How to become an outstanding engineer-nine work strategies

-How to be a star Engineer Robert E. Kelley, Carnegie Mellon University
-Robert E. Kelley, "How to be a star engineer," IEEE spectrum, pp. 51-58, Oct. 1999.
-Translation: Yan Yi

If you are an engineer who wants to improve productivity and increase your smart assets. What do you do to make others think you are outstanding? Before our research, this answer does not exist. There is no place in school or in the workplace to teach and cultivate outstanding working strategies. Most people verify their ideas through a trial error. However, many technically competitive engineers make too many mistakes in this process, making their overall performance only slightly higher than the average. For example, they may not take a proactive attitude, or they may be active in areas of low importance to the entire organization.

We found that it is necessary to change the way you do things and work with others. Outstanding people actually do things differently from others. They integrate their work strategies into their daily performance to generate a consistent code of conduct. Any engineer with enough intelligence and motivation can achieve superior performance.

However, such productivity is not released like the Big Bang. No magic pills or magic bullets can make you stand out instantly. It is developed on the basis of nine work strategies that work together. The following describes the nine working strategies by importance.
 
1. Shining trajectory)

Ordinary employees, such as Henry, are active in their minds: they come up with new ideas to make their jobs better, or they can take the initiative to help some extra things in the company, for example, planning an annual picnic or calling on colleagues to donate blood. In fact, Henry thought he was very proactive. "I have collected the latest technical documents and learned the latest software tools, so I can do my assignment very well. No one asked me to do this .』 Henry told me this way.

Lai is clear, and Henry does not know the key: only a specific behavior can make others think you are active. The true meaning of initiative and initiative is: actively pursuing greater responsibilities beyond the scope of their own powers (for example, Lai proactively helped install new software tools ). At the same time, you can still complete your main tasks. Being able to help other colleagues or teams with extra effort is like Lai actively helping her colleagues cope with difficult programs. When there are important tasks that appear in the gray area of everyone's authority, they can take the initiative to take responsibility and fulfill the tasks perfectly. Persistently stick to the identified goals or plans until they are successfully executed. Just like When LAI helped install the software, he worked overtime to complete the original idea.

However, in our research, outstanding engineers are confident that, although they are very eager to actively make a huge contribution, small contribution in their daily lives will be accumulated day after day, it may also have the same influence. In addition, they often find that a major discovery is slowly formed after a series of small efforts. If your work attitude is not focused on taking the initiative in a small place, your accumulated contribution will gradually dry up, and a major breakthrough will never happen. For example, Lai's initiative to help her colleagues deal with a complicated program may allow her colleagues to gain a breathing space, which is exactly the condition for meaningful breakthroughs at work.

Outstanding engineers also believe that the extent to which you can actively contribute is directly related to your experience. When LAI was a new employee, everyone did not expect her to take too much responsibility, but she took the initiative to make some small contributions to the people around her to bring some unexpected surprises to her colleagues. At the same time, other people quickly agreed that she was a productive engineer. As she became more experienced, people began to expect her to take the initiative to undertake more difficult and risky tasks.

Our observation of Lai, Henry and hundreds of other engineers found that new recruits must be active and active in any competitive team of professionals. This attitude will not only make the supervisor satisfied, but more importantly, your colleagues and customers will also appreciate your performance.

2. Know who to ask (knowing who knows)

Generally, employees only have a channel to learn about the latest office gossip or keep in touch with people in their own field and head hunters, so that you can switch to a better job in the future.

In addition to the above pipeline, outstanding engineers maintain a more important interpersonal relationship network. As they know, the current degree of social information overload has made few people have all the information they need to complete their work. They may have 50-80% of knowledge, but their work will not be completed unless there is a way to supplement the rest. Effective interpersonal relationships are the way they complement information insufficiency.

People who are good at using this contact know that they must establish reliable two-way contact channels with experts in various fields in advance. Experts in this contact network can help each other to complete important tasks at hand. The main purpose of establishing this network is to minimize the possibility of insufficient knowledge for new jobs.

There are two major differences between an effective interpersonal network and an average person's interpersonal relationship: one is that an effective interpersonal network contains the right person, and the other is that the response speed is fast. The experts they know can provide the correct answer immediately. Average People often get wrong information, usually because they ask the wrong person, or the experts who know the answer are not in his interpersonal relationship network. They may be misled, or they may continue to explore blindly.

Rapid response to the network allows excellent engineers to quickly obtain information they lack, and can continue their work earlier than others. Suppose they spent half a day asking for the answer they needed. The rest would take a day or two, and the information is usually incorrect. Over a long period of time, the cumulative difference is considerable.

