Usually it just involves a good strong muzzle and the necessity to fill out 10 forms to request a new pencil. However in more extreme cases a lion-tamer's whip and chair are often used.

I ask myself this question everyday.

Impossible.

By the way, where is Del?

Hello DCaD!

Compliments for your definition and activities a manager must do with engineers or other workers in any organization.

I understand that you are Chinese. In your country this is a bigger problem than in the western organizations. We, in the west, we already experienced the ego driving individuals, which created many bankrupted companies. I was in your highly populated country and found people are very knowledgeable because you want to approach to the leaders position, in local, country-wide, and global markets, as fast as possible. From no where to become a leader or a boss, it turns the brains upside down. They are afraid to loose what they get so rapidly and act as tyranes.

Again, nicely done and wish you good managing opportunities by following all your recommendations and absolutely don't loose control of yourself! All yours, Gil.

Engineers are looking for leadership. Management is an insult since they have something on their mind. Of course work is called work and not, play, for a reason.

There is a goal at hand and the cats and dogs are not profitable as zoo animals.

Good project, good people, and good pay make things happen.

Progress through Fun!

Feed your friends!

Dear TRANSCENDIAN!

During customer needs are on the minds of the leaders, everything is fine. When their personal needs and wants is the project like automakers did until now, everything goes wrong and no one works really.

I aggree that good project, pay, and good people make things happen but you need presure on people, time, and money to create really things as needed before the competition.

Without certain pressure, human become lazy! I watch myself when I have time to do things. Let me know how you feel when you are free! Have a nice day, Gil.

Do you enquire as a sadistic HR wanting to manage engineers or do you want to know about engineers managing a project?

If it is the first, forget about it, lion tamers chairs and whips will only prompt bad response.

For the second, realistic scheduling do wonders.

The wording of your question makes understanding your request difficult at best,

I agree with the posters who suggest that engineers are noeither managed nor manageable. They must have a project vision and leadership.

My interpetation of your question leads me to think that you are inquiring about how to manage engineering or technical projects.

Here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management

Most business schools have some courses in this field, but they tend to focus on the reporting and making fancy charts aspects.

The real goal is to achieve the objectives of the project, on time and budget, by optimizing the allocated resources:Cash, talent, labor, materials, energy etc.)

My answer to this question is to get some exerience working in any area of the field that you are thinking about, to serve a kind of informal apprenticeship and see what the real problem issues are. Then go to school, and compare what is being taught to the context of your exerience.

Then when you graduate, you will have practical wisdom, not just a degree with fresh ink.

milo

just a little PS on the subject of management: I do think it is a bit different from "leadership". I certainly was no born manager but did learn how to do it. I remember sitting in the driveway one time crying over the events of the day.

The perfect manager will ask for volunteers among the willing, and tells the unwilling what to do. You got your cooperative sorts and your uncooperative sorts, introverts and extroverts to work with.

Always there is somebody interested for one reason or another in figuring out how not to do something.

I did find that the freelance life let me off of actually having to fire people. I could simply not hire them again. Still I'm a bit hard headed and if it was my decision, I hired who I wanted, and not necessarily who the client wanted.

When I die, all I really want to leave is a legacy of integrity.

As an experiment I have imagined determining the perfect mix of introverts and extroverts on a spaceship.

P.S. I'm looking for a Management Position. General Grant is one of my heros.

I hope this helps

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She reduced altitude and spotted a man below. She descended a bit more and shouted, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The man below replied, "You're in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You're between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude."

"You must be an engineer," said the balloonist.

"I am," replied the man, "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I've no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help at all. If anything, you've delayed my trip."

The man below responded, "You must be in Management."

"I am," replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?"

"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you're going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you've no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it's my fault.

If you are referrring to Engineering Management, that's different to engineer management. I did a post-graduate degree in Engineering Management, specialising in maintenance management. Other fields were project , development, production, technology & operational management, if I recall correctly. It is underpinned by some MBA-type subjects, as well as decision analysis, etc.

Graduate/technical knowledge are more product focused. Once you've been promoted or similar, you need to manage the systems better, & we are not all equally gifted! It helped me quite a bit, but a scaled down version would also have done quite nicely. Interestingly, they also reuired that you already had some industry expereince, so that you can apply your newfound knowledge better. You could see in class those who've been around the block a bit - much higher quality questions asked - nice to challenge the professors & lecturers!

Hi Gideon!

Please, stay on the line. The question is clear and simple: What is engineer management? After my opinion, how to direct engineers to obtain some performance from their knowledge? The company or the boss has an objective, a goal. The people around this person are the engineers and they have to understand the objective and make the maximum effort to arrive to the objective as successfully as possible. To arrive to the objective, it is necessary to tell people, sorry the engineers, what to do, when to do, and roughly how much could cost. This is the management in general and engineer management in specific. The engineers have the solution because they study to know what to do or have experience to realize the project or in case of failure they are out of the company. Finally, we have a project with objectives and we can realize a cause-and effect chart or a PDCA cycle or use other project managing tools. E. Deming was very simple and clear about it. Check with the Japanese organizations and you get the answer. When the project and objectives are understood, the support is around, the engineers make the rest. Each boss or company handles people the way they want but success at the end is the most important. When success is real, engineer management is valuable for that organization. I like this company, Gil.

Perhaps the question was rhetorical.