Do you "Stand Out"? 34

[bridgebuster]

My employer (very large AE firm) has found a new way to waste money, an HR program called "Stand Out". You answer a bunch of questions and it tells you your personality type. Then every week you get an email to "Check In" to describe what you loved and loathed about the week, how much value you brought to the company, did you have the opportunity to use your skills, did your boss interact with you (he says good morning before barricading himself in his office in order to remain oblivious to what we do, what more can I ask?). I was wondering if anyone else is subjected to this madness?

They have a link to unsubscribe but it really doesn't work.

 

[zdas04]

When I started I was pretty sure that I pretty much knew everything there was to know about pretty much everything. 37 years later I just published a 680 page book that purports to be "everything that I wish I had known when I started out". This means that not only was my starting knowledge level lacking, but my arrogance was completely unjustified. I doubt if I was completely atypical in my lack of practical knowledge.

[bold]David Simpson, PE[/bold]
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[HamburgerHelper]

I think there has to be something said about someone bringing new approaches and not burdened by "knowing" what is impossible. Maybe, some industries are different than others but there are some that have the prevailing mindset of "this is how we have always done it and how we will forever do it." I am not implying that experience isn't valuable but the pendulum swings too far the other way in some places.

 

[rotw]

zdas,

May I ask you a piece of advice. I am referring to your before last post above - still under rated, in my view.

As a matter of fact, because I sometimes failed myself to listen or pay enough attention to your orientations / criticism delivered in this forum, I find my self in situations where I had to learn things anyway and I had to learn them the HARD WAY. I hope I really learned because its hard to correct an attitude and change a mindset to the better. Many people claim to have acted upon their mindset but I don't thing there are so many that succeeded. Of course education, personal development and mentoring can be important in the process but I suppose the real switch can only happen within us.

Maybe a sign of our times (?), it appears many people have a tendency for shortcuts in order to get things done. As an engineer I do like shortcuts when my goals are reached. But the shortcuts I do refer to pertain to the process of learning and also of valuing seniority / experience and definitely I want to point out to the quality of the listening process.

My point is that you may spend treasures of your own energy to elaborate for others on the correct attitude toward learning, self improvement but sometimes you feel that you are facing a real stone wall. Nothing will change. Sometimes it can even get worse

I know it is a lost cause, but assume you decide to give it a shot.
What would be the best way / angle of attack to build awareness within people that are inherently and severely reluctant to change ?

 

[CWB1]

Nobody comes out of college knowing most of what they need to survive in engineering, but at the same time learning by doing and discovery of missing knowledge/ability is necessary to grow. A mentor cannot tell the mentee what they should need mentoring on, only the reverse, so junior engineers should be challenged to complete any/all large projects and allowed to pull mentors in as necessary to teach and/or assist with design. Its not a matter of anyone being "geniuses," its a matter of allowing juniors to run and discover what they don't know, which is simply good professional development practice.

JMO but the biggest problem at most companies is lack of professional development and micromanagement. At my first employer I saw my manager once every two weeks for a scheduled hour, in design reviews and major meetings, and maybe once a week besides in the hallway. IMO it was the perfect setup as it really put responsibility on me to learn, interact with others, and get the job done. I could always call in his or other senior engineers' help but I didn't suffer from limited responsibility limiting my growth. At other employers since I've often questioned responsibilities - someone engineers, then reports most every detail to a manager who attends and repeats in most every meeting that engineer is invited. Nothing is fast, communication sucks, and professional development is painfully slow bc the lower level folks aren't trusted with any real responsibility.

 

[aap2]

Also - keep job hopping - see how that works out for you in the long run.

If it makes one well rounded I don't see a problem with it, especially if they are contracted out.

Even if you are one in a million, there are still hundreds out there just like you.

This is one of the thoughts that I had when I was in college and it made me feel really hopeless. I figured if about 5,000 to 7,000 students graduate per state school and then you multiply that by roughly 1500 schools that's roughly 7,000,000 new people entering the workforce every year.

God made the integers, all else is the work of man. - Leopold Kroenecker

 

[aap2]

Also - keep job hopping - see how that works out for you in the long run.

And besides in the long run, we're all dead.

God made the integers, all else is the work of man. - Leopold Kroenecker

 

[lacajun]

In my experience, a lot of managers are working managers, i.e., they are responsible for management and engineering work/projects. It's hard to manage, when you don't have the time to do it.

We cannot expect from people what they do not have to give. We cannot judge them for not having it either. You have deficient areas that render you incapable of living up to someone else's expectations. All of us do.

Bottom line, management wanted the P&IDs updated. They asked you. You're complaining about it.

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC
NSPE-CO, Central Chapter

 

[zdas04]

rotw,
The ONLY way I've ever found to get anyone to change any behavior is to trick them into believing that the change is their ORIGINAL idea so that they own the concept. Don't tell someone "you need to do xxx in yyyy situations" and they hear "blah blah blah". Put them in a situation where their options have been pared down to exactly one that they can discover on their own and they will own it.

I talk a lot in my book about "ownership". I find that concept to be the key to success. I don't chew gum, but when I'm going to the field I carry a pack of individually wrapped chewing gum in my pocket. Sometime during a conversation on a field guy's site I'll pull out the gum and offer him some. People always take it. If they throw the wrapper on the ground, I'm pretty sure that someone will find a reason to demote/fire the operator within the next 6 months--they have no sense of ownership. If the operator puts the wrapper in his pocket or the trash then he is very likely to be an operator worth teaching and learning from.

Same with engineers. If they have a sense of ownership and pride of accomplishment they are way more effective than the guy that proudly proclaims "I don't live to work, I work to live". In fact when I hear that statement I start the process of making his life so intolerable that he quickly finds somewhere else to live.

