Young Engineers

The Brand of You: How to Ruin Your Brand Equity During a Teleconference

How can skills that normally promote your personal brand equity cause serious damage during a teleconference?

Understanding how to manage your personal brand during a multiuser teleconference goes beyond just adhering to the basic rules of conference call etiquette. A misstep during a call can mean serious damage to the brand of you, not to mention the brand of the site or office that you’re calling from.

Communicating in person amidst a room full of people is like a spacious superhighway where everyone drives in their own lane. Everyone is staying within their own space; everyone is focusing on surroundings, staying aware of other cars; everyone is adjusting their driving relative to the speed and distance of the nearby cars.

In a teleconference, though, it’s now rush hour and all those cars are now merging into the same tunnel. That’s why when it comes to your personal brand equity, this particular environment can make for hazardous conditions.

Here are five easy ways to ruin your brand during a teleconference. Driver beware.

1. Being unaware of choice and voice. The word choice you use and the tone of voice delivering those words while on a call can impact your brand. Without the help of facial expressions and body language, what is meant as sarcasm or humor when you’re delivering a message in person can come across as unprofessional or even disrespectful when your voice is the only signal coming across. This doesn’t at all mean check your sense of humor or engagement at the door; just be aware that the microphone has the ability to distort and filter your intentions, leaving only the words.

 

2. Being overly loud on the call. Loud doesn’t mean assertive. Loud means annoying. While having a strong executive presence is a key enabler in promoting your personal brand equity when speaking to a room of people, those same benefits can turn on you while on a call. In person, when you are speaking in a conference room, your voice is directional. People see you speaking and your body language helps convey individual moods, passions, ideas. In a teleconference, you are just one voice in a traffic jam of voices. By all means speak up and speak clearly so your voice can be heard, but using the volume of your voice solely to overtake a conversation will only come across as rude or disrespectful. You brand will suffer and you will just become “that guy/gal who always talks over everyone.” Use your “inside” voice and your brand equity will live to see another day.

 

3. Not managing side comments. Side conversations can become center stage. A side conversation in a conference room that may be undetectable during an in-person meeting can evolve into distracting white noise during a teleconference. Teleconference microphones are increasingly sensitive these days and even the most hushed conversations can be amplified greatly. Keep side talk to a minimum during the call. And if you’re calling from home, be sure the neighbor’s barking dog is out of earshot.

 

4. Not knowing when you are on/off mute. “Sorry I was on mute!” is a sentence many of us have uttered. It generates chuckles the first time because we’re all only human. But the second and third time it happens on the same call, it can hint at distracted inattention. “Is this person really engaged in this call or are they just doing something else? Is the discussion not important to this person?” people may wonder, rightly or wrongly. When it comes to your brand equity, perception can often trump reality. Even if you’re the most detail oriented, active listener in the entire office, appearing to repeatedly not know when you’re on mute or asking questions previously asked, will all swing your brand equity far into the dark side. Be a strategic muter: Mute when you’re listening (and really listen—use all your will to resist the urge to multitask), unmute when you’re speaking and don’t lose your place while switching between the two.

 

5. Not realizing if the phone is on or off. That green LED light on most teleconferencing devices is your friend; and it’s a vital protector of your brand equity. Double, and triple check that the phone is really turned off when you expect it to be. Not doing so risks embarrassment and irreparable damage to your brand, not to mention the inappropriate sharing of strategic or confidential information.

After the teleconference has ended and the group on the other end has disconnected, you are no longer in the room to defend yourself. Your equity lingers on and has to fend for itself, subject to the residual impressions you have made with your audience. The people on the other side are still thinking about what you’ve said and how you’ve said it.

And your equity is either getting voted up or voted out.

Keep that at the top of your mind when you’re on the line and always be protecting your brand, even if it’s only your voice doing the talking.

The Brand of You: Introducing Brand Identity and Brand Equity

How do you get your reputation to thrive long after you’ve left the room?

You make a great impression in business meetings. You always deliver on your commitments. You are results driven and are an impactful player when it comes to delivering client results. Building the outputs of these behaviors involves two aspects of branding: your personal brand identity and personal brand equity.

Think of brand identity as the icon, the symbol. Brand identity is what most people think of when they first hear the word, “brand.” It’s the Shell symbol that stands for gasoline. It’s the logo of your hometown football team. It’s that bright orange bottle of Tide that stands for laundry. It’s the Ritz-Carlton name that stands for unsurpassed hospitality. The symbol reminds the observer of the product or service, but beyond just a visual reminder, what emotions or impressions are generated as a result of having seen that symbol?

Does that green Starbucks siren sign on the side of the road remind you of relaxing weekends with your spouse, sipping lattes over the morning paper? Or does it recall that one hyper-caffeinated time you studied 12 hours straight for a licensure exam? Brand equity is that emotional or reputational response evoked by the symbol.

When it comes to the branding of you, identity and equity take on very specific forms.
Your identity becomes your name—your signature on an e-mail, when someone sees your name at the start of a memo or a technical report. The equity, on the other hand, is the reputation or emotional response that the observer associates with your name. (“Hey! That’s that LEED architecture expert.” Or “Hey! Isn’t she that super smart project manager who always delivers ahead of schedule?”)

Every second of every interaction you have with others, even if it is only your name interacting as your proxy, you are always being voted on. Your stakeholders, even if only subconsciously, will either vote “positive equity” or “negative equity.” This is sometimes referred to as your “hall file”—those words being said in the side corridors of office buildings, in side conference rooms, in the gates of airplane terminals. If this is the case, then how can one separate brand-equity building from workplace politics? There are several ways to distinguish one from the other but one of the most effective is: results, results, results.

Results distinguish equity from gossip. If you have a data set of strong results that are influential to your colleagues, managers, and clients, the landslide victory will be in favor of a positive, not negative, personal brand equity. Just as product brands build loyal followings, positive equity builds loyal stakeholders—people who back you in your absence who have the results to show for it.

There is a lot of work required to build and maintain a personal brand, but it all begins with being conscious of your brand identity and the brand equity that it evokes.

14 Essential Qualities of an Executive Engineer

Do you have bodily vigor? How good are you at playing the business game? Do you maintain a well-groomed appearance?

