Converting engineers into managers: a systemSir Austin Pearce, CBE, Ph.D.,

Indexing term: Engineering administration and management

Abstract: Management development must be a long term programme. By careful assessment of people andtheir skill it is possible to determine a potential level to which an individual might be expected to rise. Theneeds of the potential job and the individual's skills and performance are compared and it is decided what jobhe needs to do in order to acquire the experience and managerial skill that he is lacking. Such a programmemust be monitored regularly and remedial action taken if it is seen to be slipping. In-house training andexternal causes may provide valuable back up to the development programme.

1 Introduction

When I was asked to write this paper it was with particularreference to my position as Chairman of British Aerospace.As my tenure of that office could be measured in daysrather than weeks this appeared to be somewhat difficult.Fortunately during my career with Esso I have spent manyyears working on the problems of changing individuals fromtechnical specialists to managerial specialists and perhapswhat I have learned in my Esso career will in due coursebenefit British Aerospace which has many highly specialisedand highly competent technical people who could beinterested in a future as a manager.

Purely by coincidence I was recently asked by one of theBritish Aerospace employees why it was that Britishcompanies seemed unable to produce chief executives whowere both technically qualified and had grown up in theorganisation.

The question was, of course, a generalisation and thefacts show that there are plenty of examples to prove thatthe conclusions are not correct, but some of the recentdiscussions about Finniston show there are problems, andso the question is what can be done to convert more firstclass engineers into first class managers.

2 The conversion of engineers into managers

2.1 Why?

Some will no doubt question whether it is either desirableor necessary to convert engineers or technicians intomanagers, why not leave them in their chosen specialtiesand become progressively more expert? This is one solution,but I believe that as industry becomes more complex andthe technical content increases then those who run theindustries must be capable of assessing both the develop-ments and the advice they are being given, and by askingthe right questions getting the best answers, and suchactivities will require some technical knowledge.

I personally am convinced that we do need moretechnically qualified people in high positions in industryand they must be of high calibre in order to hold their ownwith their financial counterparts and government officialswho themselves are highly competent.

2.2 How?

Having decided that we are going to change some of ourtechnicians into managers the next stage is how do we start,and then progress into when and whom.

Paper 1079A, received 25th June 1980Sir Austin Pearce is Chairman of British Aerospace, BrooklandsRoad, Weybridge, Surrey KT1 3OS, England

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My first step is to start by looking at the organisationand determining those positions into which we want to gettechnically trained people. This by definition almostrequires a degree of formalisation of the organisation chart.It does not have to be a rigid formalisation of the situationbecause as I hope to show later we are dealing with a longtime span programme and circumstances will change, butwithout some form of objective and discipline things willnot happen, the programme will slide and in the end thewhole programme will fall into disrepute.

Let me assume that the organisation is going to looksomething like Fig. 1 then it is fairly clear that there are atleast five out of the six positions to which technicalpersonnel could aspire.

Chief executive

Technical Production Finance PlanningResearch

Fig. 1 Organisation chart

Personnel

As an ultimate goal I would not eliminate even thefinance position, but that will not happen unless theprogramme for the other positions has been successful.

2.3 Whom?

Having determined the possible positions, the next stage isto decide the desirable inventory of skills for anyone fillingthe position. Some people tend to fill this requirement bywriting a job description and this can be a good startprovided it allows the definition of the skills needed.

For example, it is easy to write a job description for atechnical manager in which there is no direct reference tothe ability to manage a group of people, many of whom areprima donnas who feel the organisation revolves aboutthem. The ability to get the best out of such people isclearly a very necessary and important attribute, and insome cases could be more important than technicalknowledge.

Similarly it is very important I believe for the Personnelgroup to be sensitive to the financial implications of someof the things they propose. It is very easy and very pleasingto submit plans for improved benefits, training programmesetc., but they are expensive and any management groupmust weigh up the economic pluses and minuses beforemaking a conclusion, and so the personnel people hadbetter know and, in particular, understand the figures.

These are two quite simple and obvious examples butthey demonstrate the sort of factors which job descriptionsoften omit, whereas a skills inventory should not and weare after all trying to produce the desired skills inventory.

Having determined the first set of objectives at the top

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level this whole process needs to be developed downthrough the organisation because the raw material for thedevelopment programme starts at the bottom with the rawrecruit and should progress with him throughout his career.Naturally this ideal state of affairs cannot be achievedovernight and the tendency is to start at the top and workdown. The reasons are eminently practical, there are fewerjobs at the top and fewer contenders and so the programmeis manageable, but for success I believe it must evolve andprove progressively down the organisation.

