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Anthony Fasano

TEQC 23: How to Effectively Budget for QA/QC Review

January 10, 2023 By EMI

https://media.blubrry.com/engineeringcareercoach/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/teqcp/TEQC023.mp3

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QA/QC ReviewIn this episode, host Brian Wagner, P.E. talks with Anthony Fasano, P.E., founder of The Engineering Management Institute, about how to effectively budget for QA/QC review, both from a time and monetary perspective.

Engineering Quotes:

QA/QC Review

QA/QC Review

Here Are Some of the Questions We Ask Anthony:

  • In which part of a project budget should quality control and quality reviews be placed?
  • Should a project manager review previous projects to see where things went right or wrong?
  • How important is it to ensure everyone working on a project is at the same level of expectation according to the progression of a project?
  • Should someone who is not familiar with your project be doing the quality control reviews?

Here Are Some Key Points Discussed in This Episode About How to Effectively Budget for QA/QC Review:

[Read more…] about TEQC 23: How to Effectively Budget for QA/QC Review

Filed Under: TEQC - The Engineering Quality Control Podcast Tagged With: A way to look at previous projects, Anthony Fasano, Budget for QA/QC Review, Having a good project process in place

How Engineering Companies Can Facilitate the Transition from Engineer to Manager

January 2, 2023 By EMI

Engineer to ManagerEngineering companies are great at developing engineers. But what about the often natural transition of an engineer to an engineering manager? How can the organization help the engineer transition from the technical aspects of engineering to the soft aspects of management: the overall management of the project and the project team members, both internal and external?

Without a career path plan, the right organizational structure, training, and support from management, the young, aspiring engineering professional will most probably fail in his new managerial position(s).

In this article, I discuss the life cycle of an engineering manager and how engineering organizations can avoid stunting this cycle. I also provide five strategies that organizations can use to ensure they are setting up their engineering professionals to become the best engineering managers they can be.

“Before you become a leader, success is all about growing yourself. After you become a leader, success is about growing others.” ~ Jack Welch

The Life Cycle of an Engineering Manager

Most engineering professionals begin their careers learning the technical side of their specific discipline. They spend most of their time doing calculations through complex spreadsheets or intricate software packages.

By the end of their first few years, they can often run calculations in their sleep and are well versed in the guidelines or processes for the technical aspects of their projects. They may even have obtained a master’s degree on the same topics over those first few years as well.

As they progress, their company sees this technical expertise and gives them more technical responsibilities and, ultimately, one project to manage. Congratulations — you are now a project manager! That may mean different things in different organizations, but nonetheless, this individual now has responsibilities in addition to those calculations and other technical responsibilities.

Fast forward a few years and the same engineer, who is now managing multiple projects, gets promoted to engineering manager and is now managing a team of engineers and other technical professionals. Now things really get interesting. Not only does the engineer have to juggle different projects, but they now have to deal with the most variable organizational component of all — PEOPLE!

Where they go from here is a direct reflection of how their organization prepared them for this transition. Rewinding for a moment, there were actually two key transitions that I mentioned through this life cycle:

Transition #1: Project engineer to project manager (managing projects)

Transition #2: Project manager to engineering manager (managing people)

The ability for engineering professionals to excel through these transitions, in my opinion, is directly related to how well their companies have prepared them for each transition.

Here Are 5 Actions Your Organization Can Take to Help Engineering Professionals Handle Management Transitions and Become Great Managers and Powerful Leaders

