Скачать или смотреть Technical & Cultural Challenges of a Chief Engineer, A Candid Conversation with Two CEs (Part 1)

At the center of a Lean Product and Process Development effort is a single responsible leader called the chief engineer who heads a team that creates the new product or service concept, develops the business case, conducts the technical design, manages the development process and takes it into production, coordinating the effort with production engineering, sales, and marketing.

Chief engineers typically have strong technical skills to effectively lead and manage the work of engineers, designers, and other developers on the team. But perhaps their greatest talent needs to be nontechnical, an observation that emerged in this interview with two chief engineers from TechnipFMC, conducted by LEI Communications Director Chet Marchwinski at last year’s Designing the Future Summit. The interview was edited for length. Read the full version here. [link to come]

Q: Alan, you're the first overall CE and Alison is a CE on a critical system of Subsea 2.0, a major product. What were the key challenges for each of you as chief engineers?

Alan: We heard a lot about, “You need to lead without authority.” What does that mean? My role was very challenging because [Subsea 2.0] is a very large system and we always expected the chief engineer to be extremely technically knowledgeable about the product. But when we assembled the team, I would think, “I am the least knowledgeable guy in the room because we have experts for every subject.” For instance, Alison is an expert on Christmas trees.

For me, it was really hard to get this thing about leadership without authority. It started to gel once I could convey to the team what was the vision I had for the future of the company and how this product should transform the whole company.

Q: Allison, what were your challenges?

Allison: The way it was explained to me was, “You're in charge of developing this product and its value stream.” My biggest challenge was wrapping my mind around what that really means; what is the value stream of a tree. And do I understand everything about that flow?

Q: You're both experienced managers and leaders, but as CE's what changed about the ways you managed and led?

Allison: Being given responsibility for a product changed the way I cared for how development succeeded. Historically, you're graded on meeting schedule and budget, for example. But having the product be the center of your development was a shift. It changed the way that I led and communicated that vision to my team to make sure that we were all product-focused and that the decisions we made were the best for the product and not the best thing for short-term gains, schedule, and budget.

The other thing that changed was we wanted to expose problems and be transparent about them. When you ask that of your team, it's important that you don't just ask for people to tell you problems, but you work with them to solve problems. That takes a lot more time and energy.

Q: Alan, how about you? What was different about the way you managed and led?

Alan: Allison touched on it; the chief engineer needs to deliver a new value stream for the company. Before we were doing engineering for a project, so it's short term. When you think about what it means to deliver a value stream, it’s connected to the sustainability of the business, to the strategy of the company.

You need to rely on the experts in every discipline to make it happen. So it's a big task engaging everybody to align on that vision and leading, as they say, without authority. How do you promote this leadership? I think it's conveying the vision with passion. You need to have passion for the product, for what we're trying to do, and this passion has to permeate the organization.

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