3 Assessment of individuals

Once the skills inventory for the job has been determinedthen we move to the next stage of matching people to theskills. This is where the problems start to become moredifficult because now we are dealing with a more subjectiveprocess which is less amenable to quantification, we arenow in the realms of human relationships. We are nowstarting to identify strengths and weaknesses from whichthe objective should be to capitalise on the strengths andfind ways to minimise the influence of the weaknesses. Thisis the stage at which many development programmes falldown because it is very easy to concentrate on the weak-nesses and see them as an excuse for not going further. ThisI classify as the negative approach as opposed to thepositive approach which says here is an individual withthese strengths how can we make him or her better.

There are some techniques which help reduce thedangers and one golden rule is never to rely on the assess-ment of one individual, that individual may have had anexcellent record of developing people but all of us arehuman and we have our biases, one of which is a tendencyto develop people in our own image and in a changingworld this may not be the right answer. So it is desirable tohave at least two viewpoints on an individual and if possiblemore, but at least two are essential.

A forced ranking system of a number of individuals by agroup of their superiors is also a helpful technique, but itshould not be used in isolation because it sometimes tendsto discriminate in a more extreme fashion between the topand bottom names on the list.

One important discipline in the assessment of individualsis to force the assessor to answer certain key questionsabout the individual and to record the answers. This requiresforms to be prepared and to be filled up, and that meansmore paper to be added to the already excessive pile theexecutive is trying to handle, but dealing with people andtheir futures is very important and it must be a disciplinedapproach, and because a development plan takes manyyears it is important to have records going back in timewhich can be checked and also used as the foundation onwhich to build the future.

4 Management development

In my view management development is not somethingwhich is done on a once off per year basis it is almost a wayof life and a disciplined way of life extending over yearsand which is a key element in determining the future.

We have now got our inventory of skills required for thejobs and an inventory of skills available in our people, sowhere do we go from here. Before answering that questionthere are a couple of points which I believe should be madehere and they are based on my own experience.

The first is that there is a tendency to make development

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programmes too short. Quite often development plans arelimited to no more than three years ahead on the basis thatwithin that time span things will have changed. Some thingswill have changed, but if the programme is reviewed on aregular, say annual basis, then the updating will take care ofthe changes. Frequency of moves also affects this time spanand whereas a three year programme may be adequate forpeople just starting at the lower levels of the companywhere there are more jobs and so a greater frequency ofchange, this is not true at the higher levels and to me theoptimum development plan will vary from about five yearsat the lower levels to probably ten years at the higher level.

A basic question which helps determine this time span isthe one which says 'What next?' By this I mean thatwhenever an individual is moved into a new job as part of adevelopment programme then at some time the managementmust be thinking of where it leads. It might be that thisparticular job is the ultimate for the individual concerned,and if so, that needs to be recognised, but if the individualis to move on, then it is necessary to have a good idea ofwhat that next move is likely to be. The answer may changefor a variety of reasons with time, but it is important, Ibelieve, to plan two stages at a time and not just one.

From this concept I derive my next point which is thatthere must desirably be more than one candidate for anyjob, in other words, have your eggs in different baskets.Personally I like to have three candidates for any one jobbecause people do leave the company, people do haveaccidents or illnesses, or family problems which restricttheir capabilities, and people do reach the limits of theirabilities and so plateau out in the organisation. There isnothing wrong or bad about this last factor, it is just whathappens and any system which has been developed mustcater for it. Add them together and the answer is to havesome alternative choices so that the system is prepared formany eventualities. It may sound a trite remark, but I knowof no system or individual dealing with people which is100% accurate and so a safety facility is needed.

With these concepts in mind I start with my inventory ofpeople and their skills and some background of their perfor-mance, and with my descriptions for various jobs I nowdetermine a potential level to which the individual might beexpected to rise and this potential level is checked with atleast one and preferably more of my colleagues who knowboth the individual and the jobs. From this potential jobdetermination, the needs of the job and the individual'sperformance and skills we can determine those skills whichneed strengthening and the experience and managerial skillswhich the individual needs to acquire. Now we know whatneeds to be done and we can then determine which jobs theindividual needs to do, in what sequence and for how long.This programme is then adjusted to take account of boththe opportunities and also when the final job position needsto be filled. Expressed in another way, we do a form ofcritical path planning of an individual's career.