Figure out a way to get your engineers (or yourself) to become invested in their work and the improvement in results is amazing.

The ownership stuff is in Chapter 10 of my book, which you can download for free at Elsevier Blog, you don't have to read the drivel of the blog, just scroll down to the link right above the picture of the book cover.

[bold]David Simpson, PE[/bold]
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[rotw]

This is a clever and effective approach. Many thanks for this piece of advice.
Appreciate the link to the book's chapter 10 which I am reading (I started by examining the 4 postulates...)

 

[zdas04]

LOL, Good place to start (the very end), I do enjoy original thinking.

[bold]David Simpson, PE[/bold]
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[SNORGY]

Wow...disappear for 6 weeks of shows and I miss all the fun and excitement...

lacajun, good to see you. Thank you for observing that SNORGY, apparently, Must Be Absent.

Come to think of it, that might be the problem with the levels of common sense and intelligence possessed by the "non-engineering" roles in some corporate cultures.

I could derive an entire career from one acronym...

Who is right doesn't matter. What is right is all that matters.

 

[SNORGY]

My two cents...

I start with every E.I.T. or intern with a simple assignment. It might not always be interesting, but if they nail it, it's not long before the brain candy comes. The first assignment I ever got as an E.I.T. was to put numbers in circles on a drawing called a P&ID; didn't matter what the number was as long as it had four digits and a different number went in each circle. There were already a couple of letters in the top half of each circle. Then I was asked to list all the letter+number designations and the drawing number they were on. I was literally at a level where I would ask, "What's a PI? What's a TI?", and then my boss would give me a catalogue to read. In the ensuing 3 months that followed, I had specified, ordered, listed and catalogued the delivery (by looking inside every box) of all in-line instruments for a 10,000 BOPD oil battery. All because I did a good job with a boring list of numbers in bubbles on some drawings.

OK so 35 years later I still get seen as "the list guy", which is occasionally irritating, and I'm currently doing something at work that's a bit tedious, but when brain candy stuff comes up, it invariably finds me, too. It's been ok in the long haul.

Just do the best you can with whatever task you get. If you do that, then when you truly do get bored, at least you'll be better positioned with more options available to you.



Who is right doesn't matter. What is right is all that matters.

 

[lacajun]

zdas04, I've gotten men to change their behaviors by listening to them vent to discover their true problem. Once identified, I talked a little logic to them and let them apply said logic to find it is true and they changed. I watched one electrician go from hating construction workers and constantly refusing to work with them to sticking up for them at the end of the project. It was quite a change but a good one to see.

There are lots of ways to get people to change. I've learned an important key is to have people that are open to change because they're not afraid to admit, first to themselves, they were wrong.


Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC
NSPE-CO, Central Chapter

 

[zdas04]

lacajun,
I think we are saying the same thing. Get them to believe that the change was their own idea. Letting someone talk through their problems while you listen and nod at the right moment is a tried-and-true method to help someone find solutions. At the end of the day telling someone to stop yelling or to stop being fat is pointless. As soon as they "get the idea" to control their anger or their weight they will likely succeed. Where are we different?

[bold]David Simpson, PE[/bold]
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[TWJR]

1794 days and counting!

Calendar days, or work days? I'm with you buddy. Got about 4 years to go. Just trying to crawl across the finish line.

 

[dgallup]

My company just started to implement a HR website called Namely that sounds a bit like the OP's Stand Out. So far they have mostly just populated it with the usual HR stuff like benefits and company calendars and job openings. Supposedly we are going to form teams with performance goals and review each other. Gag me with a spoon, too much like social media. I work well with pretty much anybody who is not a complete ahole but I don't do social media and I don't trust this site. They've already put salary info on it and the first thing that shows up if you hit the compensation link is your base salary in big bold bright color. It's rather shocking to see it all lit up when they have very definite rules that you are never ever to discuss compensation with co-workers. If I walked away from my computer for 5 minutes anyone could fire up the browser, go to the site, it will remember my login and password and bingo there it is. Now I really don't care if other people know what I make but this is so insecure they are asking for it to get leaked all over the place. Not to mention addresses, phone numbers & every other bit of personal information on us the company has. Probably small potatoes after the Experian hack but I doubt it will take many Russians to crack our security. Corporate HR did a training class on Namely, when I asked about web security all I got was blank faces.

Speaking of counting down, I just set that up on my vacation calendar spread sheet last month. 1071 Days to Go! That's to get the restricted company stock they just gave me to keep me around. If I leave before then they claw it back.

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The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.

 

[BrianPetersen]

Back when I worked at a company that was just big enough to start thinking about BS HR initiatives, I had been there long enough that I simply ignored them. Nothing bad happened.

At the next place, which was a smaller company but run by someone who was constantly pushing for better and better quarterly results (while simultaneously being as much as a year behind on employee incentive payments, but I digress), the meeting in which he introduced a new feedback and review program was the same meeting in which I handed in my resignation and walked out the door.

I pretty much do whatever I want now (and for a much higher hourly rate). RFQ comes in for a job that I'm not interested in? Can't be bothered. There won't be any BS HR initiatives, because there isn't an HR department.

Takes a while to get to that point, though.

 

[bridgebuster]

@TJWR- calendar days, if it were working days I think I'd go stark raving mad.

 

[bridgebuster]

As a Baby Boomer, I have to wonder how The Greatest Generation won World War II and put men on the moon and brought them all back without Namely, Standout, Salesforce, Chatter, and SMART goals?

 

[zeusfaber]

That would be the generation that had World War II (and, in many cases, didn't win it).

A.