Excellent engineers have established a more effective and rapid network, and their productivity can be further improved to surpass ordinary engineers. Even if you have the same Tianji, you are always not enough on your own.

However, successful interpersonal relationships are usually based on one-to-one direct communication, and less human computer network broadcast is often ineffective. Distinguished Engineers will spend a lot of time building, maintaining, and using an efficient interpersonal network composed of a group of experts who interact with each other. There is no direct relationship with the use of high technology.

3. Proactive self-management)

Most people believe that self-management means controlling time and plan. If their work can be completed within the original schedule, budget, and specifications, their self-management will be fine.

Outstanding engineers know that the true meaning of active self-management is not simply time-based and plan-based management. These two items should be done by every employee and paid by the company. An outstanding engineer's work strategy is to actively create opportunities, influence decision-making at work, perform extremely well at work, and create his own career development direction. Such an attitude can allow them to quickly accumulate work experience and talents, and increase their value in the company.

Elena is engaged in research and development at a company that provides advanced ceramic materials for the automotive industry. She applied to the company for a business trip and hoped to attend a productivity and quality seminar. Her boss did not agree because the content of this seminar was not directly related to her work and her travel budget was almost exhausted. Elena didn't give up her thoughts because she believed that attending the seminar would make her more valuable in the company. She spent her vacation attending the seminar and paid her own travel expenses.

During the meeting, she found that Europe is developing a new quality standard ISO 9000. This standard sets up bidding requirements to ensure higher quality of raw materials, products, and production processes, making European companies more competitive in the global market. If companies like her that provide raw materials cannot meet these requirements, they will not be able to participate in the European bidding.

She became more active when she came back. She used her time to study ISO 9000 requirements and explained to her team at lunch meetings. Soon, her colleagues began to pay attention to this issue and tried to persuade their superiors to prepare European ISO 9000 bidding requirements early, which would be of great help to the company.

Senior supervisors are hard to accept their opinions. They suspect that Europe will form a consensus on standards, not to mention the enforcement of new standards. However, Elena keeps trying to let the supervisor know that she will send some articles or memos she has written to them to remind them of the First Advantage of complying with this standard. Finally, the top executives saw some substantial benefits and decided to adopt this idea. Now, Europe is already the biggest customer of their company, and the quality improvement is also helpful to their U.S. market.

Elena's self-management makes the company more successful. Even if her supervisor does not support it, She proactively increases her value. At the same time, she also saw the opportunity to enhance the company's value. Finally, Elena's practice emphasizes the combination of work strategies. Her self-management also includes initiative and willingness to take over her responsibilities, or even surpass her superiors, to achieve a goal that everyone will benefit from. The key to achieving this is that she does not give up easily.

4. Getting the big picture)

Most people have short-sighted issues. They only look at the world from their own perspectives and limit themselves to the same perspective.

On the contrary, outstanding engineers often jump off their own perspectives and look at things from many different perspectives. 「 What do my customers think? What do my competitors think? What about my colleagues? What are my boss and the shareholders of the company thinking ?』 Because they can use different perspectives to measure the importance of things, they can make improvements to products or develop better solutions to problems.

The opinion of outstanding engineers is a model of judgment developed by accumulating sufficient experience. Sarah, after obtaining her master's degree in computer science, found a software development job in Silicon Valley. During her studies and work, she used a notebook to record her observations on common problems and solutions. Every night, she will read her notebook carefully and look for patterns of problems and clues like a detective.

Based on Sarah's practice and experience, she is doing just as well as other new recruits. However, the biggest difference between her and others is her understanding of software and computer logic. Her colleagues quickly discovered her insights and asked her for help when there were major obstacles that could not be broken. This also provides a great opportunity for Sarah to get in touch with issues she would not have encountered at her original job.

During her one year of employment, Sarah did something incredible to her colleagues. She requested to be transferred to the software testing department. Testing work is often mistaken for being inferior and with limited future development. The work of Software testers is primarily to check the results of others and confirm that the execution of the software is as expected. Compared with other R & D work, the test work lacks the personal sense of accomplishment brought about by the development of new products. Because they always bring bad news, such as software bugs or quality problems, software development engineers are usually reluctant to tolerate the existence of testers even if they know it is necessary.

But Sarah sees the test work as a new opportunity to understand her own job from a completely different perspective. She will gain a broad picture of the cause of software errors. A large amount of experience can be accumulated within one or two years. At the same time, we can work with the most important customers to develop reasonable test programs in customers' eyes.