  1. Provide your younger professionals with a mentor, but not just any mentor — one who is a leader in the protege’s field and who can provide the right type of guidance. This mentor should already be an effective manager or leader in the same field that the younger engineer is aspiring to manage; in this way, the younger engineer can seek very specific management advice from the mentor. Otherwise, you may be wasting both parties’ time as management in different engineering fields can require vastly different responsibilities.
  2. Have them present or engage in real-life project situations for managers that matter. Think about the things that an engineering manager has to do on a regular basis and put your aspiring managers in positions to do those things as often as possible. There is no better way than learning on the job.
  3. Ask your new and aspiring managers what managerial skills they feel they need to improve on. You might even do an assessment or survey to find out which skills they are weak in. Assess as many new or aspiring managers in your firm as possible. Then, and only then, should you provide them with the training needed. This will ensure that the organization gains the best return on the training investment and properly cultivates effective managers and leaders in the long run.
  4. Provide both project management and soft skills (people skills, communication, building relationships, engaging people) training that will transfer back to the job. Very few engineering organizations do this effectively. When delivering training to engineers, provide them with a framework that they can use to apply what they’ve learned on the job. Otherwise, they will go to said training, be given a ton of information, and not have the time or tools to integrate the new content/skills into their job responsibilities. (Trust me on this — I can’t tell you how many project management training binders I put on my shelf as an engineer, only to never open them again after the training.)
  5. Have them shadow their own managers as much as possible when you are getting ready to promote them. Whether it be meetings or important phone calls, have these aspiring engineering managers listen, observe, take notes, and determine strategies that might work for them, so when it’s their turn, they are ready! There is no excuse not to have your professionals perform this shadowing exercise. While it may cost you some of their time, the lessons they learn will be invaluable and will greatly increase their odds of success as managers.

Please share any experiences or strategies in the comments below on strategies you can add to these five that have been helpful in your organization’s leadership development practices.

At the Engineering Management Institute, we help engineering companies cultivate well-rounded managers and leaders through effective professional development programs. Our Engineering Management Accelerator and Project Management Accelerator online interactive workshops provide project and people management skills training in a very accountable way for engineering professionals. Our next sessions are in Q1 2023 that you can check out here.

If you’re interested in enrolling some of your managers or aspiring managers, please contact our office at 800 920 4007. We also offer our Engineering Management Training Needs Assessment as an inexpensive first step in deciding on how to maximize your training spend and your people.

This article was originally posted on LinkedIn here.

Please leave your comments, feedback or questions in the section below on strategies that have been helpful in your organization’s leadership development practices.

  • If you enjoyed this post, please consider downloading our free list of 33 Productivity Routines of Top Engineering Executives. Click the button below to download.

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Anthony Fasano, PE, LEED AP
Engineering Management Institute
Author of Engineer Your Own Success

Filed Under: Blog, Leadership/Management Tagged With: Anthony Fasano, Become Great Managers and Powerful Leaders, Help Engineering Professionals Handle Management Transitions, The Transition from Engineer to Manager

Don’t Commit This Cardinal Sin of Delegation Like I Almost Did (Until My Son Helped Me Avoid It)

November 29, 2022 By EMI

Cardinal Sin of DelegationI had a long day of coaching, training, and podcasting and I was looking forward to unwinding at home that evening, believe it or not, by getting out and doing some yard work. Immediately after dinner, I told my wife and three kids, “I am going outside to mow the lawn.”

I changed into my yard work outfit, put my headphones in, fired up some Alan Jackson and started with some tree clipping. I was deep into it, sweating hard, and feeling very productive.

Then, my wife sent my 10-year-old son out to help me. I immediately felt a sinking feeling in my stomach…

“Now what,” I thought to myself. “I have to stop what I’m doing to get him involved? I am being so productive right now, this is going to really set me back.”

So, I ignored my son for a while. He went into the garage and fumbled with the weight set. Finally, it hit me. At the Engineering Management Institute, I spend a lot of my time coaching and training engineers on how to be more productive by delegating effectively. The biggest barrier that engineers and other professionals have when it comes to delegating is holding on to the tasks for too long. They take on the mentality of, “It will take me longer to show him or her how to do it. It will be faster if I just do it myself.”

cardinal sin of delegation

You can get away with that mentality for a little while in your career, but if you really want to develop professionally and climb the ranks in your firm, you will have to let go of that philosophy and rigorously delegate every task that you shouldn’t be doing.

[Read more…] about Don’t Commit This Cardinal Sin of Delegation Like I Almost Did (Until My Son Helped Me Avoid It)

Filed Under: Blog, Leadership/Management Tagged With: Anthony Fasano, develop professionally and climb the ranks, how to be more productive by delegating effectively, The Cardinal Sin of Delegation

Engineers Leave Companies When Their Career Paths Are Unclear

November 15, 2022 By EMI

career pathsHiring and training new employees is one of your biggest expenses, and it is costing you a lot more than money. In this post, I would like to provide strategies for improving your firm’s retention rate, regardless of how good (or bad) it may be.

The Cost to Replace a Highly Trained Employee Can Exceed 200% of Their Annual Salary. 

