Improving effective completion of a task comes from practise, and from multiple exposures, even if slightly different each time. The more opportunities for exposure to a task, the more quickly the improvement. Skills like playing a musical instrument, or participation in a sport or game, are obvious analogies for the benefits of repetition. Like those skills, knowledge work in the professional space benefits from repetition and frequent exposure. The challenge is in finding ways to design more than once, to apply an equation more than once, or even finding a reason to read the Standard or technical specification many times.

There is an enormous range of software available to help with your to-do list, to block distracting websites, to streamline email, to organise your files, documents, life. The hard thing to admit, though, is that technology systems are only one part to the puzzle. The puzzle includes people, process and tools. The tools – the technology system – is the shiny new option. But the process – the structure and principles behind the system – needs to be in place for the system to work. And the people, oh the people. That factor is probably the one with the most impact. That’s you, too.

Every decision has consequences. Hiring decisions, promotion decisions, decisions to award credentials: all have consequences. It’s easy to disassociate the decision with what happens after the decision’s made. Someone (else) will work with that new hire, and that new hire might be … different. Because, diversity. So, others face the consequences while the original decision maker does not. Same with awarding credentials, especially if judgement was required to award the credential, based on interviews or purported evidence. Not that this is inevitably problematic, it’s just that there are consequences. Celebrate the good ones and be prepared for the awkward ones.

The future belongs to those who invest in unique, deep and cognitive skills. Due to technical “advancements”, engineers and other credentialed workers now end up with administrative tasks filling the day.

Technical workers are expected to develop communication and business skills as a priority. There is a fundamental problem with the direction towards those non-technical skills: engineers should become engineers because their skills and personalities tend towards mathematical innovation and problem solving. Using an engineering undergraduate degree as a starting point for leadership is not wrong, but those who want to do technical work should be revered just as much.

In a professional services business, documentation is a key asset, and these are typically considered to be “deliverables”. Contracts, schedules, scopes of work, designs, drawings, technical specifications, even emails: these are all very important documents – or rather, deliverables - to be created, reviewed, approved, sent, stored, and archived.

Processes and procedures that do not, in the end, create deliverables, therefore, have lower value. Some processes and procedures are inputs to deliverables, and so they are important too. Check the purpose of the document being worked on: will someone else see it? Then it is a deliverable, and it is important.

The successful design of real things in the real world will always be based on a combination of art and science. The process of design includes unquantifiable judgements almost every step of the way. Experiences are a primary component of judgement, because that is the way to be exposed to mistakes, recognise where innovation can occur, and see the unforeseen. Experience by its nature requires a person to be immersed, to be in the thing being experienced, and for it to be personal to them. Judgement can’t be taught directly, since its application requires that that unforeseen be subsequently seen.

The statistical bell curve is taught in school. Statistically, a study of a population will yield a bell curve, or the ‘normal distribution’, where the most common answer or result clusters around the middle.

Given that phenomenon, it is puzzling that there is a relentless drive for perfection, for getting to the top, for being the best. The tragedy of the bell curve, though, is that most end up in the middle, no matter what effort is made. Most are not superior, nor better, nor more excellent. Statistically, we are probably just average, yet quite extraordinary while we’re at it.

What engineers do is hard to define. There are different types of engineers, such as under the traditional disciplines of civil or mechanical, and there are also new categories such as “technical specialists” and “managerial engineers”.

Along with the ambiguous functions of engineers, there is a gap in expectations between organisations and career progression. Some engineers expect to progress quickly to management; others with technical aptitudes may have no interest (or lack the skills) in managerial roles. The past decades have focussed on managerial skills for engineers. It should come as no surprise that technical training and experience have suffered.

A key task of managers is coaching and developing staff. A fundamental challenge in organisations is to release managers from an expectation of doing the work, going to meetings, and replying to emails, to allow them time to plan, organise and supervise the work instead.

Many managers are not comfortable dealing with others' career development, possibly because they don't have time: they are expected to be as productive as their workers.

Developing employees for future positions is an intangible and almost immeasurable task. Managers seem to be expected to address today's problems, rather than prepare employees for possible future positions.

There have been 60 “100 words a day” articles here so far. “100 words a day” appeals because it represents enough words to get a thought presented, but it’s not too many words to be daunting every day. Except for Saturday. There are no 100WADs on Saturdays around here.

The hard part can be finding new topics. The fun and challenging part happen after the writing of a couple of paragraphs. The next step is to go back to edit down, or up, to be exactly 100 words. It tests editing skills, to be only and specifically 100 words, each time.

“Document control” means different things to different people. Four activities in professional businesses can be labelled as “document control”; each is a unique problem needing bespoke solutions.

