Tab Article
A follow up to the author’s book “Developing Effective Engineering Leadership” (IET 2002), Maintaining Effective Engineering Leadership explores a framework of skills and process as a means of maintaining leadership development.
The author argues that engineering leadership is the result of the development of four fundamental concepts: personal managerial skills, self-leadership skills, operational leadership skills, and organisational leadership skills. Therefore, for an engineer to progress into a leadership role they must possess and apply these skills in order to become a capable manager and leader.
Each of these concepts is explored in turn with examples taken from the space shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003 to show the importance of these processes and skills and highlight what can potentially happen when they are ignored.
The book also introduces the Capability Maturity Model which provides organisations with appropriate processes and knowledge guidelines to ensure effective leadership to avoid such disasters.
Topics covered include;
- A good process gone bad – setting the stage with the Columbia disaster
- The importance of process
- Leadership is guiding a process oriented organisation
- Maintaining vigilance for product and the need for change
- The financial impact on process and operations
- How do we change – what do we need to do?
- Individual capability
- Recommendations for process and capability in today’s industries
