I read the three articles that comprised The Unwritten Laws of Engineering back in January 2018. The main purpose of these pieces was to address King’s belief that personal or administrative failures often cause very technically skilled engineers to fail at their craft. The Unwritten Laws of Engineering focused on the professional rather than technical aspects of the role. Throughout, it was filled with recommendations for how to best apply engineering knowledge to the job without getting trampled underfoot by the challenges of navigating a work environment.
King’s style is to deliver simple messages supported by clear and realistic examples. His two-fold suggestion that new hires attack early assignments with enthusiasm and make any extra effort needed to complete initial projects exemplifies his approach. He explains the importance of these recommendations by pointing out how a new hire has not accumulated enough projects to allow a manager to overlook natural variations in performance.
He adds later that nothing is more dangerous for an engineer’s future than becoming known as a strong starter who never finishes projects. The single biggest danger of this reputation is that others will start to dismiss ideas from someone who never finishes projects on the account that the proposed project will probably never get done anyway. This is perhaps good advice for someone who has settled into a new role. A new hire may start with enthusiasm and finish projects on time merely as a result of natural 'new hire exuberance' - however, over time a new hire slowly becomes a seasoned employee and this initial energy will fade. Those who maintain a strong early pace always make a strong case for taking on more interesting or challenging assignments in the future.
Most of King’s advice addresses a skill engineers are usually not trained on – communication. This strikes me as a very sound approach. As King himself notes repeatedly, most engineers are technically qualified for the job. Their failures tend to stem from setting the wrong initial expectations or having a difficult time cooperating with others. He has many specific examples that fall into this category but I felt one thought summarized them all: if a situation is inadequate, the options are to accept the situation and work hard or seek a move to another role as soon as possible – note that causing mischief is not among the options!
One up: I’ve written in the past about how much I like a common sense approach to managerial questions. King seems to be a kindred spirit in this matter and many of his managerial prescriptions were supported with a strong dose of common sense. Here were a few of my favorites:
-Do not cite ‘uncertainty’ as the reason for not making a decision if sorting out uncertainty is part of your job.
-Never cite a subordinate’s lack of skills as the reason for withholding responsibility – developing the right skills is the manager’s job.
-If a mistaken decision will not risk a catastrophe, make the call quickly – there will be an opportunity to reverse course later.
-Managers should never blame changing scope for poor work because understanding and applying the right scope is part of the role.One down: I thought King’s reminder that laws, principles, and methods are no substitutes for judgment was a well-intended point that went just wide of the mark. It reflects a common problem with advice – the engineer who agrees with the comment likely already exhibits good judgment while the engineer who stands to benefit the most form the comment likely doesn’t have the good judgment needed to understand it. To put it another way, the engineer who will benefit the most from King’s work is the new professional who requires laws, principles, or methods to support the slow process of developing the judgment necessary to no longer rely on these at some point in the future.
A better approach here might be to reframe the most important aspects of judgment as laws, principles, or methods. Although this process might impose an unnecessary structure around the essentially unstructured skill of ‘good judgment’, this approach would probably make sense to an engineer because the profession is based on working with laws, principles, and methods. When the engineer grows into the profession and is ready to use good judgment, it will be easy enough to discard the laws, principles, and methods that were need early on in a career to inform decision-making.
Just saying: I like King’s insight into the value of asking – what do you recommend? Though it is often a great question to ask during a confrontation, it should only be asked by those seriously willing to consider the advice. If you are perceived as someone who ignores others, never ask this question – it will only be interpreted as patronizing and bring further damage to your reputation.