Many engineering companies are aware of this expense, yet they hold back on investing in initiatives that can reduce this expense by greatly improving retention and also making it easier to recruit when the time comes.

At EMI, we have surveyed and provided career coaching to thousands of engineers, and they continue to tell us that the most important thing to them in their careers is the opportunity to grow. Therefore, before anything else, including salary increases and promotions to new positions, you should consider how you can provide your employees with growth opportunities. That should be your number one focus.

One great way to do this is to chart out clear career paths for your staff. People really like to see the full length of the career paths they are traveling on as opposed to just the next one-hundred feet.

career paths

According to Willis Towers Watson, 76% of employees who fall into the “high-retention-risk” category are itching to leave because they have nowhere else to go on their current organization’s career ladder.

So, give then somewhere to go and offer professional training and development to help them get there.

Two Engineering Firms That Are Getting This Right

[Read more…] about Engineers Leave Companies When Their Career Paths Are Unclear

Filed Under: Blog, Leadership/Management Tagged With: Anthony Fasano, Hiring and training new employees, provide your employees with growth opportunities, The Cost to Replace a Highly Trained Employee

TEPM 5: How to Hold Your Project Managers Accountable (And Why It Matters)

November 14, 2022 By EMI

https://media.blubrry.com/engineeringcareercoach/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/6d1b0bdf-a1eb-451f-a826-c621c8e327e2/TEPM005.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Project ManagersIn this episode, I talk about how you can hold your project managers accountable and why it matters by providing you with three specific steps you can start implementing right away.

Engineering Quotes:

Project Managers

Project Managers

Here Are Some Key Points Discussed in This Episode About How to Hold Your Project Managers Accountable:

The reason that holding project managers (PMs) accountable is important is that your project managers are the cash flow engine of your firm. They dictate how profitable your projects are. If they are not performing at a high level, the ship may be sinking, so to speak, in terms of your company financially. And unfortunately, oftentimes what happens is if your PMs are not accountable, their projects aren’t going to do well financially, although they may do well enough that you won’t notice it fast enough to rectify this problem.

Your PMs must be held accountable regularly. That being said, let’s look at how you hold your PMs accountable. Here are three specific steps that you could take to do this:

[Read more…] about TEPM 5: How to Hold Your Project Managers Accountable (And Why It Matters)

Filed Under: TEPM - The Engineering Project Management Podcast Tagged With: Anthony Fasano, expectations the company has of project managers, Hold Your Project Managers Accountable, project managers are the cash flow engine of your firm

How Can You Show Your Company That You’re Ready to Be an Engineering Manager?

November 1, 2022 By EMI

Engineering ManagerI received this question recently from a young engineer, and it’s one that many young engineers struggle with. They feel like they are ready to move into an engineering manager position, whether that be managing projects or people, but they don’t know how to show their companies they are ready.

I am going to offer some of my thoughts on this topic here in this article, but I would also ask you to please leave a comment at the bottom of this post with any thoughts, experiences, or advice on the topic that you can share.

Since I am an engineer, and I always think in frameworks, I would like to offer a two-step approach to answering this question.

Step 1: Practice Makes Perfect

[Read more…] about How Can You Show Your Company That You’re Ready to Be an Engineering Manager?

Filed Under: Blog, Career Goals and Challenges, Leadership/Management Tagged With: Anthony Fasano, Are you ready to be an engineering manager, Move into an engineering manager position, Practicing some managerial-related tasks

A Message from Pearl Jam: Before You Become an Engineering Manager, Understand What Comes Along with the Title

October 20, 2022 By EMI

A Message from Pearl Jam

“All the things that others want for me, can’t buy what I want because it’s free.”

This a line from a song entitled “Corduroy” by the popular band Pearl Jam, led by famous vocalist Eddie Vedder.

There has been much debate about the meaning of the song, but interviews with Vedder, as well as the lyrics, suggest that the song is describing the pressures of fame.

It’s been said that the song is specifically about Vedder’s ability (or struggle) to cope with all the attention fame has brought him and also about others taking advantage of his fame for their own personal gain.

For example, the line at the top of this article about all the things that others want indicates frustration, because he’s financially wealthy and can have any material item that he wants. But he can’t buy what he really wants — anonymity — which is free.

