Giving Back-A Volunteer Opportunity for Engineers

Engineers are wonderful creatures. They are blessed with incredible skills but do most of their work in the background. Lawyers run for office and dominate the political landscape. Television shows bring us into the world of hospitals and doctors. We don't see many prime time shows on the lives of engineers. I don't hear many engineers interviewed on the radio.

But certainly we matter. Watch Apollo 13 and quickly realize the importance of engineers. We just don't crave the limelight. I equate us to offensive linemen who plow the way for running backs and quarterbacks to make big plays.

Well, I have a wonderful opportunity for engineers to step out and support an incredibly worthy cause. First, a description of the cause.

Water Missions International (WMI) is a non-profit ministry, located in Charleston, SC, that implements a variety of safe water solutions in disaster response and community development projects. The ministry was started by engineers, men and women using their God given technical skills to support others. I could write at length about them but I'll get to my main point.

When you visit WMI, you quickly realize that at the wonderful core lies a manufacturing plant. They receive raw material and run the material through a series of assembly steps to create the final product, a Living Water (TM) Treatment System. (LWTS) Along the way, they have the same issues as you do at work. Quality must improve. Processes must become lean. They are well aware of the need for continuous improvement but there is one small detail I must mention-they totally rely on volunteers to do the assembly work.

With the scope of the ministry growing and the need for the product expanding, the organization realizes it now needs a different type of volunteer. They need "engineer types" to come observe their processes and recommend ideas for improvement.

As a first step, they are currently developing work standards. (this is being managed by a volunteer group of 24 Industrial Engineers from Robert Bosch Corporation) Once the standards are in place and the process released, there must be continuous improvement in quality, cost, and delivery.

So, we are asking for engineers to come and visit. Take a plant tour, pray about what you observe and if you feel led, volunteer your engineering skill and talent to help Water Missions International continuously improve the wonderful output it provides to the world.

To learn more about WMI, please visit: http://www.watermissions.org/

Or, email me at sd@qualitymindsinc.com

Our Thoughts During the Holiday Season

Well, here we go again-another holiday season. Let the stress begin. There are so many things to do before the end of December. How can we possibly accomplish everything? There are parties to attend, presents to buy, families to see, and feasts to prepare. At some point, we will try to relax and enjoy it all.

Does this hit home with you? I know it does and every year you probably vow to do things differently. But, alas, you find yourself in the same soup come late November.

Instead of accepting the oncoming angst, let’s stop, sip our coffee, and take an objective look at what swims in our heads. How many thoughts, on average, do you think we have each day? Interestingly, the internet has an abundance of information on the subject. Most literature says a person has, on average, 12,000 thoughts per day which breaks down to 8.3 thoughts per minute. Thoughts govern our feelings so if the majority of the 12,000 are negative, we are having “bad days” which include stress and other unhealthy emotions.

Are you are a positive or negative thinker? Take this test to find out or to at least get an idea. For one minute write the positive thoughts you experienced this week then for another minute, the negative thoughts you experienced in the same period. Think about your week at work and away from work.

My positive thoughts were pride, comfort, accomplishment, energetic, enthusiasm, euphoria, eagerness, inspiration, and joy. My negative thoughts were envy, cynicism, anger, despair, fatigue, hopelessness, boredom, lack of direction, pain, and apathy. Of the nineteen total thoughts (roughly 8 per minute), 53% were negative and 47% were positive.

Now take the estimate and apply it to the 12,000 daily thoughts. Table One (above) shows the approximate number of positive and negative thoughts per day for different positive thought rates. For argument, let’s assume that most of us are, at best, 50% positive thinkers. This means that on a daily basis, we have approximately 6000 positive thoughts and 6000 negative thoughts. If you are skewed closer to 25%, you have up to approximately 9000 negative thoughts each day.

What is the point of all this? The 6000 to 9000 negative thoughts are ball and chain to our attitudes dragging us into a bitter and hard to escape quagmire. They close our minds and hearts to life’s wonderful opportunities. In this holiday season, there are so many reasons to be thankful and those reasons should dominate our thoughts. But this is easier said than done.

