the focused world of the individual design domains. And, frankly, it doesn’t influence the success of the final product.

Creativity in engineering has profound and tangible value when it makes a product unique among its competitors. It might manifest itself as a total new genre of product or a groundbreaking new experience for the end user. But either way, it’s when innovation through creativity has delivered a sustainable market advantage to a product as a whole.

With this higher-level, real-world definition of engineering creativity that counts, consider again if you deliver that benefit to the final product. Chances are you can’t because of the restrictions imposed by the electronics design environment and methodology you use.

Now we get down to direct questions that aren’t clouded by assumed truths. Do you have the opportunity to explore new ideas, experiment with new technology, and pursue “what if” questions as part of the design process? Innovation is the process of harnessing and applying creativity, but the right design systems and approach need to be in place to allow it to happen. If this isn’t the case, then your creative potential is being squandered.

It’s not only the benefits that design creativity brings to a product that are lost. It’s also the very factor that makes you as a design engineer unique and valuable. In an increasingly globalized electronics industry where design knowledge has become a commodity, there are now millions of engineers around the globe that can do your job. Perhaps there is another dubious assumed truth here: “Of course my designs are special and unique.”

Acquiring and building engineering knowledge is only a temporary advantage—others will quickly learn. Your creative ability is what can set you apart from the rest, but only if you apply it. And it appears, today, most engineers can’t. A large part of the blame for this lies squarely at the feet of the very electronics technology we employ in designs.

Where Did Creativity Go?

The rapid evolution of device technologies means that where we once developed designs based exclusively on physical hardware, a product design now involves a complex mix of hardware, software, programmable hardware, and mechanical design. The result is an explosion in the complexity of the design process and a matching increase in the segmentation and constraints applied to manage that complexity.

From an engineer’s perspective, this course of isolating and bolting down the design processes has destroyed the opportunities for creativity, and therefore the path to true innovation in product design. To make matters worse, it also removes the ability to distinguish your unique value as an electronics engineer.

Other factors are at play as well. The increasing competition imposed by a global electronics design industry has ramped up the pressure to get products to market quickly. Although time-to-market is only a temporary advantage, it nonetheless squeezes the engineering schedules to a point where exploring new concepts and accepting their associated risk is untenable.

A New View

Design engineers need the opportunity to experiment, explore, and even productively fail. This is the font of design creativity and the innovative products it can deliver. To reach this point, we need to change our approach to electronics design and the systems we use to apply that methodology. This means standing back and taking a high-level, holistic view of the design process. It considers the product development in its entirety and focuses on the end user’s sustained experience with that product and the company itself.

Such an approach pulls back the view of design from a blinkered, domain-specific tactic to one that fosters collaborative product design as one task and one process. Creativity can leapfrog an insular perspective and be redirected at the product experience itself and how it hooks into broader ecosystems.

With the current segmented and constrained design systems (the conventional divide and conquer methodology), this new open approach to product design isn’t possible. It requires many of the existing boundaries within electronics design to be broken down and new, flexible ways to design to be reintroduced.

Engineering project teams are ultimately designing one product and should use a single design environment that encompasses the entire design process. Product design can then be tackled with high-level processes as a single task, starting with the concepts and functionality that are defined in the soft domain, while hardware is “plugged in” to suit when needed.

By effectively “disconnecting” the functional intelligence of a design (defined by its soft elements) from the hardware it resides on, creative innovation is no longer limited by predefined hardware constraints. The single design environment allows creative ideas to permeate through all domains without risk, freeing all engineers to explore their ideas and visions with a clear view to the final product.

When such a system is in place, applying this high-level approach to electronics design will free your engineering creativity to develop the next generation of connected electronic products. True innovation in electronics design comes from engineering creativity and the opportunity to explore ideas. And we’re all familiar with it, because it’s built in. It’s the unique “aha!” moment, the moment when the right combination of synapses fires in your frontal lobe, and in practice, when you have pursued the right “what if” questions.

It’s also critical to a product’s ability to compete in the market and to your survival as an engineer in an increasingly globalized electronics design industry and a troubled economy. Here’s one last assumed truth to consider: “Everything will really be okay in the end. I just need to ride it out.” It won’t, you know. Now is the time to act.

I did came prepared, but I did not prepare enough. I did not think hard enough trying explain my job in very simple language. I printed some photos Gameboy and iPhone circuit board. They seems quite exciting seeing how a Gameboy looks like inside. I also brought a chips to show them, but I doubt they understand exactly what it does. At the end of the day, I think they sort of know computer engineers build computer chips and there are computer chips inside every electronic device. I bet they are totally lost when I try to explain how we make build a chip. I even used the word fabrication.

The little kids asked me some questions about my job. Most of them are pretty general questions, like how’s my work environment like, what kind of education I need, working hours, etc. When I said I work flexible hours, I can come into work leave any time I like and I can take breaks whenever I want, the little kids seem very excited. Then I explained a little more that my job is project base, which means I have work long hours when the deadline is getting close. I tried to use handing in homework as an analogy, I hope some of them will get it.

I like talking to little kids about engineering.  I feel I have done some good service to my profession.  I wonder did my words inspired any kid grow up to be an engineer.

If we are just looking at the result, yes, she seems to be worse off than before.  However, there are many things cannot be quantified with a dollar sign.  Instead of seeing it as a failed attempt of career change, it can be seen as a sabbatical.  My friend always dreamed to study aboard and experience a different country.  That was her last chance to experience the school life full time before she is too old to enjoy that.  The course work she learned in school might not be very useful, but who knows what might come in handy one day.  Most important of all is she had tried to go after her dream.  No matter what is the outcome, she won’t have any regrets.  Maybe when she look back in 10 years, her decision quitting her job to go back to school will have a different perspective.