A Note on Values

 In my last post I made a comment about engineers '[placing] value in being technically competent'. In the interest of keeping these posts digestible I glossed over this idea to focus on my core point, but I wanted to take a moment now to expand on this idea of 'values'.

What are Values

There are probably entire bookshelves worth of writing on values; how to identify them, how to live them, and more. Rather than give a rigorous survey of all this material, I'll instead try to summarize how I like to think about values, both personally and organizationally. Given our topic, I'd like to draw my definition from a source that holds a lot of value to me personally:

"For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" - Matthew 6:21 (NIV)

 I think this does a great job at getting right to the core: wherever you spend your time and money, that is most likely what you value. You can devote hundreds of hours of time discussing, develop the most inspirational values statements, and market them to the ends of the earth, but when the chips are down and money (treasure) is on the table, the choices you make will show you what you truly value.

Now where things can get tricky is that some values will be more fundamental than others. I believe it is entirely possible to hold multiple conflicting values, although given enough contention of resources one will have to win out over the other. This can make it difficult to suss out what things are merely 'important' vs. what things are truly 'values'. I like the way the Agile Manifesto lays it out "That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more."

Something I also like to consider when identifying values is that they should not only be descriptive (tell us how things are), but also prescriptive (tell us how we will respond). This is especially important for organizations as it is easy to fall into the trap of vague, overly broad values statements that are never really applicable in day to day operations and offer no guardrails or guarantees about future behavior.

The last point on values I'll call out is that people and organizations grow and change, so it is very likely that their values will as well. I think it's important to acknowledge 'aspirational values' that help define where you want to be, even if you aren't there yet. It is equally important to periodically reassess values and determine which, if any, have fallen away under new circumstances. 

Why Should You Care 

 For many engineers it can be easy to brush off discussions around values, especially in the context of business. Most would agree it is not that values themselves are meaningless, it's that so often those values statements are at best vague and at worst completely misaligned. This disconnect between words and actions is what can turn off so many to what should be an important exercise. 

The problem is this, whether you want to acknowledge them or not, every single person and organization already has a core set of values. These values, spoken or unspoken, intentional or accidental, will underpin nearly every major decision and action.

So if you are finding yourself constantly battling headwinds at work, or never quite to the place you thought you would be in life, or just not having the impact you thought you would, then I would highly recommend taking some time looking for possible impedance mismatches between your values, your actions, and the values and actions of those around you. Being intentional about our values, and making sure our actions align with those values, is absolutely critical if we ever want to have any hope of getting to where we want to go. 

What Should You Do

There is a lot of great material already out there on how to go about defining and developing actually good values statements. I think the critical first step, the one that doesn't get talked about as much, or practiced nearly as often, is that of just being aware of the values around us. The challenge is that values by themselves are not something we can see, or touch, or hear; they only ever manifest externally through our choices and actions. To really be good at identifying values, we have to get good at being aware of these choices and from them, deducing what they say about the chooser's values. 

This, like most things in life, takes practice. I'm not saying you need to go run off this second and develop a personal values statement, or even try and convince your organization that they need to totally revamp theirs. But I would recommend the next time you find yourself making a hard choice, a large purchase, or add up where you spent most of your time throughout the week, think about what those choices may be saying about your values. 

Practicing this within organizations is even trickier. The lines from actions to values can be obscured by competing interests, legacy systems, and incomplete information on your part. I recommend starting by looking at an organization's budget as probably the most direct link to their values as it is the most concrete statement of where the leaders want to spend the limited amount of money they have. Some less concrete things you can observe in an organization include what actions get tolerated, how conflict tends to get resolved, and where leaders focus most of their time and energy.

By intentionally building this awareness, you'll gain a deeper perspective of how these underlying values drive the surface level behaviors we see every day. Understanding these values will better equip you to find solutions and paths that are more inherently viable. For personal values, this awareness can help drive more consistent behavior that is better aligned with what you really want. And as that awareness extends beyond just your own values, you'll start to see how previously confusing or frustrating behaviors caused by misalignment make sense in a way that they didn't before. 

A Well Rounded Engineer

It is that time of year once again where everyone's favorite question - "Do you have any New Years Resolutions?" - is being asked around the dinner table, at social gatherings, and even at the workplace. Whether you are someone who spends time developing a thorough list of goals and strategies, or have given up on the idea of resolutions altogether, I think the underlying question is probably still at the forefront of our minds - "How can I become more like the person I want to be?"

