All,

I’ve cut a few drafts of this MEMO over the holiday weekend, not least as it was my 49th birthday on Sunday which sucked me down a few emotional rabbit holes which I’ll cover later in the series.

This note is about one of the most fundamental and under discussed aspects of people management and ability to get stuff done. It leads into the more complex topics of “awareness of Team” and of course “the extended team” which I’ll cover next week.

My friend, nemesis, and sometime mentor at Queens University was a little old lecturer, Mr Tom Keating. He was already in his 60s but looked older. I emphasise “Mr” because he was the only lecturer in the department without a doctorate and had a big chip on his shoulder. He also learned engineering the hard way, with years spent on ground breaking projects in every continent. He thought most of his contemporaries in the department were “muppets” with no real world experience. We once broke into the department head’s office and shared 12 bottles of champagne that ended up not being destined for a party to celebrate the department securing key research funding (let’s just say a lot ended up on the floor). Amongst other things Tom was adamant that while I was one of the smartest kids ever to go through the department (you’ve all worked with me long enough to form your own opinion there) that I’d never amount to anything as I’d a safety net and if anything ever went wrong my dad would bail me out (parses to: fat, lazy with zero hunger to succeed). He was probably right too. As things transpired our family business came within a whisker of bankruptcy during the “mad cow disease” crisis in 1996 and the safety net evaporated with it.

Tom repeated the first rule of engineering ad nauseam – simply when any question or problem comes up the first rule of engineering is too: “find somebody who knows”.

Think about this for a moment. That rule is almost diametrically opposed to what people think engineering leadership is about (i.e. super smart people/geniuses with huge brains who know everything) and instead focuses on the social and networking aspects. Many CTOs and engineering managers in the sector seem to have an insatiable need to be the “smartest guy in the room” on any topic.

Tom’s view was the opposite. Specially in any domain an engineer ever comes across there is always somebody smarter in a specific technology who has been tinkering for a while and a few years further down the learning curve (or often many years). Not only that but more often than not these folks are eager to apply their knowledge to real world problems to move the needle for the firm. In many cases they’ve been shouting about some key opportunity or other for years but no-one listens to them, so are really happy to help when the chance arises. More often than not great engineers love leveraging their talents and capitalising on all those years tinkering in the garage.

In this paradigm the best engineering manager is the person who works hardest to find the real talent in a particular area and persuading those people to work with them. The super networker. A person who finds joy in other people’s talents rather than feeling threatened by them, or envious.

It’s also a little bit more complex than just networking as separating the real talent from the charlatans is no mean feat especially in sectors like ours where there are lots of smart people who talk a good fight.

If you take Tom’s rule to the next level, to build a world beating technology company in a sector like ours the “manager” needs to assemble a group with many of the top engineers in the respective tech niches then gel them together into a team. Once again more complex than it sounds. The manager needs to be smart enough to know what the broad contextual framework looks like, but have the constitution to almost by definition be comfortable being the dumbest guy (or gal) in the room in most technical discussions. Surrender your ego, accept that the talent is way smarter than you are, focus on the outcome and moving the needle for the firm, focus on creating a collaboration culture. Same goes for all the other functions, sales, finance, marketing, people, etc.

So there you go.. the key to success, put a lot of effort into seeking out the top talent, or as Tom put it “find somebody who knows”…

Enjoy the holiday!!… the way things are heading in the Euros we might need to have another change freeze next weekend.. like till Wednesday.

Cheers,

Danny