The Art of Engineering

Quoting for electronic design is quite an art. You never really know how long something will take or the difficulties that you will face along the way. Experience helps to give you some indication of the effort involved, but a new project is often outside of the experience that you have. A gut feel could lead you astray or to pin point accuracy. A framework for quoting certainly helps...

1. Always give a quote
   

   An offer is on the table ensures that you are in the running. Set a time frame for the quote and deliver on your commitment. This the first opportunity you have to demonstrate that you can deliver – make sure that you do. I recently quoted on a project and was shocked that at least three other companies had not bothered to deliver a quote.

2. Know your worth
   

   Understand your own value and how that contributes to the project. Undervaluing yourself leads to difficult financial situations and lack of motivation. Overvaluing results in a begrudging client who is unlikely to use you again. Clearly communicate the value that you add.

3. Quote on fair value, not customer worth
   

   Big customers may have more financial backing, but should not have to pay a premium for your services. You may want to under–quote a small customer to make sure that you secure the work. Everybody loses when a quote is not fairly valued. Under quoting undermines the project and compromises your ability to deliver a high quality end–product. Over quoting undermines your relationship with the client and damages future opportunities.

4. Know your strengths and weaknesses
   

   Understanding yourself will help you to leverage your strengths and compensate for your weaknesses. Quote around your strengths and approach the project in a way that gives you and your client an advantage over your competitors.

5. Take reasonable risks
   

   If we only quote for things that are comfortable we limit our ability to grow. Sometimes a project might seem too big, or require skills that we have not yet aquired. Push yourself enough that each project forces you to grow.

6. Only quote if you can deliver
   

   If you can't deliver or you are not the best option, then be open and clear about this. Your client will be happy to know that you did not mess them around. Doing work for work sake is a bad strategy.

7. Be remarkable
   

   Amplify your strengths and offer something remarkable. Remarkable could be the way you communicate with your client, the quality of your work, or the speed at which you are able to deliver it. It may even be the price (high can also be remarkable). Remarkable beats boring.

I would love you hear what your ideas and "rules" for quoting are – please leave a comment and let me know.

If you have an idea for a product, or a problem that can be solved electronically, then please contact me – I would love the opportunity to give you a quote.

What you do matters. What you do each day matters. The decisions that you make are important.

Sometimes we forget that our role, our decisions and our actions play an important part in the world around us. It is especially easy to forget when we are faced with overwhelming circumstances or events. Many people who care about the environment feel overwhelmed by the scale of the challenges we face. In that same way many businesses and households are reeling in the face of a global financial crisis.

It is so easy to go into a state of stasis – doing nothing, or just reacting to our immediate challenges. The worst thing to do is nothing. Reacting may mean reducing your budget and cutting out excess spending. It may be reducing your environmental impact by buying less stuff. The problem is that reacting is defensive, like pulling your hand away from a hot stove. If you are always defending you are never going anywhere and standing still is a bad idea in a rapidly changing world.

Responding is better, initiating is best. When we respond we take positive actions, actions which improve our lives rather than deprive them. Environmentalists often go wrong by focussing on what we need to take away rather than on how we can improve and benefit our lives right now, but we know from dieting that deprivation is a temporary solution which leads to overindulgence. Respond by adding positive actions.

When we initiate we go beyond ourselves. We push beyond our own personal boundaries and lead people to new places. Creating new innovative products or processes in a slow market is initiating. Starting a recycling programme within your community (your street or neighbourhood) is initiating. Everyone has the opportunity to be a leader, whether you are a young engineer trying to push new ideas into a big company, or a housewife who wants to create a better life for your family. You may lead just a few people, or many – what matters is that you take action. We need you to lead.

Taking action is difficult and requires consistency and effort, so I would like to leave you with this story about Jerry Seinfeld.

Jerry says that to be a better comic you have to create better jokes, and to create better jokes you have to write everyday. He puts a big calendar on a prominent wall and every day that he fulfills his task of writing a new joke he gets to put a big red cross on the calendar. After a few days of doing this consitently you will have a chain. Jerry says, "Your only job is to not break the chain. Don't break the chain."

Innovate, be consistent, keep taking action, what you do matters. We need you to lead.

Kudos to Seth Godin and his book Tribes which inspired this post. You can get a free audio version of Tribes. Read the book or listen to the audio version – it is a valuable investment of your time and effort.

I was pondering processes while making some tea today. Most of my process pondering these days is inspired by what Sig is doing.

I think our natural tendency is to work hard toward some perfect process. We try doing something in one way, find the flaws, adjust, grow, etc. Hopefully as things progress we have developed processes that work really well for us. But that is the key right there, they work well for us. The question we need to ask is whether they work well for anyone else.

Think about an employee trying to get a job done. What usually happens is that the boss (we) try to impose our process onto their actions. It is a kind of FIFO mentality (fit in or f-off). Our process might work brilliantly for us, but horribly for them.