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The Essential Qualities, reproduced from a facsimile of the newsletter are:

1. Judgment – Reasoning ability, accuracy in conclusions, ability to profit by experience.
2. Initiative – Alertness, imagination, originality, independence in thinking.
3. Integrity – Truthfulness, honesty, sincerity.
4. Organizing Ability – Systematizing, classifying according to functions, planning and delegating
5. Health – Bodily vigor, good sight, hearing, etc., included.
6. Perseverance – Industry, ambition, concentration.
7. Aggressiveness – Energy, courage, domination of will.
8. Open-Mindedness – Reasonableness, teachableness, openness to new ideas.
9. Co-Operativeness – Unselfishness, kindness, cheerfulness, tact, loyalty.
10. Competitiveness – Interest in playing the business game.
11. Control of Emotions – Freedom from outbursts of anger or touchiness.
12. Refinement – Courtesy, manners, general culture.
13. Appearance – Well-groomed appearance, good carriage, pleasing facial expressions, etc.
14. Sense of Humor

Reflecting on these, I realize that I do have to watch my posture from time to time (Quality #13) and on a day to day basis, I still try to navigate corporate politics to the best of my ability (Quality #10). I strive to resist people who push my buttons (Quality #10) and still believe that there’s no better work than hard work (Quality #6).

While so much of the technological landscape has changed, I am grateful that as a contemporary profession, engineering still upholds many key characteristics today as it did in the early 20th century (even if you do wear contact lenses like me—Quality #5). All these decades later, I remain inspired to strive toward these qualities and couldn’t be more proud to be immersed in a profession that endeavors to do the same.

And now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to get busy.

I need to start working on my domination of will.

What do you think are the essential qualities of executive engineer leadership today? Leave your comments below or e-mail pemagazine@nspe.org.

A Traveling Scientist’s Field Guide to Root Beer

The whole point of the medical treatment was to make you forget the past.

Memories that one wished had never occurred could be erased, particularly in the context of personal and emotional loss.

And if that feat of pharmaceutical engineering proved too magical to believe, one could still be emotionally inspired by way of an 18th century poem by Alexander Pope, from which the Michel Gondry film on this memory treatment took its name:

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;

Linking memory with past and present had particular resonance for me at the moment, but it was remembering, not forgetting, that I was striving for. I was in Cincinnati, Ohio, where I found myself sitting at a café table with Lionel, a French entrepreneur and computer science PhD who was the founder of the company that had been facilitating the statistics software training I had been in all week. Lionel and I had learned that we were both fans of Michel Gondry, a film director known for his surreal theatrical imagery without the heavy use of computer-assisted effects. In particular, we both agreed that Gondry’s film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was an elegant interweaving of art and science. Despite our cinematic affinities however, our conversation had evolved to a much more pressing question:

“What is root beer?”

Referring to the popular soft drink available widely throughout the United States but less so outside North America, Lionel was inquiring about this deceptively non-alcoholic beverage, which he had recently read about in the Stephen King thriller, Hearts in Atlantis.

Questions and the contexts in which they were posed had very much been the stuff of Lionel’s workshop all week long. Knowing which questions to ask on the path toward a problem’s solution was the central concept of the training. Lionel was teaching a hands-on software seminar on using methods from a particular branch of mathematical analysis called Bayesian statistics to optimize engineering, research and development, and manufacturing processes. Michel Gondry’s themes of memory were quite apropos, since recalling how to even spell Bayesian statistics had itself proven to be a challenge for me, much less in being able to follow Ariadne’s fiber-optic cable through all these labyrinthine computing tools in which we had been immersed.

The concept of Bayesian statistics is to take the knowledge one knows now in the present and use it to predict knowledge that one could possibly know in the future. Harnessing that knowledge using precise statistical methods to form predictions creates correlations to the present, linking the present circumstances to new knowledge in the future that is not yet known or confirmed. The equations we dealt with were part probability, part human behavior, and part hieroglyphic-inspired mystique.

How Lionel and I had even ended up here in this cramped corner restaurant in the terminals of the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport was itself a probabilistic journey, our third unplanned encounter over the span of a half day’s time.

Statistically speaking, the probability of two individuals randomly running into each other in a city of 300,000 people is not tremendously high.

But that’s not how a Bayesian would look at it.

A Bayesian would say: Start by looking at what information is presently known. Say you discover that the two individuals have a passion for the fine arts that are equal in intensity to their passion for the sciences. Given that the two individuals are uncertain as to the next time they would be in Cincinnati again to see its museums, they weigh the relative sizes of the major art museums in the city and select the smaller of the two. Say both individuals also have the behavioral practice to be early arrivers at the airport to minimize the unavoidable side effects of rental-car returns, ticket counters, luggage check-ins and long airport security lines. Say the two individuals both have connecting flights to major cities served by the same airline.

Generally without knowing these pieces of information, a third-party observer would estimate that the two individuals would probably not meet.

Until they do.

So it was not a Bayesian surprise when earlier that day Lionel had found me in a section of the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center diligently participating in an interactive and extremely technically demanding hands-on exhibit: constructing a model house using copy paper and children’s crayons. I showed him my masterful design and we chatted about architecture and an emerging artists’ group show that was on display in the museum and then parted ways.

Just a couple of hours later, when he and I met again, unknowingly synchronized in the time frame in which we were returning our rental cars, we were still surprised, but less so. And when we found that our airport departure gates were directly across the hall from each other’s, we decided to seek out food and conversation in the remaining time that statistics would allow, bringing us to…root beer.

I knew inherently through experience (and copious indulgence) what root beer was, but had never been asked to explain what it was. But the course of the conversation grew to being less about the history of sugary soft drinks than the circumstances in which a computer scientist from the outskirts of Paris and a chemical engineer from New York City could unexpectedly meet and talk data analysis, horror novelists, and surreal art films, all in a distant city in the American Midwest. Science and engineering can be quite rigorous in their methodical combination of theory and applied practice, but ultimately, they are also just tools that help us seek a more precise understanding of all those characterized circumstances, composing the manner by which we all live as citizens in a world still trying very much to understand what it means to be immersed in an increasingly omnipresent and global life. We talked the challenges of venturing out to start your own company and the challenges of working internationally while striving so hard to make a significant impact locally. Every quantum of conversation was aggregated to the point where a seemingly mundane present was going to be a part of an intricately woven memory to be one day recalled in the future.

