MIT Sloan Management Review

Leadership and Organizational Studies, Management of Technology and Innovation

 

Don’t Blame the Engineers

By Craig M. Watson

January 15, 2004

To better manage technology, a generalist must know it well enough and challenge it often enough to truly understand its potential risks and rewards.

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In the aftermath of the Columbia space shuttle tragedy in February 2003 and the Great Blackout of August 2003 in the northeastern United States and Canada, concerns have surfaced about whether nontechnical managers are capable of effectively managing the complex engineered systems for which they are increasingly responsible. As one experienced observer recently commented: “The moral I carry from both the Columbia disaster and the blackout is the dismal level of technical expertise of this country’s managers. … The technical side gets derided as detail.” That challenge, of course, is hardly limited to quasipublic undertakings, such as space flight and electric power; it is endemic in the private sector as well, especially in the United States, where training in management has always eclipsed engineering expertise in determining executive progress.

As a management generalist with technical experience in diesel engines, pharmaceuticals, chemical engineering, information technology and electronic payments, I believe generalist managers are more than capable of successfully managing complex technical systems. It is management’s responsibility to know enough and to challenge well enough to understand the true risks that their technical environments embody. Meeting the challenge of effectiveness demands a combination of skills, some of which appear to have been lacking in both the Columbia disaster and the recent blackout.

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