There is ample self help stuff to alter your way of thinking. I’ll offer mine-Table Two (above) is a simple diagram of our thought process. We receive inputs from various suppliers and convert the inputs into outputs (our thoughts). Negative inputs yield negative output (negative thoughts/bad days) while positive inputs get converted into healthy output (good thoughts/blessed days).
We control the inputs (that drive our thought process) by choosing the suppliers of the inputs. If you socialize in a circle that spreads rumors, get out of this negative ring. If you are repulsed at the negativity in news stories, stop watching or reading the news.

Let this article serve as impetus for you to sit and enumerate the things you are thankful and grateful for in this holiday season.

US Lags Behind in Engineering Graduates

There was an interesting article in Sunday's paper. The setting was my alma mater, Georgia Tech. The subject was the loss in competitiveness of the United States in the engineering field. The main solution offered in the article was to encourage more women to become engineers.

Of the 855 engineering majors at the school, 87 are women. (10.1%)

One of the causes (given in the article) is the negative stereotype of engineers-'the nerd drinking Cokes and eating Twinkies until 3 in the morning'. This deters females from entering engineering majors.

One point (made in the article) that I wholeheartedly endorse:
To counter the stereotype listed above, William Wulf, president of the National Academy of Engineering said: 'The really important attribute of an engineer is creativity. Somehow, that's not what high school girls are hearing about'.

It took me years to realize that one of the strongest attributes of engineers is creativity. I've said it before that the one, unique thing engineers bring to the table is a thought process. The way we think allows us to apply our skill and talents in any field-manufacturing, coaching, healthcare, etc.

Becoming an engineer does not commit you to a life of design and desk sitting in front of a computer. It opens the world to you and your thought process. Whether male or female, the path you take depends on your ambitions and dreams.

Topics for Seminars

When was the last time you attended a great seminar?

I plan to offer seminars as part of my service package. My idea is to hold informative sessions in Charleston on Thursdays and/or Fridays. The length will be at most two days. (probably one day)

The point is to learn something new and enjoy a nice day in the Lowcountry.

What topics would you be interested in for a one to two day seminar?

Competition

I have talked before about Thomas Friedman's wonderful book, The World is Flat. In short, the theme of the book is global, economic competition. The term superpower is becoming extinct as more countries are becoming a slice of the economic pie.

Some of you are feeling and experiencing this as your product or service competes with companies in India, China, and Mexico. Others read about it and know it is an issue but aren't overly concerned since it doesn't personally affect them.

If you don't buy the idea of global competition in business certainly you can see it in the world of sports. Forever, the United States has dominated the sports world. Heck, we invented baseball and basketball. In basketball, we always won the gold medals. Remember in 1972 when the Russians beat the United States for the gold medal in basketball? The win was extremely controversial but was more shocking in the fact the we lost. We never lost in basketball! But we did.

Now, it is becoming the norm for us to lose in world competitions. Our men's basketball team recently finished third in the world basketball championships. Our golf team recently lost in dramatic fashion to their European competitors in the Ryder Cup.

So for the business world, the perfect analogy exists in sports. You just can't "show up" anymore and expect to win or stay in business. There are more people and companies in the world that are striving for what you have and want. Their skills are equal or better than yours. In some cases, they are hungrier than you. This is new to them. To succeed on a world stage. Wow!

As individuals, it is important that we constantly improve our skill set. How? Read new and interesting books. Attend a class at a local technical college. Volunteer in your community. Go back to school for a masters degree in a subject you love. Blog on the internet. Attend seminars.

As companies, we must nuture our employees and help them continuously improve their skills. The thought of a thirst for self development within a company is wonderful and should be the goal of any leader responsible for others.

Creating a Career-Article from Fast Company Magazine

Careers don't just reflect which jobs are available, they represent who we are as people. Fast Company was founded on that notion (among others). The ensuing 10 years have seen everything from the rise of online job boards to the Brand Called You, the birth of blogs to offshoring. All of these developments have had a significant impact on the way we manage our careers--and the next 10 years promise to be just as dramatic. A number of technological and demographic trends still in their infancy will shape the way you develop and guide your professional life in the decade to come. Here's how to ride those waves.