As we finally left the café to catch our flights, I reflected on what had just happened. As student, as listener, and as friend, there was nothing about our conversation and the circumstances in which it had formed that had not been just simply grand (even if perhaps that feeling had been influenced by me having just downed two icy cold root beers.)

Lionel picked up a few souvenirs from an overpriced airport gift shop for his children and we smiled and shook hands, wishing each other good journey and safe roads ahead. Between dreams and professional aspirations, stepping forth into the scientific promise of an inspired future can oftentimes be the equalizing tool that brings logic into the fray of reality and its ongoing unknown variables. It is here that the seemingly cold yet dynamic functions of the sciences are freeze-framed like a movie still, revealing the human elements of inspiration and aspiration therein among the threads.

You realize without knowing at first, that in the methodical execution of science, in all its rigor and quantitative intensity, nothing in the world is really magical.

And then everything is.

How a Supply Chain Withstands a Hurricane (Through the Eyes of a Porcelain Rooster)

I rarely use the words “porcelain” and “rooster” in the same sentence.

But just a few days after Hurricane Sandy struck Manhattan, a porcelain rooster was the centerpiece between the worlds of the electric light and of urban darkness.

Supply chains are the strategic corporate tool for conveying value from one end of society to the other. They are also subject to all flavors of disruptions given the level of complexity that many attain while in motion. Disruptions such as cargo delays, tangled logistics. And weather.

Two days after Hurricane Sandy swept portions of the Atlantic Ocean into New York, the Hudson River and East River had found their way deep into Lower Manhattan and had prolonged their stay. Most subway services were still spotty at best if not fully suspended. Bus services had not been restored. It was cold and damp. And it was 1:30am.

My singular mission of the night was to carry a 30-pound cardboard box containing a 3 ½ foot tall porcelain rooster 12 blocks back to my car. Intended as a long overdue birthday gift for a friend, the rooster was to become a trophy for inserting myself directly into a convoluted supply chain. My shoulders reminded me how heavy the box was.

From a distance I must have appeared to be a giant cardboard box with legs.

Due to a confusion of supply chain logistics between the retailer and the courier service, the massive package in my arms had just voyaged from west coast to east coast and back again at least twice. Being frustrated by the interrupted flow made worse by the storm, I had to literally take the problem into my own hands. If this could happen to a 30-pound ceramic rooster normally found only on the pages of wedding registries, I was wondering just how the rest of the economy would fare as the fear of interrupted gas and food delivery in and out of the city continued to loom.

When I passed 58th Street, the infamous broken crane of CNN and YouTube fame was leering down at me like a disapproving parent.

It was during this labored introspective walk, amidst this uncertainty of power restoration to the city, that the reflection on technology and society shined most brightly for me. This moment was humankind’s intersection with that 150-year-old technology called the electric light and its triumphs and its obstacles. Wandering through these half-lit New York City streets, where somewhere just below 45th Street, the entire city was bathed in total darkness. Peering into the void as I trekked by, I was certain that this was what being in the labyrinth with the Minotaur must have felt like. The beast we all fear yet desire is the dependence on electricity.

Passing next by Columbus Circle, I walked by the “Discovering Columbus” installation by Japanese contemporary artist Tatzu Nishi.  In a place where Columbus is normally invisible to the churning traffic around him while perched atop a 20-foot column, Nishi had constructed a scaffolding to allow viewers to walk to the top of the monument and greet this patron saint of supply chains in person. I felt a sense of honor to be hand carrying a package to its destination under Columbus’s watchful eye (or perhaps it was just my forearms starting to ache).

By the time I made it back to my car, prize in hand, I had to use some of my Tetris skills to position it into the back seat of my sedan, whose design engineers had obviously not imagined its use for freight transportation. I was exhausted. And hungry.

Despite the surrounding electricity outages, you can always count on New York City to have a 24-hour pizzeria to be within reach that is always powered and open, regardless of circumstance.

I was the only customer at Ray’s Pizza in the wee hours, with the union of pineapple and ham on my Hawaiian pizza itself also a modern supply chain evolutionary relic of the tradewinds long blown past.

I stared out through the neon sign as a light, rainy wind slid past, carrying a cargo of street rubbish. A news report on the television was praising local utilities crews on moving quickly in restoring electricity to an apartment complex. “We’ll take it one block at a time,” said the man on TV.

I took another bite of my pizza. I was just one speck in the middle of a sea just starting to wake up again.

The Packed Bag

The desk in the hotel room was bathed in the glow of a Cracker Barrel sign.

This nearly ubiquitous restaurant chain had its sky-scraping signs located throughout most of the major highways of the United States and its promise of a wholesome country-style meal undoubtedly comforted many a weary traveler on lonely night drives throughout the American interstate system. I imagined that the parking lots of RVs and minivans, the back-lit gift shop windows and the rows of rocking chairs of Cracker Barrel stores would be modern day subjects for the artist Edward Hopper were he still alive, as places to paint if not to also dine.

As distracting as the thoughts of chicken and dumplings and cornbread, collard greens and post-war artists may have been, the more pressing issue on my mind was the engineering exam I had in front of me.

I was in the South Carolina Low Country on a business trip to help conduct process control training at one of our plant locations. A last minute need had arisen and our schedules had to be moved around, but I was eager to still participate and grow my experience as facilitator, instructor, communicator.

On this particular trip, I was going to be a teacher by day and student by night, taking courses in chemical engineering as part of my skill development. I was in the middle of a series of distance-learning engineering refresher courses, and I was one test away from completing the current session. The subject at hand tonight was mass transfer and chemical thermodynamics, or as I explained to a colleague, the reason why sugar makes your coffee sweeter faster if you stir voraciously with a spoon rather than let the sugar crystals dissolve untouched on their own.

Kirk poked his head into the office side of the suite where I was working, “You almost done, man?” Time was almost up.