This may sound highly mechanistic and to some extentinhuman, but effective development of people needsdiscipline it it is to succeed in the time span available.

Having done all this planning and programming we,however, cannot then just sit back and relax becausemanagement development must be a live and ongoing thing,we are dealing with people, and people change. People failas well as succeed and, of course, circumstances change.

As a result, the programme has to be regularlymonitored, and I suggest this needs to be done at least oncea year and preferably twice. Then if the programme is

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slipping, we can take remedial action, or if things havechanged we can adapt to the new circumstances.

But in addition to needing to know how the programmeitself is going we also need to know how the individual isperforming and the individual also needs to know, so it isimportant that there is a regular reporting on the individual'sperformance, and a regular reviewing of performance withthe individual. It is often necessary to have a formalisedsystem of reporting, say, once a year just to make sure itgets done, and this can use some standardised appraisalform, but I believe the reviews with the individual must betailored to the individual and to the job. So sometimes thediscussion if formalised and sometimes quite informal, butone objective must be that the individual does know howhe is doing.

This latter requirement creates problems of its own. Ifthings are going well then everyone is happy, but what if anindividual is failing in the job; how do you tell him andwhat do you then do?

This is where many personnel development systems failbecause managers cannot or will not tackle the unpleasantjob of telling an individual that he is failing and why. Onereason for this reluctance to discuss failure is that the 'whatnext' question, if asked at all, has only been answered if theindividual succeeds, whereas the second 'what next',question which is what happens if there is failure, has neverbeen asked.

So there has to be a fall back position. Some take theview that it is the individual's fault if he fails, so find a wayof moving him out. Another view says that the managementwho decided where he should go are responsible and sothey should now find a job in which the individual'sdemonstrated skills can be used to the benefit of thecompany. My view tends towards the latter, but not in allcases. Sometimes it is kinder to an individual to encouragemovement into a field which is different from that in whichhe or she failed and where both they and others know they

have failed. There is no one single answer, but this problemhas to be faced because when dealing with human beingsthere will be some failures and these must be handled withgreat care and attention and consideration.

So here we have a system with certain guide lines and adiscipline of its own and it is a system which can be aDpliedequally well to arts graduates as to engineering graduates;the problem is the development of people.

Allied to this system of development programmes, thereis the right training programme also. This training may beeither in-house or through external courses and the mix willvary with the individual, the job programme and also thetime available. With in-house training once the key elementshave been decided it is desirable to expose the individual toother managers who have proved their abilities in certainfields of work so that the learning is by example as well asfrom experience. True the management job will changewith time but it is helpful to know what creates success.Outside courses can be very valuable in giving the individualthe opportunity to see his company in comparison withothers and for a time to take a dispassionate view of hiscompany while exposed to the views and ideas of others.Thus, a blend of inside and outside training is anothermechanism for converting engineers into broad basedmanagers.

In the final analysis, however, the success of any devel-opment programme depends on the willingness anddetermination of the management from the top down tomake sure it succeeds. The system must be made to work.This to me is the fundamental question which must berepeated almost ad nauseam in any organisation 'Will itwork?' and then 'How can we make it work better?'. Theseare the questions which any good engineer ought to beasking every day of his working life, and if he then appliessimilar disciplines to the human engineering of an organi-sation, I believe we will have few problems in convertingengineers into the best of management.

Sir Austin Pearce was born in 1921 atPlymouth. He was educated atDevonport High School for Boys, andBirmingham University. There hegraduated with a 1st Class HonoursDegree in oil engineering in 1942 andwas also awarded the university'sCadman Medal. He was awarded thedegree of Ph.D in Chemical Engineeringin 1945.

In 1945 Sir Austin joined the FawleyRefinery as a technical assistant. In 1956 he moved toLondon on appointment as General Manager (Refinery) forEsso Petroleum Co. and was appointed to the Board in

1963, Managing Director in 1968, and Chairman and ChiefExecutive in January 1972, from which position he retiredin March 1980.

His other Esso appointments included the Chairmanshipof the Irish Refinery Company, President of the EssoHolding Company (UK) Inc., Chairmanship of the EssoPension Trust Ltd and Board Membership of Esso EuropeInc.

Sir Austin was a Member of the Organising Committeefor British Aerospace from April 1976 to March 1977 andbecame a nonexecutive director of British Aerospace inMarch 1977. He was appointed Chairman of BritishAerospace in April 1980.

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