Week 1 Flashcards
Effect of diversity
Research shows that diverse teams, including company boards, perform better than non-diverse ones.
Diversity helps teams avoid “groupthink”
UKSPEC
UK professional engineering competence
Engineering council
Wrote the UKSPEC
Maintains the register of accredited engineers. Set up in 1981;40 partner members, such as the BCS and IET
Benefits of joining a professional engineering institution
Recognition of professional status
Support and guidance with professional development
Technical regional events, seminars and conferences
Monthy journals/other publications
Specialist interest groups and networking opportunities
Legal and health advice
BCS
British computer society
Members of the BCS can apply to become Chartered IT professionals
Offer qualifications such as ECDL
Accreditation
One or more professional bodies may accredit a degree programme
Accredited degree
Evidence of meeting academic requirements
Simplifies process of becoming a chartered engineer
Still need to demonstrate you meet professional requirements such as 2-3 years of technical work
Engineering council accredited degrees
Engineering council maintains a list of accredited degrees, but they don’t accredit degrees themselves
Engineering council statement of ethical principles
Honesty and integrity
Respect for life, law and the public good
Accuracy and rigour
Leadership and communication
Skills of a manager in an engineering company
Mix of technical and non-technical skils
Need both management and engineering skils for a management role
Topchik 5 stages of personal growth
Attention getting Flying blind Steadiness On the rise Doing
Maps quite well to the BCS SFIAplus framework
Eisenhower principal
Explains how you should prioritise work in a table with urgency and importance as columns and rows
Market leadership change
Potential for leadership changes increases when companies are more competitive and when opportunity is at its most open
E.g nokia losing market leader in 2012
Management model
- Mathematical and backed by algorithms
- Backed by social sciences or psychology (provide insight rather than answers, support professional judgement)
Box quote 1976
All models are wrong but some are useful
Different models work better for different organisations; the best models are those that:
are sufficiently accurate and simple
Systematic decision making (or scientific)
Deliberation can help avoid unconscious biases
Personal decision making
Revolves around building up social/cultural capital and /or learning
Usually because of a lack of financial capital
Reasons for Nokia failure
Had the opportunity for touch screen technology several years before
Too many variations of existing phones, targeted at micro-markets
Inventiveness in phone design was not encouraged
Too many loud, male managers, stuck on broadcast mode rather than receive
Kahneman
Explains how decision making is affected by many unconscious biases
Hunt’s research
Gender diversity boosts financial performance by 15-20%
Ethnic/cultural diversity boosts financial performance by around 35%
Giachetti & Marchi
Claim aggressive competition can change market leadership
Key members of the engineering council
Institution of Civil Engineers 1818
Institution of Mechanical Engineering 1847
Institution of Electrical Engineers 1871 (Institution of Engineering and Technology since 2006)
British Computer Society 1956
IET
Merger of earlier institutions of electrical engineering, incorporated engineers and manufacturing engineers
Inspec, respected bibliographic database
IEEE
Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers
Set up in 1884
Publises over 30% of the Electrical, Electronics and CS literatures
ACM
Association of Computing Machinery
Set up in 1947
Publishes over 50 journals
Responsible for the annual Turing award
International Professional Bodies and Accords
Professional accreding bodies may recognise mutual equivalence
Seoul Accord covers Computing and IT, 8+ signatories incluing UK, US, Japan
Washington Accord covers Engineering, 21 signatories including UK, US, China
False Dichotomy
Engineers and managers aren’t totally different roles
Those who do what they do best vs those who develop skills that complement what they know
More productive vs boosting their effectiveness
Pyschologists have the notion of flow
When you’re in the zone and getting work done
Multi-tasking effect on flow
Multi-tasking reduces your flow, making you less effective; mono-tasking is better
Utilized by the Crystal Clear agile method
Covey’s 7 habits of highly effective people
Be proactive Start with the end in mind Put first things first Think win-win First understand, then try to be understood Synergise Sharpen the saw
First three: moving from dependence to independence
Second three: moving from independence to interdependence
Covey on effective habits
Effective habits are internalised principles and patterns of behaviour, at the interaction between knowledge, skills and desires
Questionnaires for assessing your own self-management
Measure subjective qualities, based on psychology
Work well when scientific techniques don’t work
Need to reflect at the end so you can understand the result and plan on how to improve it
Gibbs 1988, theorised one way to reflect on mistakes you make
-> Description -> Feelings -> Evaluation -> Analysis -> Conclusion -> Action plan -> Description
SMART goals
Specific Measurable Achievable/Assignable Relevant/Realistic Time-bound
Emotional intelligence
Social skills, self-awareness, empathy, self-management and motivation
Ideal team player Lencioni
Hungry
Humble
Smart
BCS’s SFIAplus total framework
1&2 - Follow/Assist - Entry/Junior support
3 Apply - Foundation/support
4 Enable - Practitioner/Analyst
5 Enable/Advise - Advanced/Manager
6 Initiate/Influence - Expert/Senior manager
6&7 Strategy/Inspire - Thought leader/Head of function
Executive
BCS’s SFIAplus Membership grade
Associate
Professional
Chartered Professional
Fellow
BCS’s SFIAplus certification level and experience
Foundation
Practitioner
Higher onto Chartered Professional
Topchik refers to the “committee of people”
All the noises going on in your head
Crystal clear (An agile method)
Lead designer and two to seven other developers
In a large room or adjacent rooms
Using information radiators (whiteboards and flipcharts et al.)
Having easy access to expert users
Distractions kept away
Deliver running, tested, usable code to the users quarterly at worst
Reflect & adjust their working conventions periodically
Ikigai
Japanese word for a reason for being
Behaviour vs personality
Very difficult to change your personality
Easier to change your behaviour
Entrepreneurship vs intrapreneurship
Entrepreneurship gives you more control and potentially more funds, but is more risky
Intrapreneurship funded by employer, less risk, richer pool of talent, less control, lower reward
Lifecycle of a business
Startup Rapid growth Maturity Decline Rebirth or death
Gilbrat’s Law
Business growth occurs in random shocks; there’s no systematic determinants of growth, in his view
Tends to hold for larger companies, but not so much smaller companies
Age influences growth rate, as well. Only some patterns of growth have evidence of shocks
Penrose’s theory
As managers get more experience, they become more efficient, which means more resources can go towards growth-inducing activities
Implies growth is not and end, rather a result
Penrose effect
Faster growing firms have higher operating costs than slower-growing ones
Hazard to growth is implied to be operating costs
Marris’ theory (of Managerial Capitalism)
Goals of managers and shareholders are aligned, even if it doesn’t seem as such at first
Optimum rate of growth
Managers desire a higher growth rate to increase their pay/position.
Thus, they seek to retain and re-invest profits.
This impacts dividends/share prices which places their jobs at risk.
Thus, they seek higher dividends, but this impacts growth
5 stages of business decline
Blinded Inaction Faulty action Crisis Dissolution
Why do companies seek growth?
Firms seek growth to increase the wealth of their shareholders. (Friedman 1970)
If firms move into new areas, they can boost employee morale and change the world for the better