Kirk, then the training and development manager at the site I was based at, was a mentor, career consultant and life coach to me. He and I were making this trip together to conduct the training. When I found that the last minute schedule change conflicted with my exam, Kirk said he’d be happy to continue his proctor duties and overnight the completed exam in the morning, the difference being that I’d be hunched over a hotel desk in the middle of a massive hotel suite rather than under the burn of fluorescent lights in a corporate conference room.

Kirk’s professional background was built from an expansive network of government, corporate, and academic roles throughout the southeastern U.S. It was always Kirk who was first to press a new book on leadership or management profiles into my hands or e-mail me links to career development articles he’d come across in his own work. It was also Kirk who got me started with a practice I still exercise to this day:  the packed bag.

The purpose and concept of a packed bag is straightforward:  If your job ever needs you to be agile and responsive at a moment’s notice, you should always have a packed bag ready and waiting in the trunk of your car. No need to run home and throw a suitcase together, no need to subject yourself to the risk of forgetting basic travel necessities when being pulled into an important impromptu opportunity. The packed bag should contain: a couple changes of clothes ranging from business casual to something slightly more formal, some travel toiletries and basic supplies, and a book to help you bide time in line, in airports, in taxis or in road-side sign lit hotel rooms.

For me, the packed bag also symbolized personal and professional readiness. As one obtained and collected skills and knowledge through professional experience or through academic endeavors, just having knowledge alone was not as useful as being able to be activate that knowledge when a business situation called for it. Kirk taught me to be prepared not just physically, but epistemologically because it was current skills and knowledge at the ready that would help me propagate the acquisition and development of even newer areas of knowledge and expertise. His coaching became instrumental in me not only knowing how to facilitate classes as an instructor on a given topic, but to polish the very skills of facilitating and public speaking.

The packed bag was a reminder to me of the adventure of travel that any profession could offer, that one should be primed at a moment’s notice to take advantage of opportunities that may arise, regardless if they were business opportunities, career development experiences, or a chance at tackling the open road in the search for new ideas.

In the face of sudden change of original travel plans, tonight my packed bag had enabled me to focus more on preparing for my exam than actually packing for the trip. I signed off my test and handed it over to Kirk. He smiled as he autographed the cover page, glancing at some of my scratch-work and formula derivations with a raised eyebrow. He sealed the test into a FedEx envelope, pointing a corner of the package at me: “Better you than me, man,” he smiled. “Time to grab some food.”

Our other colleagues were waiting for us in the lobby. Kirk, with his seemingly endless well of energy, had already snatched up his laptop and power cord and had zipped around the corner into the elevator bank.

The sound of the hotel door clicking into place behind me as I stepped out into the carpeted hallway snapped me back into reality. Kirk stuck his head out from the elevator, which he had been holding for me and smirked, “Test wasn’t that bad, was it? Let’s go, man! People waiting!”

The test was over and it was time to focus on the class I was going to be teaching in the morning. As I stepped into the elevator, I could see one of Edward Hopper’s painted characters quietly look up from a cup of coffee in a dusty highway-side diner; he nodded in approval.

I was ready.

San Diego's Superheroes

San Diego is full of superheroes.

Some superheroes were found at Comic-Con International, whose annual convention of sci-fi, fantasy, comics, and gaming fan culture also happened to be taking place concurrently with the NSPE Annual Meeting this past July. On account of the Comic-Con goers, the streets of San Diego’s Gaslamp District were definitely more energizing and colorful than usual—it’s not every day that you get to stand in line between a Storm Trooper and Where’s Waldo while waiting for a slice of pizza.

Others were superheroes of eras past, like Thomas Edison and Charles Lindbergh who graced the corridors of the breathtaking and historic Hotel Del Coronado, or “Hotel Del,” whose iconic (and according to tourist brochures, haunted) crimson turrets are themselves a feat of aesthetics, architecture, and engineering.

Other superheroes still were the resident heroes truly living up to the name: the Navy SEALs trainees at the Naval Amphibious Base training center on Coronado Bay. Each early morning that I drove past their training grounds on my way to the NSPE meeting, their tireless commitment, counterpoint to their exhausted but otherwise stoic appearance, was visibly at work with each stride they took across the beachhead in full training gear.

This trip to a quiet cove of San Diego’s Coronado Bay placed me in the company of other kinds of heroes as well: those engineering professionals of NSPE and its affiliates from across the United States as well as other countries like Korea and Japan, all contributing their energies toward the broader mission to serve and develop the engineering profession as a whole.

Being in a room full of NSPE members who have given up countless hours of personal time throughout the year and who have made personal sacrifices to gather here, to see members from across all 50 states convene to push forward the mission to further the engineering profession and its practitioners, is one of the most inspiring experiences an NSPE member can have. Compliment that with the tireless NSPE staff working behind the scenes and one sees that the possibility of such a superhuman degree of logistics, planning, and scheduling being executed is itself a manifestation of reality from fantasy.

Within a span of three days, I learned my leadership style through the Dr. Michael Lillibridge’s PeopleMap tool (per his model I’m a “Leader/ Free Spirit” combination). I learned novel approaches to fiduciary responsibilities in professional organizations from a group called Leadership Outfitters, as well as received an overview on the latest developments within NSPE, like the Political Action Committee and other outreach groups. Additional leadership topics included new approaches to promoting engineering licensure and further details on the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Raise the Bar initiative to increase engineering academic requirements prior to licensure. It took a couple of introspective walks along the San Diego Bay after some hearty barbeque brisket from the local smokehouse and a pint of Coronado Brewing Company’s microbrew to really let it all sink in.

It was a grateful experience to receive an overwhelming amount of support for my Career Engineering Roadmap program for emerging engineering professionals as well as to be a part of discussions on the next phases of NSPE’s own organizational growth as we explore the “Race for Relevance” model of professional society excellence. Also energizing for me was interacting with the new class of NSPE leaders stepping into new roles for the coming terms of office, ranging from the PEPP Young Engineers Advisory Council leadership like Amy Barrett, Daniel Gilbert, Neerali Desai, and the rest of the team, to the other newly elected young leaders on the NSPE Board of Directors, like David Conner and Kodi Jean Church, who are all going to be so important to sustaining and growing NSPE in the coming years. Being a part of the range of experience, talent, and expertise that now sits on the board continues to help me dimensionalize what opportunities exist for my own continuous learning and knowledge growth.