In this process, Sarah can learn how to avoid mistakes made by nature and opinions in future software development. At the same time, the test gave her the opportunity to understand her colleagues' opinions. She learned a very solid skill in the process of developing software issues and troubleshooting by her colleagues. Two years later, when Sarah returned to her software development job, she began to show her work in training in the testing department. Her colleagues quickly decided that she was a software master. Sarah became a software expert at their company and led the company to compete in Silicon Valley.

Distinguished Engineers like Sarah can tell the nuances of different points of view. This is not because of the day. It is because they take the initiative to pursue and turn this trait into practical help.

5. correctly follow (the right kind of followership)

Generally, Engineers believe that the focus of serving as followers is to strictly observe the division, accept commands without hesitation, and avoid threats to supervisors.

However, an outstanding engineer has long known that the deputy can make a correct contribution. The true meaning of an outstanding second character is to concentrate on helping. They take the initiative and actively invest in the success of the organization (and its supervisor). At the same time, they can make independent and decisive judgments on what to do and how to do it. A good follower can fully cooperate with the supervisor to achieve the goal of the entire Organization. in real time, the personality and work culture between him and the supervisor are different.

This may be surprising to many, because most people think that outstanding people should be supervisors or focal points. In general, an outstanding deputy provides a warning to the supervisor in advance in case of any difficulty, making a careful resonance board, or questioning the correctness of the decision of the supervisor.

Among many technology companies, the company believes that the real needs of customers and knowledge staff think the best must be differentiated. I often hear bosses and I complain that when a customer only needs a Dodge car, his employees create a Rolls-Royce. Technical staff tend to be very persistent in making the best, and they want to use the most advanced technology in the product. Real time will cause time delay and increase budget.

But sometimes right and wrong are not necessarily absolute. A superior engineer at Bell's lab argued that he was doing additional functions when the supervisor questioned him. His supervisor hopes to use the simplified Transfer Function in the telephone switch to provide the product to the customer in advance.

She said: "Don't worry about these additional features. This customer would rather have a basic machine available now, instead of waiting for another month for a stronger function .』

Her engineer replied, "this is not the case 』. And sit down with her to discuss the short-term and long-term goals of this product for this customer and other customers.

"That's right. It may be good for this customer in the short term .』 Her subordinates said. "But there are also risks in doing so. They may classify us as low-level product lines. At the same time, if we add this additional feature now, we will save a lot of time for the product development of the next customer in progress. However, we confirm their ideas with the customer again .』

This outstanding follower understands the issues most concerned by his supervisor. At the same time, he also tried to move her point of view to their common overall goal. If possible, outstanding followers can slightly correct their direction to align their efforts with the company's goals. If not, they have to find another company that is more suitable.

6. Team work as joint ownership of a project)

Generally, employees know that teamwork is done by working with others during planning or solving problems, and doing their part well.

Outstanding engineers have a higher level of view on teamwork. They regard it as a series of complex techniques, including participation in setting common planning goals, Team commitment, work discipline, schedules, and sharing team achievements. At the same time, this also includes actively promoting team interaction-making everyone feel like a member of a group, handling conflicts, and helping other members solve problems.

A medical equipment supplier has set up a crisis processing team to handle the problem because the hospital is very dissatisfied with the failure of its latest care monitor. This instrument may occasionally issue an emergency warning of errors, which makes patients and medical staff very difficult. Medical staff often rush to deal with emergencies to find that there is no problem at all.

This team includes professionals from five departments, including production, R & D, and customer service personnel. Among the seven members of this group, only Aiden is the best. He was originally an engineer and transferred to the customer service department to learn more about customer service-related matters.

When the first meeting of the group lasted 3rd hours, the members had a heated dispute over the immediate action. Ewing, a 53-year-old production engineer who has been working in the company for 25 years, hopes to persuade others to continue dispatching repair personnel to the hospital for repair. Julie, a new researcher from the research department, hopes to completely recycle the product in comparison with the precedent of Jiao Sheng's handling of the Tylenol incident.

As the discussion proceeds, the debate between Ewing and Julie is becoming increasingly intense and uncivilized. Aiden found himself and others getting frustrated and upset. In order not to let this situation continue, Aiden puts forward his feelings and recommends that you pause for 10 minutes to take a rest and think about whether there is a transfer plan.