Compare it to making a cup of tea (or coffee, or your beverage of choice) — every person has subtleties and nuances in the way they make their favourite drink. The end result is the same, a drink which you enjoy drinking, the process is different. Typically we are happy to allow people their own coffee/tea/beverage making process, why do we expect them to design/code/file/etc. according to ours? Do we allow freedom for variation in the process if the end result is the same?

It seems like a fixed process way of working is a relic of modernism. Allowing processes to vary provides flexibility to create efficiency (each person works differently, just like we each make tea differently). Also, we get to watch the process and see the benefits (and disadvantages) of how others do things. Again, adjust, grow, etc.

On the other hand we also want to avoid the confusion of a laissez–faire environment. There must be some form of regulation. Do not police process, regulate it. Ensure outcomes, monitor efficiency. Be open to new ideas. Adjust, grow etc.

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When I was preparing this post I sent it to a friend, Dave Alcock (founder of The Forum SA), who gave me some great feedback which I felt needed to be published as is:

"There are times when the concept needs to take a back seat. Particularly where team members interface — there need to be agreed conventions of handover and interaction at those interfaces IMHO.

"It also relies on there being adequate skill/experience/ability within the people you give this licence to. Some people simply need method otherwise there is no way they can achieve the objective.

"My personal take: Method can turn ordinary people into super-achievers and turn super-achievers into ordinary people."

Technorati tags : processes, business, systems

Would you take a job with these requirements?

"Up and coming seeks visionary leader to take team to new heights. Great pay and benefits, but you'll have to perform for our clients. Clients and upper management can be very demanding and you will be expected to perform under pressure. You'll be constantly evaluated on past, present and future performance (but mostly on present and future). You'll be expected to stand up to strong critics of the product and make sure that the team functions well at all times.

"Lasting changes will begin with you - starting immediately. If those changes and results are not immediately evident you'll have to answer to evaluation committees. You should be comfortable with your job being under constant threat. Client loss will be directly attributable to you."

You might see this job advertised in the following way,

"South African soccer team seeks new coach"

Soccer? Why am I talking about soccer in an engineering and business blog. Would you mind bearing with me while I look at some of the problems in our sports and the government before applying this to our businesses?

Let's start with sports - a firm favorite in South Africa. It seems like it takes only one loss (at any of our three major sports - soccer, rugby and cricket) and the first words out of everyone's mouths are, "The coach should be fired!" Let's look at this quickly.

Inevitably a new coach enters the system with their own vision of how players should be coached and how decisions should be made. They go about implementing there vision (or at least laying the foundation for it) and then slowly work towards that. First is the excitement of new prospects, then the hard work begins. For a while things start to get a bit messy as the new tactics and strategy are learnt and implemented. Hopefully after that messy time the effects of the work will start to show, all the elements of their strategy start to fit together - and then the team starts winning.

Where it all seems to go wrong is during that messy phase. Commentator, critics, fans and government all get in on the act of telling the coach to sort things out, or else (in the words of The Donald), "You're fired!" And invariably, before things get better, the coach is fired, a new one is hired and we're back at the beginning, but worse off.

Onto the government...

If a brick was laid every time I heard, "The committee for (prisons, health, police etc.) has come up with a plan to deal with the crisis of (escapees, HIV/AIDS, crime)," we would not have a housing crisis in South Africa. It seems like we're always coming up with plans to solve things, but the plan changes every week, and all the useful time is spent coming up with a new plan.

This messes everyone around.

So what is the problem? Could it possibly be that we in South Africa are chronically impatient? Why are we not willing to wait and allow change to take effect?

I would postulate that most people are risk and change averse, that is, they like stability. Each change, each new plan, creates instability, and this makes everyone unhappy. New training, and unhappy workers means lower productivity. Lower productivity equals fewer results, which again equals a committee to solve the crisis in (prisons, health, policing etc.).

This is what Jim Collins would call a Doom Loop - and that's bad (just in case the word Doom didn't give it away).

By now it should be clear how this could apply to your business. Are you chronically impatient when you try or implement something new? Do you expect to have results NOW?

I think there are three things that we need to be very careful about when trying new systems.

1. Are we able to measure the outcomes effectively?
2. Are we measuring the correct thing? (it might not be as obvious as it seems)
3. How long do we need to wait before we see real effects? (not just what we want to see)

This is all really about how we measure the effect of a system, and whether our measurements are reliable. So, I suppose the next question will be, "But how long is long enough?" Well, I don't know, and I'm not too sure that anyone will be able to tell you. Here are a couple of things to do to ease the waiting. (This list can also be applied to new products)

1. Watch it develop
   Try to allow the system to grow on its own and watch where and why this is happening - you'll learn a lot from the people who are using it. Try to release some control and you will probably get something better than you could have thought up on your own.
2. Get rid of inefficiencies
   Instead of reinventing the whole system to get rid of every inefficiency that you can imagine, just get rid of those that are easy to change. Again, watch the system - the people doing the work will quickly let you know what is wasting their time.
3. Create constant feedback
   Always listen to what people are saying - you'll learn more that way than watching your metrics.
4. Be flexible
   You (and I) are not infalable. Adapt and remember that it is outcomes that are important, not whether your ideas are being followed perfectly.