Attending large national society events such as the annual meeting are of course filled with the formal interactions within the various sessions held throughout the conference, but just as critical were those side interactions on the terrace overlooking the bay, those pre-seminar meetings over coffee and Honest Tea in the Loews Market Café, the conversations and introductions on the sides of the hallways and chandeliered stairwells. One only really gets the full impact of NSPE’s reach and combined passion to promoting licensure and the engineering profession as a whole when attending the annual meeting in person—there is no virtual link or teleconference that can quite replicate the enthusiasm and energy of an in-person experience.

It is a privilege to serve as the National Director for Young Engineers and with a year left in my term, if this year has been any indication at all, the heroes still yet to emerge, combined with those that have already begun to make their mark, will definitely make it action packed.

Inspiring Acts of Creation

Engineering aesthetics in technical design and construction can often re-emerge in the physical, observable world in new, startling ways. This miraculous cycle emerges each time a new structure , piece of equipment, or personal device emerges from concept to fully matured reality. What’s produced is the result of an inspiring act of creation that blurs the line between traditional sciences and the arts.

Last autumn I was at the Phoenix Art Museum and there was an exhibit by the photographer Jamey Stillings on the construction of the new Hoover Dam Bridge. The vast scale of what he was able to capture in pictures beautifully captures exactly those aesthetics that are inherent in engineering design. With the common public, design and creation often means something tangible, visible. The beauty that emerges from this process is like a condensation of ideas, from concept to completed structure, a process that Stillings captures in breathtaking fashion. It’s also a testament to what society is capable of when the building contractors, engineers, architects, and designers all bring their intangible knowledge together to create tangible outcomes.

Stillings photographs reveal the elegance in the convergence of aesthetic and engineering design that occurs, in this case flawlessly by necessity, before a project of the scope of the Hoover Dam can stand on its own. In some of the photographs, the desert backdrop of the construction makes the bridge appear as if it were being built on another planet, echoing the same level of alien informality that much of the public holds when considering what engineers actually do. It is easy for individuals trained in engineering, when asked about the profession, to instinctively rattle off the technical complexities of one’s field, oftentimes increasing that alienation. But imagine if an engineer could just point to a Stillings photograph and proclaim, “This! This is what I do!”

Take a look at some of these photos for yourself at the artist’s personal Web site on the bridge project.

Is it an art form?

The engineering, I mean.

Coffee, Ambition, and Success

“Success is not an entitlement. It has to be earned every day.”
-- Howard Schultz, CEO Starbucks

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz uses a single word to capture the momentum that propelled the growth of his company from a small coffee roasting business to a global brand: onward.

The principles that Starbucks applies to how it runs its business is just as applicable to the engineering world. Consider what Schultz refers to as the “touchstones” of Starbucks:

• Respect and dignity,
• Passion and laughter,
• Compassion, community, and responsibility, and
• Authenticity

While “laughter” may not be explicitly called out in the Engineers’ Creed per se, that same passionate duty to improve society and public quality of life are very much part of that same DNA. Schultz’s idea for a coffee house business was initially rejected by potential partners and investors, but over three decades later, that idea has grown into an organization with nearly 20,000 stores worldwide. One might also say that these same touchstones can be similar springboards to how some of the most successful engineering firms of today remain successful while enduring through difficult, adverse times.

But where to go when such adversity disheartens us at the individual level? Perhaps it’s the adversity that one encounters when seeking out that elusive first or second or nth job. Perhaps it’s the adversity that is an inherent part of passing a licensure exam or earning a graduate degree. Schultz captures this struggle best with this description:

“Wherever the location, the best beans—the ones with enchantingly complex flavors and compelling characters, known as Arabica—grow under some degree of stress, like high altitudes, intense heat, or long dry periods. Such harsh weather conditions can produce high-quality beans, but also fewer beans per tree.”

Making up less than 4% of all working Americans, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the yield of professional engineers is grossly asymmetric to the technological needs of a world that yearns for quantum changes in science, culture, and quality of life from one generation to the next. So why aren’t there more engineers? To reference sculptor and art world legend Louise Bourgeois who declared, “There is no virtue in wanting to be an artist—everybody can do that—but there is virtue in actually being one,” there is similar virtue in actually being an engineer and all associated stresses as well as all associated rewards.

This virtue has nothing to do with elitism or self-aggrandizing entitlement—the path to an engineering career can be quite Arabica-like due to the nature of its rigorous and trying circumstances. The virtue comes in confronting these circumstances and having the grit to overcome them. It can be a rocky way through, but we’re all proud (if not simultaneously exhausted yet inspired) to have seen a gratifying engineering career emerge out the other side fully. This can be true in traditional engineering careers or even in those where engineering is applied in nontraditional ways to trail-blaze the way to new ideas and discoveries.

Engineers persevere because that’s how engineers are trained. Engineers are thinkers who apply the same tireless, innovative problem solving to the construction of our own careers and for the worlds that we strive to better through the joining of technology, the needs of the public, and the overall quality of life. Food for thought (or sugar for your espresso for that matter).

Sow your ambitions deeply enough into yourself and you just might discover an idea for a single coffee shop, the first coffee shop in a world that demands 20,000 of them.

The Design of Happiness

As engineers, we are trained to quantify the world around us to the extent that such analytical representations of our surroundings emerge comfortably, organically. Engineers quantify to innovate and improve: the structural stability of cantilevered bridges like the recent Stonecutters Bridge in Hong Kong; the efficiency of a gas scrubber in a new chemical plant in Louisiana; the aerodynamic efficiency of a turbine in the latest globally accessorized jetliner. These are the quantitative fruits of tangible things, but how might one quantify happiness?

For one answer, we turn to the world of graphic design. One distinguishing nuance between how graphic artists interpret the word “design” versus how an engineer would interpret it rests at the interface between aesthetic purpose and functional execution.

Stefan Sagmeister is a renowned designer whose firm works globally with clients ranging from Portuguese energy companies to international banks and investment firms to Levi’s jeans. While Sagmeister is regarded as an icon among designers, outside the design world he is less known, or as he is famously quoted, “Being a famous graphic designer is like being a famous electrician.” In a recent film project, with the irreverent working title of “The Happy Film,” Sagmeister illustrates how fame through work is not necessarily a prerequisite of his happiness, but that happiness in work and in life results from the context in which each element is nurtured and the time devoted to such nurturing.