• Document transmittals: the inwards to, and outwards from, the business must be controlled, particularly in case of a dispute about which is the most recent.

• Versions of internal documents: while being developed internally, document versions need to be controlled.

• Storage of records: a finished document should be findable.

• Communications and newsletters: the content of these may need referencing, but often aren’t specifically controlled.

The best approach to control documents is by repeatable processes.

General management and business acumen training courses are widely available and offered in many different contexts. Technical training is more specialised, has a smaller audience, and is less profitable.

Management and business acumen courses do not train technical workers in the skills needed to interpret specifications, use judgement when technical information is incomplete, or application of a technical theory to arrive at practical solutions.

These judgement skills for technical topics are difficult to teach, especially to workers who are years into their career. Also, it is difficult to measure the knowledge achieved in the classroom. Experience is a better teacher.

Routine, repetitive, systemised work in the future will be replaced by some form of ‘robot’, or artificial intelligence. The workers of the future will thrive on the non-routine work, that which cannot be easily programmed. Our approach to education, training, development, and competency will turn towards targeting skills that non-routine work requires – skills that are deep and technical, as well as soft and social. Work that requires deep analytical thought combined with empathy and emotional intelligence is very difficult to automate. Creativity, teamwork, human interaction and shared experiences are a long way from going the way of the robots.

In organisations with knowledge workers, there can be tension amongst a worker’s position description, their role title, and what they actually spend their time on.

In an investigation into determining competence, it is observable how awkward it gets when the conversation turns to explore what a worker actually does during the day. It inevitably seems to boil down to meetings and emails. Perhaps this is not the best use of a credentialed technical worker’s time. Unless, of course, those emails discuss complex technical issues, and those meetings solve deep and complicated design problems. Then that time spent is very useful.

There is a continuum for what we manage, between time and mind/energy, and another continuum for focus, between outcomes and procedures. As a 4x4 grid, the vertical access runs from outcomes at the bottom to procedures at the top. The horizontal axis covers time on the left, and mind/energy on the right.

The four quadrants of behaviour are: transactional (time + outcomes), entrepreneurial (outcomes + mind), functional (time + procedures) and inspirational (mind + procedures).

In this model, we can see that time is – or should be - spent in each quadrant at different times depending on mood or circumstances.

Experience underpins credibility. Of all the inputs into competence, or credibility, such as knowledge, skills, attitude, personality, or experience – experience is the one that is hardest to fake. It is also the one that relies on other humans for verification. It’s like if a tree falls in the forest, and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? If you gain experience, but no one knows about it, does it matter?

Every test of someone’s competence includes input of experience. It’s a rare interview that does not delve into someone’s past in order to verify abilities.

Looking for, or wanting to be, an expert in a topic takes a different effort than looking for, or wanting to be, someone who is able to do a broad range of work in a field.

As careers are developing, it’s wise to pursue broad ranges of experiences, do wide ranging training courses, and read a wide range of publications. There comes a time, though, when breadth or depth of knowledge should be considered. Sometimes those decisions are more obvious than it may seem. Natural tendencies to depth or breadth are a good indication of where future success will be.

Participating in conversations that are built around the “when-we’s” is informative but not always helpful.

“When we did this before….”,

“When I was in a role like that…”,

The way things are done in a business or an industry change and improve over time, rightly or wrongly, for the better and not always for the better. But they do progress. Don’t make that wrong. It just is.

Lamenting on the past may feel good, but it does not make the younger people who are part of the conversation feel like they are contributing or improving.

Be aware of the ‘whenwes’.

Many technical solutions are guided or directed by national technical standards. There are two types of approaches to standardisation: prescriptive or performance-based. Prescriptive standards give specific direction as to how a technical solution must be arrived at, like a cookbook recipe. There is very little room for innovation. The other type is performance-based, where requirements are stated for outcomes or results, without specifying how the user should arrive there. This approach relies heavily on the competence and sound judgement of the user. Controversially, it’s possible that the next generation doesn’t have the technical background to appropriately apply performance-based standards.

Engineering work is not management work. Managerial work emphasises organisational goals, resolving conflicts, planning and control. Engineering work is the application of theories, problem-solving and technically creative thought.

Upon graduation, engineers now expect to be provided with exciting, fulfilling and satisfying roles immediately. Before this ‘instant gratification’, there was an expectation that an engineer’s first few years would be spent on the drawing board.

What has been lost in all the enthusiasm for immediately fulfilling roles, is that in doing the menial work (before technology took that over), much knowledge and understanding accumulated. That ‘menial’ work built real-world foundational knowledge.