Spin Out Your Network

Networks are morphing from small, closely knit circles into expanding webs that can reach just about anywhere--and collect virtually all the information you need. "It used to be that a young professional's network consisted of six friends and their dad's uncle," says Elliot Masie, president of the Masie Center and author of a weekly industry newsletter that goes out to 55,000 corporate executives. Now even an average student who doesn't think much about networking in the traditional sense will already have dozens of "friends" in his or her Facebook network (an online directory for college and high-school students and alumni) before leaving campus. "We are amazed by the sheer number of grads staying connected to others today," says Christopher Morris, the director of MBA career management at the Wharton School. Because sites such as Facebook are viral, the new friends you acquire give you access to all of their friends. The result? People are entering the workforce with hundreds of contacts--and they're eager and ready to deploy them.

Today's power networkers aren't just hoarding contacts but sharing information in unprecedented amounts at unbelievable speed. "They're far more open about discussing their private lives, from what they did at that party this weekend to salary information about their jobs," says Morris. "What used to be difficult to get, you can now just ask [for]." Masie sees this warp-speed, ultraconnected culture at work in his own company. "Students who do internships with me use Facebook more than email," he says. Their conversation threads regularly focus on work experiences: What did they learn? Who did they meet? Was it fun? Did it pay well? Where do they want to work next? "One used Facebook to decide not to take a full-time job she was offered," he says. "Her network told her it wasn't a good place to work."

"This is a group with a team, a project, and a collaborator mentality," says Alice Snell, VP of the talent-management research division at Taleo, a San Francisco-based company that produces human-resources software for companies such as Citigroup, Honeywell, and Dell. If there's a tech problem, their first instinct is to instant-message a geek buddy for advice on how to fix it. If they're on a product-development team, they'll reach out to friends for input, not necessarily caring whether they're observing traditional corporate boundaries. And if they hate their boss, maybe they'll post that on their blog.

The increasing breadth and power of employees' personal networks to disperse information about work experiences will force companies to rethink how they organize teams and departments. Look for interdisciplinary teams that involve employees from different generations in an effort to take advantage of as many perspectives and sources of input as possible. It's possible that companies will flatten their hierarchies even more than we've already seen in an effort to make junior employees with their brainstorming networks feel more empowered to speak up and contribute ideas at work. It will also affect what sorts of controls they try to exert on communication with peers outside company walls. Trying to shut down these informal networks obviously won't work, even if companies find them threatening. The only option, predicts Masie, will be a "high level of honesty and transparency" and the incorporation of rewards for those employees who use their networks on the company's behalf.

If you're not 21 and burning up your Facebook account, next-generation networks aren't closed to you. Try out business-oriented Web services such as LinkedIn and Ryze to track and expand your personal network. Or go the old-fashioned route: Pull out a big piece of paper, stick it up on the wall, and map out everyone you know, how you know them, and how they connect to one another. "If it's not visual, it's easy to miss things," Masie says. "Look at it and realize this is an asset you can legitimately mature." The next step, he adds, is looking for ways to expand beyond your own peer group. "Operate up," Masie says. "Too many people forget to do that." Recognize the value of mentors and identify those above you who can help you learn.
And most important of all, adds Morris, remember that technology is just a "new enabler. These are still relationships. They have to be cultivated."

A long list of names is meaningless unless it represents real relationships, developed by offering your own help and input over time. Then, when the day comes that you need a job lead, a problem-solving tip, or just the inside scoop on the new boss, you'll be in the loop, not banished to the outer circle

Put Your Best Face Forward

"It's a big problem when someone's Facebook profile says that her favorite thing is to get s--tfaced on a Saturday night." Your network may make companies transparent to you, but you're transparent to employers as well. Anything online, whether easily available or tucked away in a private network, is fair game. "It's a big problem when someone's Facebook profile says that her favorite thing is to get s--tfaced on a Saturday night," says Masie. "Google is the first stop for finding info [on potential hires], then Facebook," he says. So there may be a number of versions of "you" being projected into the world. Not all of them will necessarily be what you want an employer to see. Can you control that? If not, can you live with it?