Part of the film project covers his firm’s famous commitment to deliberately taking sabbaticals to seek out that elusive happiness. In Sagmeister’s view, one can work until the time for retirement arrives before engaging in “serious” time off, or one can take slivers of those retirement years now, interspersing them with one’s current work. By balancing what constitutes work versus what activities one may engage in one’s traditional non-work activities, he classifies the nature of one’s work into three categories:

Work is a Job: You work for the salary and benefits, but are not otherwise enthusiastic nor attached to the work itself.

Work is a Career: Your work purpose is driven by the acquisition of skills, experience, and industry exposure to a particular field of interest. You find benefit in how the nature of this work may open doors to additional opportunities in other fields, similar or dissimilar to your current role. You make accommodations in your personal life because time spent building the career in the present will lead to some measure of success or happiness in the future.

Work is a Calling: The nature of your work is such that it is integrally a part of how you are defined as in individual. It is something that you feel driven, passionate about—something you “must” do. Financial compensation is less of a factor, if even a factor at all.

In the search for where happiness emerges from these different world views of one’s work, one may find that they are just fundamental variables, all in the same equation.

Where among these areas do engineers place their own work if happiness of the self and of society is one of the measures? The NSPE Code of Ethics declares engineering as a service and duty to the better the public good, to progress the quality of life within society. Perhaps one output of our work is how it influences the public perception of happiness as a function of safety, reliability, comfort, and quality. When directing this model introspectively, the nuances between a job, a career, or a calling may directly drive how work life and personal life are both reconciled, if reconciliation is needed at all.

Buckminster Fuller uses a term to describe how small nuances can result in large magnitudes of change: trimtab. For Fuller, a trimtab, like a rudder of a ship where small motions in one direction can alter the course of the entire vessel, understanding these nuances between job, career, and calling and knowing which contexts to act within can result in significant ways by which the work is executed. We all go to work. The work gets done. But the happiness rests in “how” the work gets done.

Just like the well-designed sea-faring vessel, functional in operation, high quality in aesthetic purpose, both domains in synchronous harmony, the production of happiness is not a sub-element of the design specification. Happiness is the design specification.

What Engineers Can Learn From Steve Jobs

Of the many things Steve Jobs will be remembered for, his view on how design aesthetics, creativity, and technology should be closely interwoven has particular resonance for engineers.

In expounding upon how the arts and humanities were closely bound to the technical engineering demands at Apple, Jobs emphasized the foundational attainment of innovation through the balance of technological mastery with design mastery. In Walter Isaacson’s biography of the Apple co-founder, Jobs shared this insight:

“Edwin Land of Polaroid talked about the intersection of the humanities and science. I like that intersection. There’s something magical about that place…I think great artists and great engineers are similar, in that they both have a desire to express themselves. In fact some of the best people working on the original Mac were poets and musician on the side…. Great artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were also great at science. Michelangelo knew a lot about how to quarry stone, not just how to be a sculptor.”

Engineers may be the stonecutters of the modern era, but also knowledgeable in the molecular makeup of stone, the patterns of the stone, the resulting effects when some structures are made from particular types of stone. But it will take crossing comfortably and copiously over the boundaries between science and the arts to realize this: There is no boundary.

Mathematicians speak of elegant solutions versus a snarled mash of force-fitted derivations. Computer engineers and programmers speak of elegance in how a particular algorithm is composed and articulated versus the jagged methods of brute force coding. In seeking the humane, engineers also seek out elegance in how problems of society can be improved or altogether reinvented by the engineering aesthetic. There is beauty in the harmony resulting from the integrated equations, structures, and functionalities in a work of engineering.

Struggles with maintaining the equal converging flowrates of the humanities and the sciences continue to exist to this day. Engineering is present at the design phase, but also in the unknown, unseen execution phase. Take an Apple iPod or MacBook as examples of such a convergence of the engineering and design aesthetic.

The end user may notice the physical, minimalistic beauty in an iPod’s form and color or the intuitive fashion in which menus and playlists are navigated. To bring that industrial design icon to life also requires the software design underlying its inner workings, the CNC machines used to shape its metallic shell, the programming constructed just right in the CAD software. Consider also the assembly line upon which the components of that iPod were built, incubated. Consider that same assembly line’s deliberate orchestration of programmable logic controllers, quality engineering, and mechanical engineering. Consider even beyond that, the graphic design, the novels, the plays, the business plans composed upon a MacBook’s keyboard when such an aesthetic is itself used recursively as a tool propagating further creation. It is on account of all these forces and more—design, engineering, art and beyond working collaboratively—that the cumulative elegance of the device is ferried from its inception as a Platonic ideal into a domain of tangible reality.

Anecdotes of Jobs taking long walks with individuals to discuss ideas are part of Silicon Valley legend. Such a means of peripatetic thinking out loud, debating, discussing, creating, was Jobs’s preferred mode of expounding his creative vision on the world around him and with the creators he partnered with.

Perhaps it is on these well worn foot-trails in the Palo Alto hills where we may also be able to walk—engineering, science, art, and design, all in step.

Perhaps we will discover someplace new.

Introducing the Career Engineering Roadmap

Around me was a backdrop of pirate ships, crystal-clad dancers, and LED arrays lighting the glass facades of steel towers sparkling with the reflections of taxis, storefront signs, and digital camera flashes. One couldn’t have hoped for a more visually energetic scene, hued in reds, blues, purples, and incandescent yellows, to talk the depth and breadth of the influence of the engineering profession and the multifarious career paths within it that made such sensory spectacles possible. The reach of engineers was further emphasized by the ubiquitous proliferation of every day experiences touched by technological innovation. Even in an electric oasis like Las Vegas, a place typically centered more on probability than on deterministic resolve, engineering is here, everywhere.

