How do I get my first management job?

Welcome to my inaugural blog posting on the topic of Engineering Management. Additionally, this blog will also host occasional postings on how managers and supervisors need to adjust their approach to effectively lead neurodiverse employees (ASD, Asperger, and ADHD). But today’s topic is strictly Engineering Management!

I have been involved in the management of engineering-intensive enterprises and I have been educating engineers to step into such leadership roles for many decades. Several years ago, a seminar participant asked me, “Now that I have studied this for several years and will soon earn a master’s degree, how do I convert this education into my first real management job?” What a terrific question! I have always believed that management is an applied art and after study and reflection you need to “jump into the deep end” and apply the knowledge that you have accumulated. Leadership is not learned in a classroom. Leadership is developed by applying the classroom knowledge in the “real world” and developing your own personal style based on the resulting experiences.

But that doesn’t answer the question, how does someone get that first opportunity? There are many paths to that first opportunity, but I shared my personal path with the seminar. I was a design engineer at a General Electric location and I was responsible for a critical component manufactured by a vendor. This vendor was very responsible and very good at what they did. But one day they failed a Lot Acceptance Test, or LAT. Now this was very serious because failing the LAT meant that GE would not accept any of the lot of devices they had manufactured. Not only was this bad news for the vendor but it meant that GE could not ship the products that these devices were part of. Since GE could not ship their product, they could not invoice the customer and make the sale. None of this was my fault and no one was pointing a finger at me. And although I did not yet understand the criticality of quarterly revenues and operating plans, I could tell by how my management reacted that missing a revenue commitment in Jack Welch’s GE was not something to be taken lightly! There was a lot of energy being expended to try to bring in shipments of other products into this quarter. But no one was challenging the assumption that another lot of these devices couldn’t be produced in time. Of course, we would also need to spend some time convincing ourselves that the vendor would pass the new LAT. So, witnessing the ongoing angst of my management, I drew up a potential recovery plan that included the analysis and testing that the vendor would need to do in order to be confident that the problem was fixed. I contacted the vendor and they performed a “sanity check” that the plan could work. I was too green to understand how critical it was that the vendor be 100% committed to this recovery plan but I lucked out and the vendor was fully committed. I pitched the plan to my management and since it only required them to commit my time and a little travel budget they agreed to “let the kid take a shot at it”. To make a long story short, the plan worked, the vendor delivered their product on time, and GE made the sale in the planned quarter. Shortly afterwards, I began to show up on the lists for training opportunities and project assignments that served as “try-outs” for management positions. I was on my way.

I believe that it is important to learn from experience by comparing it to theory in order to more fully understand the lessons of that experience. In this case, I demonstrated that I could manage my own corner of the world by thinking independently and arriving at potential solutions that others had missed. I also had the commitment to the organization to act on my independent thinking. No one was blaming me or pressuring me for a solution. I could have “looked the other way” and went on with my life, but I didn’t. I also had the skills to figure out what to do and to work with partners (the vendor) to learn what I didn’t know. And I had the courage to make a stand that I could do this. Although I didn’t know it at the time, an employee who exhibits independent thinking, commitment, skill, and courage is known as an “effective follower”. It is not unusual for effective followers to be given leadership opportunities as occurred in my case.

The concept of “effective followership” is included in every management course that I teach. And this lesson is meaningful for anyone looking for that first promotion and not just engineers. But more than illustrating this one specific concept, this story is a great example of how we can learn to lead by integrating theory and experience and weaving it into a theoretically valid system of practical action.