Over time, hiring managers will be less interested in the salacious stuff that a Google search might reveal. "So you were president of your frat," says Morris. "As more information gets out there about everyone, it diffuses the importance of each individual piece of information. It will be okay."

But that doesn't mean you won't have to manage your professional image. Lara Kammrath, a psychology postdoc at Columbia University who is making the rounds in the academic job market, recently had to deal with one of those moments when the Web's power rears up and surprises you. She arrived for an interview at a school in Ohio on a Friday, and the dean asked her how her job talk in New York the previous Monday had gone. She was shocked. Turns out that her "candidate talk" had been posted on the calendar of events at the New York school's site, and it turned up in a Google search. Kammrath couldn't help feeling panicked. "I wondered if they were waiting to see if I mentioned it," she says. "A lot of the politics of these jobs is whether they think you'll say yes. They might go with a less preferred candidate with a higher chance of return if they thought my interviewing at another school was a sign that I wasn't placing them first on my list." She got the offer (and turned it down), but the experience was nerve-wracking.

It's no wonder, then, that there are now services to groom the online you. "Reputation management" outfits such as ZoomInfo, a Waltham, Massachusetts-based company, aim to aggregate information about people from the Web into profiles with a professional focus. The company's technology crawls the Web in search of names to match with particular kinds of information: location, position, education, experiences, and credentials. The good news is that it's not interested in anything but who you are as a professional. And ZoomInfo's customers are large companies (more than 20% of the Fortune 500) that subscribe precisely so they don't have to wade through the muck when they need to look someone up. Even Google uses ZoomInfo when it's looking for a particular kind of person to fill a job opening.

"We've got 70 million people identified," says ZoomInfo founder and CEO Jonathan Stern. "We're able to create power searches to find people with specific certifications, who have worked at specific places, or have specific affiliations." Stern calls it "comparison shopping" for the kinds of people companies would like to hire. And you have input into what appears on your "label" when those hiring managers go shopping. "We want to give people more control over what is found when people look them up," Stern says. Simply go to ZoomInfo.com, search for yourself, then review what turns up. There may be several profiles for one name, indicating that the engine thinks these may all be different people. If you register with the site, which is free, you can make changes to the profile, adding accurate information about your education and work experience, and your contact information if you want companies to find you directly. You can also review all the Web links that have been aggregated under your name and verify that "this is me" or that it isn't. Then write a paragraph or two about who you are and what goals you have. It's not a perfect solution, but it's a small way to shape the impression you give clients and bosses if they search for you online.

Embrace the Liberal Arts (Again)

Solid communication skills, analytical thinking, and being a quick study are the new keys to success. Ironically, these are staples of the classic liberal-arts education. This is in marked contrast to the ever-more-specialized approach that some of today's college degrees take. That UMass Amherst degree in building materials and wood technology? Hard to believe it's going to last you a lifetime.

Even a degree with a bit more mass appeal, such as communications, shows how quickly things change. If you graduated even three years ago, such emerging niche media as blogs, podcasts, and satellite radio are all new to you. Each requires a different approach, and you have to develop specialized tactics to get your message across. Whatever specifics you learned in school are hopelessly out of date.

"As world economies come up and the environment gets ever more competitive, the U.S. educational infrastructure is struggling to keep up," says Gautam Godhwani, CEO of online job aggregator SimplyHired.com. Many of today's exciting jobs (Java developer, brand-experience designer) didn't really exist 10 years ago. And the exciting professions of tomorrow have yet to be imagined. As a result, what we need from our education has changed. "What you want to learn is how to learn," says Taleo's Snell. And that's where the liberal-arts education becomes valuable again.

Labor trends point to the increasing importance of adaptability. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average worker currently holds 10 different jobs before hitting age 40. Job tenures now hover around four years. Forrester Research's Claire Schooley predicts these numbers will only get more extreme, anticipating that today's youngest workers will hold 12 to 15 jobs in their lifetimes.

One way to approach lifelong learning is to think about what's threatening your job or your company. "Everyone can articulate what they're threatened by," says Rob McGovern, author of Bring Your 'A' Game. "Years ago, when I worked at HP, a few people went to Microsoft. We worried about what Microsoft was doing. If you're at Microsoft today, you're worrying about Google. Go find out about the thing that threatens you. Understand it. You might pick the wrong company, but what you will learn will always be valuable." The bottom line? If your degree gets you in the door, it's your experiential résumé that will take you to the executive suite.

