Crazy? You Bet I Am!

I started working in aerospace purely by chance. I am not an aerospace "legacy" living up to the family tradition. I was never overly excited about planes, satellites, or defense. I was simply a college graduate with student loans, no health insurance, and a strong desire to not be in school anymore. An opportunity presented itself for which I was qualified, the benefits were good, the location was perfect, and I took it. It just happened to be in aerospace.

I started work on March 5, 2004 with the excitement of the unknown and the thrill of a real paycheck. After a few weeks of experiencing big corporate aerospace life, I looked around at some of those "legacies" and swore that I wouldn't stay longer than five years. People laughed at me. I shrugged off their scoffs and renewed my pledge, vowing in the meantime to take advantage of that paycheck and all the other benefits the company had to offer.

After six short years of engineering school, I made no secret of the fact that I had absolutely no intentions of pursuing any kind of advanced degree. Student loans, student housing, arrogant professors--I was one college student who was none too eager to move on to the next stage of life. As I settled into big aerospace, however, I discovered one of those company benefits included fully subsidized continuing education. I was already prepared to put in five years, so it seemed like a waste not to pursue such an opportunity. I started a file folder labeled "Grad School" and began collecting information about schools, application requirements, and the GMAT.

On March 5, 2009, I received a certificate from my employer. It reads, "in appreciation of 5 years of valued service". Crap. Not only did I not have a Master's degree back in March, I wasn't even enrolled in school. I started to think about the past five years. They were hardly wasted, I invested big parts of my life in some big experiences that one could argue were at least comparable to graduate school, if not more valuable. I used each experience to grow but I also used each experience as an excuse to put that grad school folder back in the filing cabinet. Lingering in the back of my mind was the knowledge that I had this opportunity--an opportunity that few people have--that I had not taken advantage of. Staring at that certificate, I did not want to find myself five years later having the same conversation with myself. I dusted off that grad school folder and started studying for the GMAT.

Ironically, it was just a few weeks later that I found out about Alyssa. This was just the sort of detour that was going to have me staring at a "10 years of valued service" certificate, shaking my head and muttering "I could be a doctor by now". Jen and I discussed whether this was the best time for me to be going back to school. I would be working full time with two children under two at home. This was the best time for me to be going anywhere. I took out the file folder, sent in my application, and in December I received official word that I was accepted into the Management of Technology program at the University of Texas, San Antonio.

Why Management of Technology? Well, I think I did a good job of answering that question in my admissions essay, which you are welcome to read.

My Graduate School Admissions Essay

My father is a professional musician. To this day, one of my favorite things to do is watch him play. I don't know how many of his gigs I've been to over the years, but it's easily in the hundreds. As much as I love the experience of live music performances, I am drawn to identify myself less as a member of the audience, and more with the creators of the music. True musicians can meet each other for the first time on a stage and make music like they've been playing together for years. The pure innovation and creativity that goes into a live performance is energizing, and I've always thought it would be a thrill to be able to pick up an instrument and just start jamming. I never learned to play a musical instrument, but I did inherit a passion for the creativity and innovation I see on stage.

I love technology, I always have. As a kid I was a tinkerer, a passion I inherited from my grandfather. He is a product of the Great Depression and a father of six, so tinkering was his way of giving things a second life and figuring out what made them tick at the same time. I used the same approach with my first computer and it became my muscle car. I bought it in high school and, before long, nearly every component inside had been removed, upgraded, or replaced. Our family was always on a tight budget, so I had to manage my upgrades carefully with money I earned from providing rudimentary computer services to neighbors and family members. My passion for tinkering and technology was clear, but it would be six years of college, a change of major, two internships and a lot of part time jobs before I would match that passion to the right instrument: Industrial Engineering.

Ironically, it was the mastery of another instrument that would ultimately lead me to Industrial Engineering. In 1999 I interned with a biomedical company performing "Y2K" testing in hospitals nationwide. The opportunity to travel the country was so exciting for me that I decided to write about it and share the experience with family and friends via email while "on the road". I discovered a talent for telling stories in a way that kept readers engaged and entertained. The following year, I orchestrated the "Year 2000 Road Trip Extravaganza", a 6,000 mile cross-country road trip that took me and a college buddy through 25 states in 24 days. Our goal was to hit the road with all the mobile technology we could get our hands on and document the experience "from the road" using that technology. The trip provided me a perfect stage to share my passions and connect with people. For an Industrial Engineer, being able to connect with people is like a musician knowing how to read music.

My professional work as an Industrial Engineer has been mostly with The Boeing Company and predominantly dealt with the maintenance, modification, and upgrade of military aircraft. In my nearly six years with the company, I have traveled to numerous sites domestically and abroad, in each place gaining perspective on how people work while supporting their journey to improve processes through "lean" manufacturing. The specific programs and geographic locations change, but my fundamental job remains the same: work with people and their processes to systematically reduce waste.

Lately I’ve been giving a lot of thought to technology and innovation. While many of the end products & services produced by The Boeing Company are truly on the cutting edge of science, technology, and industry, much of the technology involved in creating and supporting those products and services is not. When it comes to placing new technology in the hands of employees, large organizations--especially those dealing with sensitive information--tend to be sluggish to respond and overly protective. I believe that technology should be treated as a tool, not a threat. I believe it is an investment in a means to an end, not just another overhead cost. I believe there is tremendous opportunity for companies of all sizes to manage technology more effectively.

