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.
Here’s how this applies to engineering managers. At (EMI), we consider the Engineering Management Skills Trilogy the three skills that engineering managers need to be effective: technical skills, project management skills, and interpersonal (or people) skills. The diagram at the top of this post shows how the trilogy, coupled with the Theory of Constraints, can help you develop your managers more effectively.
Using the Theory of Constraints to Maximize the Skills Trilogy
If your engineering managers possess the technical knowledge needed to understand their projects, and they have attended project management training and have improved those skills over time, then their limiting factor is most likely their interpersonal or people skills.
That’s important for you to know, because the Theory of Constraints tells us that in this scenario, your managers can continue to improve their technical and/or project management skills in an effort to become a better manager. This may seem like a good strategy, but, in fact, it is a total waste because their people skills will still be the limit as displayed in the image above.
The Two Core Questions You Can Ask
Now, let me finish by giving you the good news (yes, there is good news). While every system (including engineering managers) has a limit, nearly any system can be improved using the two core questions of the Theory of Constraints.
1) What’s the current limit?
2) What’s the obvious way to improve the limit?
In the diagram of the trilogy that I shared above, the obvious limit is this manager’s people skills. If this manager improves his or her people skills, they will be a more effective manager, even with a lower technical skill level. It’s not that this manager needs to spend more time improving his or her “management” skills — it’s that they need to spend time and energy on the appropriate limit.
What’s the current limit of your engineering managers? What’s the obvious way to improve that limit?
One way might be to enroll them in our next session of the Engineering Leadership Accelerator remote workshop, which you can learn about here. Our next session starts October 18, and we have a limited number of spots remaining.
If interested, please reply to this email or contact our office at 800-920-4007. If you would like to receive it every month, please contact me.
We would love to hear any questions you might have or stories you might share on how you use the theory of constraints to build your teams skills.
Please leave your comments, feedback or questions in the section below.