Harness Your Inner (Mini) Mogul

Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson aren't the only ones who should be juggling multihyphenate careers. We may not all manage clothing lines and signature fragrances along with our pop-singing starlet gigs, but we will all need to start thinking of ourselves as one-person empires.
As we stay in the workforce longer, it's going to take more to keep us interested, which may mean keeping fingers in several different career pies. Jeremy Bieger, a 29-year-old senior manager of interactive marketing for American Express, has a pretty cool job. Got an AmEx corporate card? When you go online to access any of its services, Bieger is the one designing your experience. He's a rising star, having already been promoted since joining the company in 2004, and has won an internal innovators award for creating a Mac "widget" that could help customers manage balances from their many accounts all over the Web.

Bieger created that widget for fun, in his spare time. And last fall, he coproduced a friend's music album and also collaborated and performed in a performance-art show--involving original music compositions, dances, and video art--in Brooklyn's trendy Williamsburg neighborhood. Bieger's not some frenetic, obsessive overachiever with no time for a personal life. He's happily married and quite soft-spoken. A double major in economics and music composition at Oberlin in the late 1990s, Bieger simply sees these activities as different parts of who he is. "It all has to do with creating something," he says. "I see a lot of people who work a lot of late nights and burn out. I don't feel that way. I see myself as a collaborator and an ideas guy. It's all about going from the idea to the creation of some living, breathing thing." Whether that's a piece of music, a video, or an interactive Web site, for Bieger it's part of creating an elegant performance and staying energized.

We need to feed the different parts of our personality, because one job may not provide all of the satisfaction we need from work.

So like him, consider what's at the root of what you do now. Are you an ideas person? Then think of different platforms where your ideas can help create a new product. Are you someone who's great at management? Try to get a seat on a board of directors or an advisory board to broaden your experience and develop a high-level perspective. "Top performers are always thinking, What comes next?" says McGovern. We need to feed the different parts of our personality, because one job may not provide all of the satisfaction we need to derive from work. Some of those 15 jobs you'll hold over the next decade may be at the same time. This mini-mogul approach is also a hedge against burnout and the rapidly morphing economic landscape.

Post Your Résumé . . . Forever

Although everyone may already be willing to take a new job if a great new gig smacks them in the face, the changing nature of technology means that we'll all be in the job market, all the time, even if we're happily employed. The first wave of online job boards made the want ads searchable, but they also let dilettantes flood hiring managers, making it unlikely for any given CV to float to the top. It also made it all too easy--and embarrassing--to apply for a job online only to find that you were applying for something at your own company. Busted.

The next generation of online job services gives more control to the employer than the job seeker. Employers are tired of sifting through junk from a pool limited to the unemployed and disaffected. Those aren't the best candidates. "We're all about the employed person," says McGovern, who founded job-matching service Mkt10 to meet this shift. "Companies want the top performers who are already doing well." That also means the gloves have come off. "Ten years ago, people didn't admit they were trying to hire the already employed," says ZoomInfo's Stern. "Now it's the other company's problem to figure out how to keep their own employees."
The new services force candidates to state their skills and interests honestly rather than just apply for a job with a large starting salary. The technology lets employers find qualified matches. Fortunately, it also gives job seekers more privacy. Services like Mkt10 reveal only a candidate's skills and profile. The potential candidate gives up her personal info only if she's interested in a company's offer to meet.

Missele Vegas, the HR director at VitalSpring Technologies, a health-care-benefits software company in McLean, Virginia, has been beta-testing Mkt10 to find candidates for the past seven months. She has used Monster since 1996 to fill positions but says that service too often left her with résumé spam and mismatched candidates. Vegas is currently using Mkt10 to look for everything from a CFO to an SAP program director. "They find people for me with 100% matches in the key elements I'm looking for--secret clearances for government work, technical skills for other positions," Vegas says. "It cuts down a lot of my pre-work." Positions that once took three or four months to fill now take 30 days.

