Wednesday, August 17, 2011

The Difference Makers

I've worked in the engineering, operations and construction industry for almost 20 years now.  Most of my career has been spent in the consulting business working for large municipal and federal agencies advising on highly technical and sensitive issues. 

Here is one key piece of information that I have learned in my travels overseas.  You can take the smartest, brightest engineer (substitute any profession here) into a complex technical situation and he will likely fail.  You can take a reasonably educated, non-technical engineer and dump him into the same complex scenario and guess what?  He will not fail.  Hmm, how can that be?  Shouldn't the smartest guys always succeed?  I mean doesn't it make sense to send the guy that has the most subject matter expertise to solve a problem?  Hmm, again, history and experience show that is not the case. 

Well then, what is the difference between the smart/technical guy who knows his subject backwards and forwards and the reasonably educated.. difference maker?  Often times, the smart, technical guy may not have the correct communication skillset, or he may talk to much and listen too little.  Yes, I think it comes down to listening skills.. by that I really mean the ability sit quietly, analyze a situation, sort out the facts from heresy, misinformation, urban legend and determine what the true hard facts are.

When the difference makers gets to that point, when he knows he has the facts sorted out guess what he does?  He gets out his cell phone or email machine and finds the smart technical guy and frames the information, puts it into context FOR him and lets the smart technical guy then solve the problem.  Yep, that's it. 

Often times I've seen the smart/technical guys get out there and make too many far reaching assumptions.. the older they are, the worse it is.  You'll have a 30 year technical guy show up to solve a problem for you and often times you'll have to drag him out to 'see' the problem because from afar he had decided that he had it solved because of his immense intellect... well 9/10 he was wrong and when he gets to the problem area and is shown the facts in the appropriate context, miracles happen.

So, remember this, find the difference makers, let them make a difference and as a manager your job will be easy... put the smart/technical guys without the ability to listen and observe and watch mayhem and chaos ensue.





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