Once again I find myself in the audience. I know my passions and I want to jump on stage, grab the right instrument, and start to play. The Management of Technology degree seems to me the next “right instrument”. Learning how to stimulate technological innovation and creativity in an organization will transform me from the guy in the audience tapping his leg to the guy that can jump on stage and jam with the band. After years of sitting in the audience, I am ready to jam.

Who's Talkin' 'Bout My Generation

A few months ago I wrote about an industry conference I attended in Anaheim, California. One of the presentations was given by Dr. Marlene Law Graham, a senior manager at The Boeing Company in Long Beach, California. Dr. Graham's presentation, “Leveraging the Power of Cross-Generational Teams”, focused on four commonly accepted workplace generations, how their respective views toward “work” differ, and how to effectively deal with those differences to resolve conflict. Allow me to grossly oversimplify Dr. Graham’s presentation.

Traditionalists and baby boomers (born roughly between 1925 and 1960) tend to view work as an end in and of itself. They equate productivity with attendance and long hours and believe in “paying your dues”. Generation X and the so-called millennial generation (roughly born between 1961 and 2000) tend to equate productivity with results. They view work as merely a means to an end and are interested in getting the job done so they can move on with the rest of life. Obviously the divisions are not hard and fast, but when the two older and two younger generational definitions are paired, as I've done here, I think the demarcation is very evident. To illustrate, let's consider two companies as if they were generational members. I'll pick the companies.

The Boeing Company was born in 1916. It has survived the Great Depression, two world wars, the Civil Rights Movement, and 9/11. To say the company is seasoned is a dramatic understatement. Its generational attitude is certainly traditionalist; conformity to the rules and long hours are accepted as the norm. The value of something as benign as text messaging might be questioned in this environment (and a colleague recently wrote about how it was).

By contrast, Google was born in 1998, unquestionably making it a millennial child. As such the company’s culture tends to be more results-oriented. A visit to the Googleplex, Google's corporate headquarters, reveals a more relaxed, open attitude towards creativity and innovation. People bring their pets to work, ride Segway scooters up and down the halls, and use conference room projectors to watch the latest DVD movie releases. In a recent interview with CNET, Google CEO Eric Schmidt responded to a question about new technologies the company is developing by expressing their attitude as follows:

“Let’s not pre-judge what these things are best used for. Let’s build great technology…and our end users will ultimately judge”.

This sentiment is echoed in Google’s policy of 20% time, where engineers can spend one day a week working on a project of their choosing. It doesn’t matter if it looks like work or not, Google’s focus is on the result, and as long as the results keep coming, the process is largely left up to the employee.

Late in 2006, Businessweek ran a story about the aggressive transformation of Best Buy’s corporate headquarters to a Results Oriented Work Eenvironment (ROWE). The concept is that “people are free to work wherever they want, whenever they want, as long as they get their work done.” Three years later, Cali and Jody, the program’s founders, have spun ROWE off into its own subsidiary, bringing the philosophy to the world via their book, private consulting, and a blog. Recently they wrote about a company considering the addition of instant messaging because their younger generation workers are accustomed to it.

“What started out as a tool used by younger workers is being adopted by older workers. That’s what we like to hear: using technology to change the culture of a workplace so that people can have more power and freedom to do their jobs when and where they want.”

Changing the culture of a workplace is where many companies fall short—especially those of the “traditionalist” variety. Companies like the one Cali and Jody wrote about might think they can step into the digital age by simply adding a social networking tool to their workplace. But social networking tools cannot simply be deployed and expected to instantly integrate generational cultures within a company. I've written before about innovation, and the mistake companies often make by simply pulling innovative tools off the shelf without understanding or addressing the cultural and generational transformation necessary to achieve the desired results.

The more traditional generation tends to view technology as a threat rather than an opportunity. A change to how work is done is a change to how life is defined, and since work is not just a means to an end but more an end unto itself, this can be upsetting. Technology thus becomes an obstacle rather than a tool. But today's generation has figured out that just because you’re at work doesn’t mean you have to be working--and vice versa. They use technology to blur the traditional definition of "the office" and studies have shown they are typically more--not less--productive while doing it. It's somewhat of a paradox that the generation that values separation of work and play the most has most intertwined the two.

The ability to always be connected is not inherently good or bad, it's how that connection is managed and balanced with the rest of life that matters. In Wealth of Networks, Yochai Benkler writes,

“The overarching point is that social production is reshaping the market conditions under which businesses operate. Consumers are changing into users…reshaping the relationships necessary for business success..."

Regardless of whatever title I may have (Industrial Engineer, Lean Practitioner, Father, Writer, etc.) I am a change agent, it's just what I do. As such I must not only be aware of generational differences and the new relationships of a technologically connected business world, I must embrace those differences and offer effective ways to unify the talents and strengths of each generation. Sometimes that might mean text messaging the boss from Starbucks while checking Facebook. What's wrong with that?