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Leading an Effective Engineering Organization

Leslie MartinichCompetitive Focus

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EMC BOK

• Market Research, Technology Updates, and Environmental Scanning

• Planning and Adjusting Business Strategies • Developing Products, Services, and

Processes• Engineering Operations and Change • Financial Resources and Procurement • Marketing and Sales• Leading Individuals and Engineering Project

Teams• Professional Responsibility and Legal Issues

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Topics

• Leading• Managing innovation• Aligning your team with your company’s direction• Gaining support for your team’s projects

• Topics we will not cover – Operations management– Project management– Financial management– Professional responsibility and legal issues

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Leading Engineering Teams

• Different strengths, preferences, skills, propensities

• Different communication styles and preferences

• Provide people with opportunity to do meaningful work, to make a difference

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Problem Solving and Creativity

• Differences in ways of thinking, solving problems, creating

• Adaptors and Innovators

• Working within a structure vs. working outside of a structure

continuumAdaptors Innovators

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Activity

• Your company has two projects. Decide which one your group wants to take.• Your company is one of the top 3 widget firms, and has 15 years of success in widget

engineering to build on. Typical widget development efforts take 6 months. Your firm expects to continue its leadership for the next several generations of widgets. It has a budget in place to support the next 10 years of exploratory efforts.

• What are your strengths and dispositions?• What are your priorities and what do you hope to accomplish?

• Team A is responsible for delivering the next generation of widgets.

• Team B is responsible for exploring new technologies and figuring out what will be the product to replace widgets in the future.

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Utilizing Talents

• Apply talents to appropriate tasks

• You need all types to complete the puzzle

• Give people opportunities to do meaningful work and make a difference (and that varies with the person)

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Communication Preferences

• Face-to-face

• Big picture

• Talks through alternatives and decisions

• Quick decisions; can correct mistakes

• Email

• Lots of data

• Thinks through alternatives and decisions

• Time to analyze the data

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Communication

• Listening – Management– Colleagues– Staff

• Understand your audience– What is important to

them?– What are their goals?

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Leading the Team

Understand your own and your team members’ strengths, dispositions, problem-solving styles, communication preferences

• Next Topics:– Managing innovation– Aligning your team with your company’s

direction– Gaining support for your team’s projects

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Industry Assessment

Suppliers

Your offering

Customers

Partners

Distributors

Competitors

Alternatives

• Industry Structure

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Industry Assessment:Competitive Forces

Industry Competitors

Rivalry Among Existing Firms

Industry Competitors

Rivalry Among Existing Firms

Buyers

Buyers

Potential EntrantsPotential Entrants

Suppliers

Suppliers

Substitutes

Substitutes

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Innovation

Value chain, timingWhen?

Distribution, channelsWhere?

Processes, manufacturingHow?

Markets, demographicsWho?

Products, technology, solutionsWhat?

StrategyWhy?

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Innovation Phases• Early Phases

– Period of chaos and uncertainty

– Need flexibility and adaptability

• Later Phases– Focus on

efficiency and process

– Focus on cost

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Innovation Chaos Standards Maturity

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Phases Overlap

• As one technology matures, innovations create another technology

Mature

Innovation

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Example: News Distribution

• News Industry

• Media distribution

• Changes in distribution– Print– Online– Pod Casting– ???

Is the firm in the “newspaper” business?

Or the “information” business? Or something

else?

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Example: Photography

• Digital photography• Photo processing -> Printing• Consider players:

– Polaroid– Kodak– HP– Ink providers– Sony– Canon

Mature

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Industry Assessment: Innovations

• What forces are changing in your industry?

Platform changesTechnology changesSupply chain changesMarket changes?????

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Where Are We?

• Choose your industry• How do you define your industry?• What is the industry structure?• What competitive forces are operating?• What innovations are shaping the future?• Where are you on the S-Curve?• What is the basis for competition—features or

price or relationship or something else?• Given the answers to the above questions, what

are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

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Industry Assessment

Suppliers

Your offering

Customers

Partners

Distributors

Competitors

Alternatives

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Leading the Team

Understand your own and your team members’ strengths, dispositions, problem-solving stylesManaging innovation

• Next Topics:– Aligning your team with your company’s

direction– Gaining support for your team’s projects

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Leading Your Team: On the Right Path

Analyze Team’s Position

Analyze Industry Direction

Devise Action Plan to Get Team on the Right Path

Big picture,

Innovations

What ARE we doing?

What SHOULD we be doing?

Strengths, Fit

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Strategy Alignment

• What should your team be doing?

• Where should your team’s focus be?

Where we are now

Where we need to be

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Paired Comparison: What’s Important

Field Sales Automation

(A)

Upgrade Systems

(B)

Purchasing

System (C )

Trouble Tickets

(D)

Special Requests

(E)

Field Sales Automation (A) A,2 A,2 A,3 A,3

Upgrade Systems (B) C,1 B,1 B,2

Purchasing System (C ) C,2 C,3

Trouble Tickets (D) D,1

Special Requests (E)

A = 10 (50%)B = 3 (15%)C = 6 (30%)D = 1 (5%)E = 0

Weighing the relative importance

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Pareto Analysis: What are We Doing?

• Where are you spending your efforts?

Activity Percent Cumulative PercentField Sales Automation 35 35Trouble Tickets 30 65New Purchasing System 20 85Upgrade Project 10 95Executive Special Requests 5 100

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Leading Your Team: On the Right Path

Analyze Team’s Position

Analyze Industry Direction Devise Action Plan to

Get Team on the Right Path

•Where are we spending our time

•What SHOULD we be doing?

•How can we get there?

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Team Alignment

• Choose your team’s industry

• What is your team’s (or firm’s) current focus?

• Where is the industry going?

• What SHOULD you team (or firm) be doing?

• What can you eliminate or reduce or redirect in order to allow your team to do what it should be doing?

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Leading the Team

Understand your own and your team members’ strengths, dispositions, problem-solving stylesManaging innovationAligning your team with your company’s direction

• Next Topics:– Gaining support for your team’s projects

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Gaining Support for Your Team’s Projects

• Internal selling• Leading Up• Managing Up

• Acquire needed resources

• Improves chances for success of your projects

• Understand communication preferences of – Colleagues– Executive staff– Your staff

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Selling Your Ideas

• Selling up– Figure out who has the decision-making power– Initially ask for input and suggestions– Restructure your proposal to include input

• Selling down– Solicit input and listen!

• Selling laterally– How does your project benefit other stakeholders?

• Remember personal needs and interests

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Negotiating for What You Need

• What are the goals and objectives of the organization?• How does the issue at hand fit into the goals and

objectives of the organization?• What are the goals and objectives of the individuals

involved in this conflict?• What are the additional interests of each of the

individuals?• If we can’t negotiate a resolution to this conflict, what is

our best alternative?• What are some possible solutions or resolutions?• How can I elicit additional information?

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Negotiation Planning

Parties You _________ _________

Objectives / Position

Interests

Best Alternatives

Options

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Make a Proposal

• Your team needs to focus on X

• What is your plan to gain support for X?

• Who are the members of your audience?

• What are their communication preferences?

• How are you going to communicate with them?

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Leading an Effective Engineering Organization

Understand your own and your team members’ strengths, dispositions, problem-solving styles

Managing innovation

Aligning your team with your company’s direction

Gaining support for your team’s projects

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Working Together

• Understand the people on your team

• Provide meaningful work

• Understand your industry’s directions and trends

• Align your team’s efforts with the organization’s goals

• Gain support for your team’s projects

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Questions

Leslie Martinich

leslie@competitivefocus.com

www.competitivefocus.com