Engineering Leadership Goes Beyond the Technical Details
Engineering leadership goes beyond getting the technical details right. Strong data, solid analysis, and correct designs are essential, but they are not usually sufficient. Engineering leaders also operate in an environment shaped by perception, communication, organizational purpose, office politics, and how work is understood by people who are not immersed in the technical details. Learning to recognize those broader factors is part of being an effective engineering leader.
In the late 2000’s, I was working with the NASA Engineering & Safety Center (NESC) on the Max Launch Abort System (MLAS) project as a systems engineer / assembly, integration, & test (AI&T or I&T) engineer / deputy project manager. I list three roles there to reflect that it was a small, agile team moving quickly, so team members were covering lots of ground and roles were blurry. We were tasked with quickly developing and demonstrating an unproven means to get the astronaut capsule away from a failing launch vehicle.
A Moment That Revealed Non-Technical Purposes
As the flight test article was in the final stage of preparation, we were making plans to paint the exterior flight surface. A team member asked me, discreetly, “why are we making the effort to paint it? It’s only flying once and the paint won’t make it fly any better.” I thought for a second, then responded, “no, but it’ll help them sell it.”
He was surprised, them smiled as he realized, I think, the layers of purpose we didn’t talk about. He was focused on the technical details of assembly and test, while I had one foot in broader circles that were balancing more than the technical details.
What Engineering Leaders Naturally Focus On
As an engineering leader, it is natural to focus on getting the data, analyzing the data, and getting the design to work. It isn’t natural for many of us to tune much of our attention on: Where’s the data going? Why? Who’s going to use it? And for what purpose(s)?’ Turning some attention this way is part of becoming a better engineering leader, and I’m thankful NASA fosters that skill.
Technical Purposes Are Important
There were several technical purposes to the MLAS project: proving the concept of launch abort crew escape with the escape rocket motors positioned differently; demonstrating feasibility of the complicated sequence of parachute deployments; gathering data to assess aerodynamic predictions on a blunter rocket nose; and using off-the-shelf automotive parts for gathering aerodynamic performance data. We focused a lot on these and others.
Non-Technical Purposes Are Also Important
Yet, there were non-technical purposes as well. One was demonstrating that young engineers with limited and varied experience could be developed into capable systems engineers quickly with experiential challenges and good mentoring. Another, and probably the most important, was showing that NASA could pull resources from across the Agency and execute a major test development cycle in a compressed timeframe and on a small budget, which was tied closely to the NESC’s need to prove they were doing good things with their allocated funding. There may have been other purposes, but these stand out to me.
Engineering Leadership Beyond the Technical Details
Engineering leadership isn’t only about solving technical problems; it’s also about understanding the broader purpose(s) surrounding the work. Technical excellence matters, but so does knowing how the results will be used, who needs to understand them, and what pressures exist beyond the engineering domain. Developing that awareness doesn’t mean compromising technical rigor; it means expanding the view.
Learning to see beyond the technical details is part of becoming a more effective engineering leader, and it’s a skill I now help engineering managers and aspiring leaders strengthen.
Help for Engineering Leaders Wanting to Think More Broadly
If you’d like help tuning your senses to broader, perhaps unstated purposes, I’m here to help.
By the way, the beautiful paint job showed up in the press release and in the NESC Annual Report.