Designing Productivity into Your Engineering Career

But this day was special.  It was the result of twelve months of a focused effort to increase his productivity in his work, as well as an equally committed shift in mindset. In addition, today was special because he’d just been named “lead design engineer” for the largest transportation project his engineering firm had ever been hired to design.  Needless to say, Dave was excited.  

He knew that his shift in mindset, about productivity as well as the process he used daily to be productive in his workflow, was what put him in this position.  Well, that and the discussion he’d had with his boss about his intention to increase productivity on important work and his desire to lead a project.

When we state an intention and put massive action behind it, anything is possible.  Dave was now a believer.

Building Productivity In Versus Bolting It On

Dave made two mindset shifts.  His first was looking at productivity as built-in versus bolted on to his work.  For the longest time, I operated with the concept that productivity was an add-on, an extension, to how I accomplished my work.  The shortfall that comes from this mindset is an inability to view “work” indiscriminately and without emotion.

What do I mean?

When we bolt-on a productivity process we take work, which will have a number of domains, sub-tasks, objectives, goals, etc.; and attempt to bin it by type, shape, duration or any number of labels.  We then attempt to task manage it all.  That is, we look at our task list and begin working to complete discrete items.  

This is what I did when I started in my engineering career.  I then graduated to overlaying Covey’s four quadrant task/time management framework.  This worked for me until I reached a middle-management level position, then it broke down.  Why?  Because I could no longer account for the complicated environment I suddenly found myself in.  Up until this point, binning my tasks according to Covey’s rules worked.  But how could I apply that structure in an emergency situation or a complex project with multiple stakeholders?  

The answer was: not without a lot of risk to personal and professional success.  It was clear that a different approach was needed.  Instead of bolting-on a productivity methodology, I needed to build one in.  This was Dave’s first mindset shift, he adopted a methodology that supported his need to get things done and account for the unexpected.

Dave’s second mindset shift had to do with daily actions.  Instead of rolling into the office and simply opening his email to deal with messages in his inbox or voice messages on the phone, he hit the office with a list of six do-or-die tasks he would accomplish above all else.  This was what he focused on when he walked in the door,  then he opened his email.  

This mindset shift was from being a follower/victim of other people’s tasks, to being a leader/curator of other people’s tasks.  What’s the distinction?

• Follower / Victim of Other People’s Tasks:  You are a slave to your inbox and you stop/delay your work to attend to other people’s emails, calls, or stop-bys in your cubicle, thus allowing ‘them’ to dictate the value of their interaction.
• Leader / Curator of Other People’s Tasks:  You schedule when you will attend to your inbox and only then do you assess the validity of other people’s emails, calls, or stop-bys and determine if they provide value or not.  If not, you ignore them.

This second mindset shift necessitated the need to talk to his boss about his change in approach to his email.  Instead of having it open all day, he only worked on email at two set periods in the day.  This was a new approach and one that he absolutely needed to discuss with with his boss.  After explaining how it would increase his effectiveness in his designs, reduce re-work from errors, optimize his billable hours, and help him achieve his goal of being a project leader; his boss told him to engage.  This was Dave’s second mindset shift, he adopted the role of leader and curator of tasks to be accomplished.

Get Things Done Until You Have To Get Really Important Things Done

To make these two mindset shifts take hold and build productivity into your workflow, you may want to explore how you assess the tasks that hit your to-do list.  

If you’re a mid-level engineer supervisor or a project leader relying on a simple list of tasks, you really need to develop a methodology that will allow you to assess a task’s relative importance to your work.  All tasks are not created equal.

If you’re a senior engineer leader, or aspire to that level, then you must put in place a methodology that will support your ability to operate with effective leadership in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment.  This VACU environment is one that senior engineers occupy on a routine basis.  Seldom are all the actions that are necessary, presented in a nice, neat, orderly fashion.  If you lack a process for task assessment, then you will quickly be overcome by events.

One shortfall of the productivity methodologies I grew up on, is the fixation on linear task accomplishment.  Using a methodology, we bin tasks according to a group, project, or some other segmentation and then apply completion dates.  This works fine until something very important pops up.  In most engineer’s lives, this will happen about 100% of the time!  

To overcome this inevitable task management challenge, one must develop a system incorporating a Get Things Done approach with one allowing for complex and uncertain immediate tasks.   Here are two actions to take to build this methodology:

1.  Reorient yourself with basic task management concepts.  A tried-and-true methodology is one offered by Franklin-Covey.  If you feel that you have a solid process in place for daily task planning linked to longer range goals and objectives, then you can move to step 2.

2.  Orient yourself with the Cynefin Framework.  This is a problem-solving tool developed by David Snowden, which helps place situations into five domains defined by cause-and-effect relationships.  It allows a person to see things from new viewpoints, assimilate complex concepts, and address real-world problems and opportunities.

Here’s how this applies to handling emergent tasks, what I call the pop-up events or issues that can pull us away from our intended daily task list:

1. 1.  As the emergent task hits you, perform triage on it according to the Cynefin’s 5-domains.
2. 2.  If it falls into the “obvious” or “complicated” domain, then act on it or delegate it immediately.
3. 3.  If it falls into the “complex” or “chaotic” domain, then overlay Covey’s methodology and assess the task’s relative importance level or level of risk if left undone.  If important or moderate-to-high level of risk, then act on it.   

The benefits of designing your own task management methodology include, lowered stress, more effective delegation, the ability to make quick decisions and an increased ability to get important things done.  All of the senior engineer leaders I’ve worked with over the past two decades, have employed a more advanced process for handling tasks.  If your aspirations include leadership roles, then it is imperative that you evolve the way you assess tasks.  By  building in the process, you will certainly generate high performance in your engineering career.