Why Engineers Need Help - Bridging the Gap between Engineers and Business
The transition from engineer to entrepreneur is easy, isn’t it? While engineers may be competent in their technical discipline, in my experience they tend to struggle with management and business skills. It is my contention that there is a significant gap between engineering and business. As Lord Sugar put it during a programme in The Apprentice TV series, ‘I’ve yet to see an engineer make a good manager – you’re fired!’ Not everyone agrees with me (or Lord Sugar). A recent post on LinkedIn by Joshua Turner took the opposite view, stating that engineers make great entrepreneurs, because they:
can define and solve problems and are trained to think logically and to follow a methodology to uncover useful solutions;
are optimistic, positive thinkers who persevere until a problem is solved;
can build trust because they tell the truth in a blunt manner;
have humility and a yearning for knowledge, which helps them learn business skills quickly.
I have no difficulty with the view that engineers can be great entrepreneurs (such as James Dyson) however they often need help to get there. This is because engineers are by training and inclination most comfortable with the tangible world where the empirical approach is king and therefore tend to struggle with people skills and intangible concepts. They can also find it hard to develop management judgement, which is an essential skill for decision making in conditions of uncertainty and complexity. Such challenges are not unique to engineers. Engineers and other professionals such as accountants are specialists with deep but relatively narrow education and training, whereas managers and entrepreneurs are more generalist with relatively shallow but broad learning. This focus on logical left brain activity by specialists is an obstacle to the creativity and open mindedness that comes with right brain activity, which is so important for the innovation and original thinking required in management and business.
So what can we do to help engineers become more business and management savvy? There are 2 approaches to bridging this gap:
up-skill engineers with business and management skills
use engineers with business and management skills to help other engineers develop their inventions and innovations into realistic business propositions
An excellent example of how to up-skill engineering professionals is the Sainsbury Management Fellows (SMF). www.smf.org.uk SMF is a UK charity that champions the benefits of a combined business and engineering education to help improve the performance of the UK economy. SMF does this by awarding £300,000 worth of MBA scholarships each year to young engineers with exceptional education qualifications and leadership potential. The excellent SMF infographic on mentoring is available on their website at: http://www.smf.org.uk/initiatives-and-events/mentoring.aspx
SMF is involved in two schemes: mentoring young engineers, and an Executive Mentoring Programme for engineers heading towards positions on the Board. SMF mentors young engineers through the Engineer Leadership Awards programme run by the Royal Academy of Engineering, www.raeng.org.uk/. Since 1999 Fellows have mentored over 500 young engineers; there are typically 40 young engineers in the scheme at any one time.
David Sainsbury (now Lord Sainsbury of Turville) founded SMF in 1987 because he felt that there should be more people in the boardrooms of British industry who have both the knowledge of how things are made and effective management skills. By contrast, he found that many overseas companies, particularly those in Japan and Germany, were succeeding because their senior executives and boards included qualified engineers.
SMF Executive Mentoring Programme (EMP) is for Sainsbury Management Fellows heading towards board level positions of leading public companies. The Sainsbury Management Fellowship Society has partnered with a leading executive search company, Heidrick & Struggles (www.heidrick.com) to create the EMP programme. Fellows chosen for mentoring are partnered with captains of industry. The number of engineers in the Executive Mentoring Programme is expected to reach 17 by the end of 2013.
The alternative approach to bridging the gap is to use engineers with business and management skills to help other engineers develop their inventions and innovations into realistic business propositions. An excellent example of this approach is the Engineering Innovation Network South West (EIN-SW) www.einsw.org.uk/
The Engineering Innovation Network South West has one simple aim, to help develop the small to medium engineering sector in the South West. The project aims to assist a minimum of seventy seven engineering SMEs throughout the South West by providing £2000 or two days of assistance. Not only will the business benefit, but staff and students within the engineering departments of the partners will gain experience working with engineering businesses.
The EIN-SW is a partnership led by Wiltshire College with Swindon College, Bridgewater College and The University of Bath. The project is funded by a £375,000 grant from the European Regional Development Fund through the South West Competitiveness Programme 2007-13. For more information visit www.communities.gov.uk/erdf or the EIN-SW website www.einsw.org.uk The University of Bath also runs an Innovation Centre (UBIC), http://ubic.org.uk . UBIC is a membership organisation for high-growth potential businesses and the entrepreneurs, innovators and researchers that create them. As part of the University’s Research Development & Support Office Enterprise & Knowledge Exploitation team, UBIC has supported over 200 companies, helping them to create 400 jobs and raise £40m in investment from ventures capitalists and business angels since it was established in 2003.
Schemes like the Sainsbury Management Fellows, the Engineering Innovation Network South West, and the University of Bath Innovation Centre, should be celebrated for the important contribution they make to the UK economy. It is widely accepted that economic growth and new jobs will be generated mainly by small to medium enterprises, including manufacturing, so anything we can do to bridge the gap between engineering and business will help. Supporting manufacturing also helps to re-balance the economy away from its over-reliance on services.
ROSS NICHOLS
Business Mentor, Executive and Career Transition Coach
www.businessmentoringservices.co.uk
Twitter: @Biz Mentoring Ltd
Blog: http://www.businessmentoringservices.co.uk/blog.php
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