This past July at the NSPE Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, thanks to a lot of hard work by the Professional Engineers in Private Practice Young Engineers Advisory Council (PEPP-YEAC) Chair Carlos Gittens and his team, I had the opportunity to present a new career development initiative at the NSPE Young Engineers Forum. With the support of the PEPP YE team and the University of Nevada–Las Vegas NSPE Student Chapter, I shared a preview of the Career Engineering Roadmap (CER), a program aimed at career strategies for emerging engineering professionals.

Conceived first as an idea within the walls of my home NSPE section, the Connecticut Society of Professional Engineers, the foundational ideas of the CER were further developed through phone calls to NSPE offices in Alexandria, Virginia, while I was traveling throughout China and Korea on business, and then reimagined and redesigned during my tenure as chair of the Professional Engineers in Industry’s Young Engineers Advisory Council. Now over two years later, and after much input from the PEI executive board, I couldn’t be more excited to formally launch the first phase of the Career Engineering Roadmap later this month in Baltimore at Johns Hopkins University.

The Career Engineering Roadmap aims to promote the vast possibilities of career development opportunities for those with an engineering background. Designed as a 90-minute seminar targeted at junior and senior engineering undergraduates and emerging young engineering professionals, the program aims to map out the career choices of emerging engineers using three key principles:

• CER Principle 1 - Engineering is more than a degree. Engineering is a way of thinking.
• CER Principle 2 – Engineering is a foundational skill-set, providing multifaceted career choices, including those outside the realm of traditional engineering disciplines.
• CER Principle 3 – Engineering is a career path that can be planned and strategized. Individuals with engineering skills are empowered with the capability and the agility to adapt to the changing needs of the contemporary global economy.

In a recent news conference, U.S. Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu declared, “We need engineers. We need scientists. This is going to be at the heart of how the United States is going to remain competitive.”

This will be true not just for the engineering students entering engineering careers, but also for any individuals progressing through their early to mid-stage careers using technical and scientific thought processes as engines of innovation, locally and internationally. The objective of the Career Engineering Roadmap is to provide emerging engineers with a strategic framework within which such mechanisms can be honed.

The strategic importance of a country’s competitiveness—economic, technological or otherwise—begins with the aggregate competitiveness of its individuals. The ubiquity of the profession’s reach has already established the destinations to be ventured toward; the Career Engineering Roadmap strives to be the compass rose for that direction setting therein, from Alexandria to Seoul, from to Shanghai to Las Vegas and beyond.

Stay tuned for an NSPE Web seminar on this subject in the spring.

Saving Yourself from the Quagmire: You’ve Been Offered a Job—Now What?

With the Department of Labor announcing last week that the national unemployment rate for June was 9.2%, interviews that convert to real job offers might be one of the most highly sought after things out there in the marketplace.

It’s great to get a new job.

What’s not so great is that after you start your new job, you realize you hate it.

While being extended a face-to-face interview is itself a motivating outcome, when interviews evolve into formal job offers, they can be difficult to turn down, particularly if one has already been in transition for months or more and has already undergone the merciless onslaught of seemingly fruitless job search engines. The combined physical, financial and psychological forces just may be too overwhelming to resist spending more than a millisecond before screaming, “Yes! I’m in!”

This is what you’ve been waiting for, right?

Before you sign and drive, hold on a sec. You are now in possession of something very powerful that you weren’t privy to before conquering the interview process: information.

Understanding that a new job is a new commitment, a new environment, and a new workplace with all of its associated nuances in culture, politics, and expectations, your self-reflection based on experiences from the interview itself can be a key process that’s arguably more important than accepting the job.

So don’t just sleep on it. Think through some of these considerations, using what you’ve learned from the interviewers. These may help convince you whether you’re about to end up in the right place or not.

Habits and Behavior
Habits are one element of behavioral DNA that is propagated throughout a company’s culture. This is one of the easiest areas to overlook. Despite how much one may enjoy the actual work itself, the environment in which the work takes place—people, location, work hours, organizational culture—can all greatly enhance or greatly sour your overall experience.

Were you treated professionally during the interview? If you were interviewed by a panel, how did the panel members treat each other? Did the interview feel rushed as if it were someone’s to-do-list item, or did you perceive that interviewing and introducing your talents to the company were sincerely valued by the business? Was your interviewer on time? If your interviewers were going to be your coworkers whom you’d interact with daily, what’s your gut feeling on how well you’d work together?

Definition
Is your role actually defined? Are there specific responsibilities that you will be measured against? What are they? More than just a job description—what are your specific responsibilities to the organization? What does success look like in this new role and how will you know that you’re delivering it?

Growth
What are the opportunities for growth in the organization? What specific skills will you be bringing to the group? Will this be a place where your unique areas of expertise can contribute to furthering both your career as well as the organization’s objectives? What happened to the careers of your predecessors in the role you'll be taking? Did they get promoted up into the organization? Did they leave the organization to pursue interests elsewhere? If the role you're being hired for is an entirely new role, what are the prospects for its growth within the organization?

Onboarding
What does the onboarding process look like? Who would be training you for your job and how long can you anticipate the training to take place? This is particularly important for roles in which a specific level of qualification or certification in a given area is directly linked to your earning power.

If you need clarification after some quality self-reflection time, you can always contact the hiring organization to get some additional questions answered. Take advantage of this dialog while it’s still yours to have.

You’ve already been offered the role—understanding what the opportunity means for you holistically might save you from the quagmire of being in a place you wish you weren’t.

The Business Card Champion

They’re emblematic. They’re sources of pride. They’re personal 3.5” x 2” flags that summarize company, title, and contact information. The business card: If this piece of pocket sized card-stock were a piece of real estate, your reputation would be its tenant. Every castle needs its monarch.

In the age of kings and feudal lords, the King’s Champion was the representative of the monarchy—king, queen, royal family, regal reputation. The Champion would represent the royalty in tournaments, feats of daring, and sometimes, even for certain rights to a kingdom in dispute. Regardless of the stakes, success of the Champion ensured that a monarch’s reputation was maintained throughout domains of their and others’ rule.

For those of us with less regal aspirations, one modern day Champion of our reputations is the business card we choose to represent us and the means by which it is sent out into our respective corporate realms.

While the act of exchanging the information on business cards is itself rapidly evolving with card scanning technology and wireless forms of data swapping, the tangible business card itself can still be a source of exchangeable identity that ranges from the Spartan, no-frills information couriers to precisely designed standalone works of art.