Engineering Management Is Highly Coveted

I have talked to, interviewed, and provided management coaching and training to thousands of engineers over the past 10 years. When I ask engineers what their primary career goals are, the answer I get 90% of the time is, “I’d like to become an engineering manager, principal, partner, or owner of my firm.”

Engineering Manager Anthony Fasano

When I ask the follow-up question, “Why,” the answers vary greatly, but the initial answer is that same one 90% of the time: “I want to go from engineer to manager and beyond.”

Like all rock stars out there wants to become famous, all engineers (or most) want to become managers and powerful leaders in their firms and industries.

[Read more…] about A Message from Pearl Jam: Before You Become an Engineering Manager, Understand What Comes Along with the Title

Filed Under: Blog, Leadership/Management Tagged With: A Message from Pearl Jam, Anthony Fasano, Before You Become an Engineering Manager, What Comes Along with Being an Engineering Manager

The Engineering Management Skills Trilogy: Using the Theory of Constraints

October 4, 2022 By EMI

Theory of Constraints

Do you have engineering managers in your firm who are more effective than others? Every engineering company does. However, most companies are trying to “improve” them, but with no success. Why? They are not considering the Theory of Constraints. In this article, I will share how this theory can help you in all aspects of your company and provide a useful diagram that can serve as a blueprint for building strong engineering leaders. This article was originally posted on LinkedIn here. 

The Engineering Management Skills Trilogy

Over this past year at the Engineering Management Institute (EMI), we have done extensive research into what makes successful engineering managers, and I have been trying to figure out a way to explain our findings to the firms that we provide training to, as well as our content subscribers, and I finally found a way to do it — through the Theory of Constraints.

The Theory of Constraints was developed by Eli Goldratt, an Israeli business management guru.

The Theory of Constraints states that any system with a goal has one limit, and worrying about anything other than that one limit is a waste of resources.

[Read more…] about The Engineering Management Skills Trilogy: Using the Theory of Constraints

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Anthony Fasano, Engineering Management Skills Trilogy, Using the Theory of Constraints, what makes successful engineering managers

Like All Professionals, Engineers Quit Managers Not Companies

September 7, 2022 By EMI

Quit Managers

This article was originally posted on LinkedIn here.

There is an infamous saying that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately:

People Quit Managers, Not Companies

I’ve spent the last 10 years traveling to over 30 U.S. states speaking and training thousands of engineering professionals, and I can attest to the truth of this statement — that engineers do quit managers, not companies.

In fact, a study by Gallup concluded that one in two people admitted to having left a job to get away from a bad manager, and 70% of the factors that contribute to your happiness at work are directly related to your manager.

Why Does This Matter to Your Firm?

[Read more…] about Like All Professionals, Engineers Quit Managers Not Companies

Filed Under: Blog, Leadership/Management Tagged With: Anthony Fasano, Avoid Letting Bad Managers Stunt Your Firm’s Growth, Engineering Management Training Needs Assessment, Engineers Quit Managers Not Companies

Engineer Your Own Success: 7 Key Elements to Creating an Extraordinary Career

August 23, 2022 By EMI

Your Own Success - 7 Key Elements To Creating an ExtraordinarY Career

First of all, let me say that you must take your career into your own hands. Too many professionals wait for their employers to give them a raise or promotion. Don’t wait for anyone. Follow these seven steps and you will be able to engineer your own success:

“Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The information in this article pertains to engineers and other STEM professionals, but can be useful to anyone classifying themselves as “a professional.” I believe that if these seven steps are followed by a professional, they will be successful. By successful, I mean, they will achieve all their professional goals. This article was originally posted on LinkedIn here. 

 

1: Set Clear Goals

Most engineers don’t set goals, and even if they do, they are not clear and aligned with their values. You must take the time as early as possible in your career to consider your values and set clear goals. Strive to understand WHY these goals are important. For example, if you say your long-term goal is to be a principal in an engineering firm, you better know WHY — and the answer shouldn’t be “to make a lot of money.” You need to have a deep reason for wanting something, or else you won’t sustain the motivation to pursue it.

Your Own Success

2: Obtain the Right Credentials

[Read more…] about Engineer Your Own Success: 7 Key Elements to Creating an Extraordinary Career

Filed Under: Blog, Career Goals and Challenges Tagged With: Anthony Fasano, Creating an Extraordinary Career, Engineer Your Own Success, take your career into your own hands

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