Tushar Desai has benefited from the new approach, too. He completed a profile on Mkt10 that led to an account-executive position with VitalSpring this past fall. "The form was more detailed than 'What's your skill set?' " he says. "There were qualitative questions: Where did I want to be? What were my long-term goals?" Desai appreciated that depth, as well as the constant updates from the system about where he was matching and how far along his materials were. Having experienced a job match in place of a search, Desai is unlikely to go back to the old way of posting his résumé on Monster the next time he's thinking about a job change.

And that's exactly what these services want to accomplish. By helping us think about who we are, what we want from work, and what experiences we need to get there, they hope to create a pool of elite, available employees all ready for their next big thing on a moment's notice. "In the future, [employers] aren't going to advertise job openings anymore," says Warren Bare, CEO and founder of Jobkabob, another job-matching service. "They'll find you." It's a scary prospect for anyone who has ever been out of work. But for the agile, well-presented, ever-learning, constantly networking top performer, it sounds . . . perfect.

Would You Like to Teach?

If you would like (or know someone that would like)to teach any of the following subjects, please let me know by commenting on this post or by emailing me.

These are continuing education type classes. The classes could take place at technical colleges or at a client's workplace. The class sizes would be a maximum of ten students.

This is a great way to get certification points if you are ASQ certified.

Subjects:
1. Problem Solving
2. Basic Statistics
3. Measurement Systems Analysis
4. PPAP
5. Statistical Process Control
6. Lean Manufacturing
7. Six Sigma
8. Auditing
9. ASQ Certification Classes: CQT, CQA, CQE, CMI
10. Process Failure Mode Effects Analysis (PFMEA)
11. ISO9001, AS9100, and TS16949 Quality Standards

Stephen

A job or A career

Do you have a job or a career?
The former pays the bills. The latter speaks (in part) about what you are. If I polled a large sample, I'm fairly certain that a significant percentage would say they are in a job and don't understand their career. Meaning, what they do every day is not aligned with what excites them. It's easy to know what excites you. It's harder to have a bill paying job that allows you to exercise your talents every day. I honestly don't have the answer. Nooone does. But I can offer practical experience. If you want advice, please read the attached article. It is my attempt at a "how to" for picking your career.

The article is titled "How to Decide on a Career and a Job within a Career" and appears at http://www.qualitymindsinc.com

Development Path in the Field of Quality

In 1991, I became certified as a Quality Engineer. To take the test, I sat through a preparation course. The course opened my eyes to the wide array of Quality sciences.

It sparked an interest in statistical thinking. I have always been interested in data but never knew of an area in which to cultivate my passion. After becoming a certified engineer, I went back to school and obtained a Masters in Industrial Statistics. In May, I was certified as a Six Sigma Black Belt Engineer.

With so many certifications offered by ASQ, it is important to understand how they are related. Please see the "quality" development path at http://www.qualitymindsinc.com

Would you agree that is more important to have a career than a job? A career, in part, defines who you are and the contributions you make to society. At the risk of sounding morbid, I often read obituaries to see what people did in their lives. In big papers such as the New York Times, you will find detailed description of a person's life. You understand the devotion of their time on earth. What they held dear. What occupied their enery and attention.

We should be working on our interests and passions every day. Teaching classes. Writing blogs. Networking with like minded professionals. Volunteering to help students, etc. Not for the love of money but to add value to the world and to make us better people.

Getting better all the time

Where are you in life? Just out of college? Twenty something and single? In your thirties with young children? Forty something and thinking of retirement?

Wherever you are, I hope you often think of ways to improve yourself as a professional and person. The former is something we often think of as we try to advance in a job, company etc. The latter seems to receive less attention but is no less important.

What I have learned over time (I'm in my forties) is that it depends on where you are in life.

This blog will continuously offer advice on professional development. This may include personal research, book reviews, interesting websites to visit, seminars to attend, etc. I'll do the research. You use what you need to improve.

I will also provide tools to use in your job. Some I have created. Others that are well known but may not be understood. I will offer explanation.

My hope is that you can associate with what I write. I beg you for your comments for I want to associate with what you write. If good dialogue occurs, we both will benefit.

Welcome to my blog. I am here to develop you.