When the Meeting continued, Aiden asked Julie to endorse Ewing's opinion and asked Ewing to defend Julie's opinion and try to use this method to break the deadlock. Although Julie and Ewing are a little reluctant, this policy effectively reduces the increasing tension and anger. At this time, other team members began to brainstorm and propose possible ideas. A very experienced but shy designer, Eloise, sat in the corner and did not speak all day long. She put forward her opinion in a gentle voice: "since not every hospital has the same complaints, should we first find out why these machines continue to cause problems? Maybe these machines are faulty at the beginning, or the hospitals where these machines are installed have some special features. Instead of fully recycling all products, it is better to only recover problematic machines and check all the configuration information to find out where the problem exists. It may be caused by a phenomenon such as a high magnetic field. 』

When she finished speaking, no other members responded to her thoughts. After the discussion continued for a few minutes, Aiden joined the discussion and reminded everyone: "I'm not sure if everyone has heard the suggestions from Eloise. I think her approach should help us solve this problem, can you try again now? 』

Eloise once again put forward her thoughts. Aiden noticed that this suggestion not only showed a serious response to the customer's problem, but also reduced the cost of comprehensive recovery. Other team members began to support the Eloise method to resolve the deadlock and then began to discuss subsequent topics.

If it wasn't for Aiden to interfere, Ewing and Julie may be still quarreling, and Eloise's opinions may never be noticed, and the entire team would not know how long it would take to struggle. Although the role of Aiden in the group is a representative of the customer service department, he has made efforts beyond his responsibilities to improve the efficiency of the team.

7. Small leadership)

Most people are fascinated by the big-l leadership style: great vision, charm, and success. For them, leadership is inherent. People with such days can show off themselves by taking power, have the right to decide the most important things, and are not interested in things such as downward authorization.

Outstanding employees regard leadership as a work strategy and use their professional competence and influence to persuade a group of people to unite and accomplish important work together. This work involves a number of efforts: helping the team create a clear vision, build trust, and get a commitment to complete the task. Strive for sufficient resources to achieve the goal. At the same time, the whole plan will be guided until it is successfully executed.

We all know that some people are very smart, but cannot lead the smallest plan. In addition to intelligence, we also need to have other abilities to show the leadership of small leaders ). Small leaders understand the subtle relationship between people, while large leaders focus on their own ideas, work style, and goals. Small leaders know that they must consider the needs, skills, desires, and power of all team members.

This kind of leadership style that focuses on itself is productive in the workplace. A small leader generally has no formal authority for the group he leads. Colleagues are willing to participate only when determining that leaders in the team are equally interested in themselves and others. Therefore, the combination of teams requires interaction and communication with all the members, which is a waste of valuable lead time for large leaders. However, a small leader who is willing to share the joys and sorrows with all team members is often more loyal and trusted than the most attractive lead supervisor.

The greatest secret of an outstanding leader is also the biggest difference between a great leader and a common leader, because they do not assume they have full control over everything else. Most big leaders believe they are omnipotent and know what is best for members and conditions.

Distinguished small leaders always ask their members' opinions first, even if they think they already know the results. Anithia, a German-based software designer in the United States, will verify her assumptions about her colleagues' ideas before starting the program. When she was assigned to lead a program to develop network software, she first asked the members about their roles and tasks at the first meeting.

"John, when you executed the plan with you last time, you mentioned that you wanted to have more hardware experience. Is that still the case? This is because the hardware part of this plan is very important .』

Like a cognitive psychologist, anithia suspends his assumptions and raises open questions so that members can express their current skills and their expectations and needs for the program. Therefore, she can better cooperate with the assignment of tasks and the abilities and interests of members. She hopes to avoid stereotypes of her colleagues, and not create actors like Hollywood producers.

Of course, as an employee, it is impossible to always get all the desired tasks and benefits. However, a small leader without formal authority can win the recognition by listening and trying to satisfy some of the requirements. At the same time, this process of hard communication can also lay a foundation for mutual trust in the plan, to help overcome the inevitable pressure when the plan encounters difficulties. Demonstrating superior strength in a technical field may help an outstanding engineer be assigned as a team leader. However, small leaders know that the power of class cannot extend to interpersonal relationships. They will try to create an atmosphere for the members to feel that we are on the same ship 』.

Anithia's plan was followed by a very good response from the customer. At the year-end celebration dinner, the president of the North American Department praised anithia and invited her to join the stage to praise the plan and its success. "If our company had 500 people like anithia, It would be sooner or later to control the entire North American market," he said .』 Then he asked anithia to speak a few words.

Just like when many actors win an Oscar, anithia can quickly say something to their superiors and members. But she does not. She invited all the team members to come to the stage and asked one of them to introduce everyone. Then she said, "this plan is the result of our joint efforts, without everyone's contribution, we cannot succeed today. We are very proud of this plan, and we are very glad that you think so too. 』 Then they bowed to everyone.