For many engineers, myself included, the answer to this question usually includes goals around improving our technical skills.  Usually this is because we place value in being technically competent and, maybe more importantly, we just enjoy doing technical things. But if your ultimate goal is to become a better engineer, to solve bigger problems, have a larger impact, ship things that matter, and grow in your career, then I would propose that it may not be your technical skills that are holding you back. Strong technical skills are the table stakes for being an engineer, but the truth is that the things we build don't exist in a vacuum. Most engineers plateau not because they hit their technical ceiling, but because the truly impactful problems that need solving are not purely technical. A truly effective engineer is one who is well rounded enough to be able to see, understand, and solve problems at the intersection of technical, social, and organizational systems.

 The path to becoming a more well rounded engineer will ultimately be unique to each individual, and not one that I would want to try and fit into a single blog post. I will, however, offer a framework that has worked well for me to help shape and prioritize how I approach this goal. The core belief that underpins this approach is that one must strive for a healthy mind, body, and soul (or psyche) and that a deficiency in any one impacts all the others. Applying this to our goal of being a more well rounded engineer, I try to focus on spending time doing things that present me with different viewpoints (mind),  challenge my physical limits (body), and push me out of my comfort zone by creating things outside of my domain (soul).

If this is resonating with you so far, then I would suggest starting by setting a reasonably short time frame, 2 to 4 weeks, and carving out some intentional time for the following:

 

Do something that makes you think

Reading, listening to music, watching movies; these are all things that don't have to be just mindless consumption of media. We have unprecedented access to so much good content that can present us with new ideas, challenge our existing assumptions, and force us to consider new or different viewpoints. 

Engineers often spend much of their day thinking, so it can be easy to default to thinking about technical topics, but I highly recommend picking something well outside of the technical domain. Business books can be a good starting point, but some of my most thought provoking and valuable insights have come from philosophy, politics, memoirs and other sources well outside the engineering domain.

Taking the time to really understand viewpoints well outside our own experience strengthens our frameworks for how we approach and interact with our social and political (i.e. human) systems and allows us to more effectively communicate and align interests across the organization.

 

 Do something that makes you move

There are so many physical and psychological benefits to maintaining even a moderate level of physical activity. This is one that many engineers will acknowledge theoretically, but either don't prioritize it, or have actively bought into the lie that real engineers aren't athletic. 

For the longest time I found myself in this camp, and I thought that because I wasn't good at sports and didn't have the motivation to lift weights or go running, that I just wasn't an active person. The key insight for me came when I realized that 1) physical activity is more about discipline (getting out even when you don't feel like it) than it is motivation, and 2) there are so many other kinds of activities outside of the traditional 'working out' and not all of them have to be competitive. Once I found a set of activities that I truly enjoyed (hiking, mountain biking, skiing) I all of the sudden found I was making more and more time to go do those things. If all this still sounds like a far reach, don't be afraid to start small by just taking a walk on your lunch break.

The more time I spend being active, the more I realize it is just as much a mental game as it is physical. The ability to push ourselves, find our limits, and prove to ourselves that we can do hard things is something that will carry over to your professional life. Those impactful and big engineering challenges will rarely be ones that can be solved quickly and easily and staying active gives us the discipline, energy, stamina, mental clarity, and resilience to tackle those problems with confidence.

 

Do something that makes you create 

 I've met many engineers who are wonderful artists and musicians, so for them this advice probably comes very naturally. But if you are one who has so far focused mostly on technical products,  I can't recommend highly enough the benefits of creating something outside of the technical domain. 

The act of creating is woven deep into our being, but in our highly connected age it can be difficult to just enjoy the act of creation without worrying about how it compares to everyone else, or how it could be marketable as a side hustle. It can be hard to put yourself out there and expose yourself to criticism, especially when it involves doing something new. The thing is, so often I've found that the most criticism comes from myself. By forcing myself to quiet that inner critic and get past my fear of failure, I find that I end up exercising a creative muscle that directly benefits my general problem solving skills.

 

Rinse and Repeat

I can't promise that if you do these things you will all of the sudden find yourself getting that next job or promotion. But if over the next couple of weeks you do it, and then do it again, and again, eventually you will find some probably quite unexpected things that you truly enjoy doing. Having invested in broadening your horizons and skills you will be better equipped to navigate both the technical and the non technical systems that comprise so many of the more interesting problem sets. And maybe some day down the road you'll be presented with one of those problems (opportunities) that connects a diverse set of domains that you are uniquely equipped to provide insight into and solve. 

That is what I think makes for a great engineer.