The Engineering & Leadership Blog
Articles, guides, and essays for engineering leaders and managers
The Engineering & Leadership Project regularly publishes blog posts, articles, and papers to help engineers become excellent engineering leaders.
We cover topics such as engineering project management, people management systems engineering, productivity, and more.
Scroll below to read our most recent work.
What you think you know about leadership is wrong
I recently gave a talk on leadership at a leadership conference for professionals in the Canadian nuclear industry. At the end of the talk, someone asked a simple, but interesting question: who is my favourite leader? After a few moments of thought, I told the crowd...
Savvy Leaders Give Credit
In the pursuit of success, it’s easy to want to puff yourself up in front of others. You want to show off your successes. You want to distance yourself from failure. You want to be viewed as someone who always does the right thing, and to have everything you touch...
When your vision goes impaired
[A note from Pat: Today's post is a guest post from my friend and mentor, Christian Knutson. Chris is an expert in both engineering and leadership, with decades of experience in the military and as an entrepreneur. He's the author of www.engineerleader.com, an...
8 Things Organizational Theorists Wish Engineers Knew
A few semesters back, I took a course in organizational theory as part of my MBA studies. It was incredible. Its amazing how much you can learn about the way the world around you works when you understand how groups of people work. One of the more interesting...
The only thing you need to do today
Go make some art. Do something bold, something important, something beyond what your job title says you should be doing. Something above your pay grade. Something more than what you boss expects of you. This is the only way to truly stand out in your career, and the...
Two “V” words to get awesome engineering designs
As engineers, we love to build things. Big things. Complicated things. New things. And, if we're honest, we're pretty good at it, aren't we? There's just one little problem - does anyone actually want what we've built? Maybe yes, maybe no. If yes, we're golden. If no,...
Taking the FE Exam? Here Are 5 Mistakes You NEED To Avoid
[Note from Pat: This is a guest post from a colleague of mine, Joel Erway. Joel is an expert in helping engineers pass their Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam, a must-do if you want to become a professional engineer in the United States.] I have dealt with many...
5 Things You Need to Do to Get a Management Position
[Note from Pat: Today's post is from Rebecca Martin on how to get a management position. She is the community outreach coordinator for the University of North Carolina’s MBA online program. Becca graduated from Loyola University in Maryland with a B.A. in Business...
The Most Important Thing in Any Engineering Project
In the world of engineering, most of us work in a "project environment". That is to say, most of our work consists of a series of distinct, unique endeavours to accomplish some specific goal. That could be to design a new product or service, for...
5 Reasons why Engineering Designs Fail
As much as I hate to admit it, engineers are fallible (Gasp!). I know, I know, we spent years in school learning second order derivatives, every function possible in Excel, and have the Greek alphabet memorized. But still, it happens from time to...