8. Smart (street smarts)

Most people tend to focus too much on likes and think that this is a way to promote quickly in the workplace. Either they are too concerned about political issues in the office, or they are deliberately pretending to be totally indifferent.

Distinguished employees understand that there are many legitimate and competing interests in any organization. Through their understanding of the operation of the Organization, they can help them promote cooperation in these conflicting competitions, highlight the conflicting part, and make the task complete smoothly. This action includes the ability to handle the dynamics of individuals and teams, know when to avoid conflicts, and when to confront each other, and know how to turn possible enemies into allies.

Remember Sarah? Outstanding Software development engineers mentioned in the 4th work strategies. Even though her colleagues thought she was crazy, she volunteered to transfer to the testing department. This action not only gives her different views on her work, but also knows that those people will be related to her future work and begin to establish a good cooperative relationship. This kind of organizational relationship not only improves her position, but also makes future work interactions smoother.

Elena, mentioned in 3rd work strategies, used a large number of organizational wit to influence her company and shifted its focus to ISO 9000 and the European market. First, she took advantage of her lunch meeting to teach her colleagues what she had learned at the seminar. After she had a better understanding of the subject, she held a more detailed training course. At the same time, she carefully explained the benefits of this special standard to her boss and gradually lobby the management class by sending relevant documents and memos on business and revenue potential. Of course, before getting in touch with a higher-level manager, she will get her boss's approval first. Then she began to train her other colleagues on how to win a European client. It can be seen that while she tries to promote her idea, she combines this idea with the company's important goal. At the same time, it also pays great attention to the etiquette of Organizational Operations.

9. Show and Tell)

Generally, employees think that presentation is to use dazzling presentations, long memos, or publicly display their own results to attract the attention of the management class. They focus on their own images and the messages they want to convey, rather than the audience.

Distinguished Engineers will carefully filter the information to be presented, deliver messages in the most effective and friendly format, and persuade specific audiences. At the highest level, the presentation means selecting the appropriate message for a specific audience, or selecting the appropriate audience for a specific message.

The importance of presentation cannot be avoided. If a professional cannot effectively present their ideas to others in the form of presentations, it is quite difficult to survive in today's workplace. For most knowledge workers, the focus of the discussion here is not a large-scale speech, such as the presentation of the most advanced multimedia devices and computer special effects at a super large conference center. The presentation is for presentations made to 5 to 20 audience members in a small meeting room within the company. Most of the presentations are presented to colleagues, superiors, or customers. Most of the content is technical or product-related topics.

The presentation preparation process is complex for distinguished professionals. Our research has observed that the presentation will gradually change from simply conveying information to shaping information. Distinguished Engineers are generally proficient in delivering messages to specific objects, persuading the audience to accept the content to be presented, and preparing for possible criticism in advance.

The most common error occurs when a message is transmitted, and the attempt to use the message to exert its influence. In this process, their audience composition is already quite different. However, their style and structure remain the same as the original one.

The labor relationship manager of a Fortune 500 company, in negotiating a new contract with the company's trade union, faced the need to reduce the cost of medical care. He solved the problem in an excellent way. During this negotiation, the plan he proposed must be accepted by the company's highest supervisor and trade union at the same time.

The main processing method is to shape the same information into completely different expressions. First, he communicated with a group of low-level trade union employees for a week and presented a small portion of the information every day. He gave them clear and easy-to-read handouts so that they could copy them to all the union members. The handout content is easy to understand. This presentation primarily conveys a message if the Union agrees to change the medical care plan. The company promises to use the saved funds to update old factory equipment, making the factory more competitive. At the same time, the risk of off-site and unemployment is reduced.

The presentations he made to the company's CEO and Vice President earlier basically contain the same information, but they are packaged in completely different ways. First, the biggest difference from a trade union presentation is that there is much less interaction time. Therefore, most of the information is included in a detailed report. He suggested accepting a new plan with a convincing chapter. In addition, he has an hour to present the CEO and chairman of the company to strengthen his argument.

He stressed in his presentation that if the management insisted on changing the medical care plan without any creative Compensation Plan, the Union would not agree and the negotiations would be almost impossible. He reminded the company that it has just entered a rapid growth period, and shareholders may not be able to endure employee strikes.

Although both sides of the camp have some criticism on his plan, the outstanding negotiator has already made the foundation of the plan very solid. At the end, the management class and the trade union accepted his proposal and made only a small change.

There are many presentation skills worth learning in this case. But the most important thing is that the biggest difference between the average person and the master is: understanding your audience and shaping the message to be conveyed.