5 Essential Digital Mindset Principles Engineering Managers Need
This article was first published on SmarterChains’ blog.
To leverage the Digital Mindset principles outlined below and drive transformation across your organization, SmarterChains recommends the following approach: Simplify, integrate, innovate.
Technically competent engineers that can also inspire others to excellence make astonishing engineering managers. For most people, however, striking the delicate balance between the technical and leadership aspects of effective management is increasingly difficult, as today’s accelerated technological developments place higher demands upon managers than ever.
To stay effective, an engineering manager needs to simultaneously:
- Master the complexities of industry 4.0 technologies in order to lead his team by example.
- Be fully capable of simplifying this complexity to non-technical stakeholders.
- Stay ever vigilant, and discover new tools, frameworks, and technologies as they appear.
Clearly, a monumental challenge, especially if you factor in the day-to-day mentorship requirements and administrative functions. In SmarterChains’ experience, tackling this challenge successfully requires a perspective shift towards the “Digital Mindset”.
The Digital Mindset simplified to its core, boils down to the 5 following principles:
- Leveraging the power of technology
- Agile, out-of-the-box thinking
- Risk-taking, explorational approach
- Nurturing systems of collaboration
- Global connectedness
Digital Mindset Principles
Leveraging the power of technology: Tremendous curiosity is the engine that drives future-ready engineering managers. This enormous drive is what powers them to keep their technical knowledge and expertise up to today’s high standards and consequently allows them to discover, assess and capitalize on new technological opportunities.
In this regard, simply skimming through technology news is not enough. The engineering managers of the future will be personally invested in deeply understanding the latest technological advances, and will actively use technology to connect what’s needed with what’s possible at every chance they get.
Agile, out-of-the-box thinking: Despite what many people seem to believe, agility is a much broader concept than responding to change. In today’s fast-changing context, where once useful skills are growing obsolete, knowledge is becoming freely accessible, and innovation is fully decentralized, to be agile means to be capable of foreseeing the need-for-change before it even arises.
Consequently, engineering managers should let go of rigid mental constructs (such as “work vs personal time”, or “the right vs the wrong method”), grow comfortable with uncertainty, and maneuver professionally and personally with fluid tactics.
Risk-taking, explorational approach: Building upon the premise that there’s no fixed “right” method, being willing to use technology to explore, experiment, and risk is crucial. Expanding knowledge beyond the work role is critical, as logic dictates — and the digital era enforces — that what people know is by necessity less than what people don’t know.
It’s the connections and pathways formed between seemingly unrelated bits of information that have the highest impact, and the easiest way to form these connections is to experiment and take risks. Soon, engineers will be required to navigate uncharted waters regularly. Consequently, it’s imperative for engineering managers to be able to move forward without definitively proven methods.
Nurturing systems of collaboration: Knowledge can only be multiplied when shared. This is why the successful engineering managers of the future will take every opportunity to extract new ideas from others, even from those that are of a radically different mindset, while simultaneously disseminating their own useful insights back to their teams.
This mutual exchange of information and know-how is central to the Digital Mindset: It starts with taking charge of learning, outgrowing any existing organizational knowledge-sharing siloes, and nurturing inclusive networks of value-exchange with fellow managers, staff and acquaintances.
Global Connectedness: Locality in relation to opportunity matters less and less as the world grows increasingly digitalized. On one hand, this means that engineering managers can gain on-demand access to information that could reconceptualize their way of working without even leaving their office.
On the other hand, this means that they can immediately harness the power of colleagues, networks, communities, and crowdsourcing, and use it to synthesize high-impact solutions applicable to their own organization. Simply put, in today’s interconnected world, the “how” of problem-solving is no longer an issue of technical expertise but rather, of willingness to keep learning.
Creating a digital-first organization
To leverage the Digital Mindset principles outlined above and drive transformation across your teams, processes, and organization, SmarterChains recommends the following step-by-step approach:
Simplify: Rulebooks, rigid methodologies, and a tightly regimented culture choke the entrepreneurial way of thinking and behavior that’s necessary to thrive in today’s context. Consequently, applying Digital Mindset principles to an organizational level starts with simplifying overly complex processes to their essence, giving staff the agility needed to operate in the new world successfully.
For example, a good starting point is incentivizing the regular rotation of members between departments in order to build a broader skillset and diversify their way of thinking.
Integrate: Maximum visibility among different departments and functions should be encouraged, as should be prioritizing the development, growth, and retainment of talented, cross-functional teams. The end goal is to orchestrate the creation of a fully inter-connected organization that operates as a single living organism, with seamless and synchronized data flow among its parts.
For instance, a small multi-talented team of marketers, designers, and industrial engineers can design a product that serves the market’s needs and is easy to manufacture, thus reducing new product initiation to a fraction of its required cost and time.
Innovate: The final step is to connect the newly empowered agile workforce with real-time consumer insight tools, adjust efficiently, and power breakthrough innovation. For example, a cutting-edge consumer relationship management tool can pair consumer reviews with production data, tracing the product back to the exact time and shift that manufactured it.
Operators can view complaints in real-time, to tackle potential inefficiencies, or will be praised and cheered by a 5-star review on Amazon or a happy customer’s new Instagram picture.
To discover how SmarterChains can help your organization, contact us here directly.