The path by which your card travels into someone’s possession is almost as important as the card itself. If it’s not treated as a little anthropomorphic PR executive representing you with panache long after it’s left your side, it might just cause your reputation (or lack thereof) to get guiltlessly chucked straight into the recycle bin. Consider a few guidelines as you use these traditional yet powerful little banners of self identity and self promotion.

1. Behind Every Business Card is a Business Person
Behind every business card is a person: a father, a mother, a jet lagged traveler living out of his suitcase for the third consecutive week, a parent missing her daughter’s dance recital, somebody’s sleep-deprived best friend suffering in between time-zone changes.

Before you even get into the business of business card brokering, always acknowledge first and foremost to yourself that behind every title is that first name, middle initial, and last name. Behind even that is a real live person. Build a unique relationship that’s founded on the person rather than some flimsy piece of cardstock and you’ll be off to a good start. Business cards are doors only—the real network relationship is the person standing behind it.

2. Treat Your Business Cards as if They Were $1 Bills
What does behavioral economics have to do with networking? Everything! Diamonds are prized for their rarity; chunks of street gravel are not. Don’t be “that guy” walking around the dining room with a visible four-inch stack of cards, handing them out like you’re promoting the opening of a new car wash or take-out restaurant. If potential recipients see that the card they’re being given is visibly one of hundreds, how much value do you think they’ll assign to your card?

If you’re thinking about initiating, treat your business cards as if they were $1 bills Is there a business reason for the recipient to receive your card? Business card giving is about connections—professional connections on a personal level. Without such connections, your business card is likely to be forgotten in a dry-cleaner-bound shirt pocket or in the deep, anonymous clutter of someone’s purse.

3. Be a Historian.
As a recipient of a business card, before you lose the details of that encounter, jot a few quick notations on the back of the card: date introduced or met, location, quick note on context. The strength of your connections will only develop to be as good as the quality of those connections, particularly as you get to work with someone in true collaborative form. This doesn’t mean you have to be all Hollywood façade about getting to know someone more personally—recognize that sincerity is always in style. Remembering details of a pleasant conversation is always a good memento to collect while on the path to collaboration building.

4. From Raw Materials into Finished Goods (Now).
So you’ve exchanged good information and formed a good connection. How do you make the otherwise inert raw data on the business card into something more actionable?

As soon as you can, get the individual(s)’ e-mail and phone numbers into your contacts list or address book. Don’t let that untouched, aging business card stack grow any larger. Don’t wait. Go back to the hotel room and do it now. If you connected in an important way (which of course you did, right?) send a follow-up email soon afterwards and start working toward collaboration.

5. One Size Does Not Fit All: Some Etiquette-Related Exceptions

The Courtesy Swap
If someone offers you their business card, it is just professionally nice to reciprocate with your own. If you have run out or have just recently changed roles and don’t have cards yet, just say so.

Business Cards Abroad
Pay attention to local practices, particularly if you work and travel internationally. In Japan, everyone gets everyone else’s business card, whether they will be working directly with you or not. Particularly in parts of Asia, even the method and gestures by which the card is presented is important to keep in mind.

In some countries where title alone can sometimes trump the actual purpose of the meeting itself, your card can be a real primer as to how much in-depth work you’ll potentially be doing with your counterpart.

Keeping Engineering in the U.S. Relevant

Today’s blog posting is brought to you....

By Chris Knutson, P.E.

With completion of the recent U.S. and China summit, increased media attention has been focused on the need for expanding bilateral links between the two countries. The shift from a strong linkage between the U.S. and Europe to one with the Far East is only a change in longitude. It has not changed the fact that to continue both growth and the ability to influence our nation’s future, the U.S. must be engaged in the world. And, we must actively accept the challenge to stay engaged outside our borders and embrace diversity within our borders.

Books such as Tom Friedman’s The World is Flat may seem gloomy about the U.S.’s ability to compete in the global marketplace and our future in it. Add to this statistics for the number of four-year engineering school graduates from China and India versus the U.S. and one might become downright discouraged:

• One unknown source puts the numbers at 600,000 engineering graduates from China, 350,000 from India, and 70,000 from the U.S.
• A 2005 study from Duke University puts the numbers at 352,000; 112,000; and 137,000, respectively.

However you stack the numbers, the U.S. has a deficit. Why? And what needs to be done to discourage aspiring engineers from downshifting to other degree programs?

First, why the disparity? Demographics and population. First off, the populations of China and India are 1.3 billion and 1.1 billion versus 307 million in the U.S. Just by linear extrapolation there’s going to be more engineering graduates. Next is demographics. The number of 18-24 year olds in the U.S. is about 26 million, and the figures for China and India, although even more murky than the numbers of graduates, are significantly higher and projected to be so. What does this mean? A larger pool for engineering students.

Second, what needs to be done to keep engineering students engaged in engineering? I offer my opinion based on what it’s taken to keep young officers interested in staying on active duty:

1. Make it Relevant. Anecdotally most engineer students drop out in the first or second year due to the core classes, such as physics and calculus. Why? These subjects aren’t glaringly relevant. Yes, everyone knows you need to know this material to be an engineer, but it’s hard to make that connection if you’re in a lecture hall with 400 other students (yes, I was the product of a public university).

2. Make it Real. Hands-on is the greatest way to learn, period. In the trades, apprentices and journeymen must complete both bookwork and hands-on tasks to demonstrate competency. Engineering curriculums by-and-large do not. Important? See point #1—the hands-on work makes it relevant and makes it real.

3. Make Responsibility. People react favorably to responsibility. Engineering is a profession of and about responsibility. Making any task relevant and real will lead to the participant taking responsibility.

Does this work? In my experience with keeping young engineer officers past their first enlistment, yes. And it makes sense, because this is what it took for me to stay with engineering during college, stay on active duty as long as I have and, quite frankly, stay engaged with any endeavor I’ve undertaken. Make it real, make relevant, and make responsibility.

NSPE member Chris Knutson, P.E., has over 17 years in the U.S. Air Force as an engineer officer and currently serves as a lieutenant colonel commanding a civil engineer squadron in New Mexico. He is a member of the NSPE Mentoring Task Force.