Chief engineers set your products apart by creating critical value targets
Source: The Role of a Chief Engineer in Vehicle Development: A Case Study of the 2019 Honda Passport by Lara Harrington
“The goal of the chief engineer is to deliver exactly what the customer values and nothing more or less. Offering features, styling, and performance characteristics that the customer does not value can be counterproductive—more is not always better, as customers ultimately pay for these extras. During development, it’s common for people to develop favorites and for functional divisions to propose their latest-trend technologies, which can quickly lead to a with too many features. Once these features and performance parameters make it into the package, they are difficult to walk back. By setting clear value targets and prioritizing, the CE can ensure the delivers optimized value.
During the early concept development for the [Honda Passport], one objective was to create a premium cargo-area experience … The team engaged in numerous roundtable discussions about options like fold-out tables, clam-shell folding rear doors, and gadget lighting, all of which came with premium price tags … My ergonomics and interiors team and I went back to the [gemba] and explored this topic more deeply … it became clear that our customers’ top priorities were interior volume and under-floor hidden storage. The gizmos and gadgets were just icing on the cake. This insight allowed me to set precise value targets for the rear cargo area, balancing cost, functionality, and usability … my ergonomics team suggested we set a target for a cargo area large enough to accommodate a German Shepherd-sized dog cage and long enough to sleep in the back. As a result, the Honda Passport features the largest interior volume among 5-passenger mid-sized SUVs and offers the most useful under-floor storage space in its segment …”
Chief engineers need to be supported
Source: Designing the Future by Jim Morgan and Jeff Liker
“The organizational focus needs to be on making the horizontal value streams—the product programs and therefore the CE—successful. This priority should be reflected in your operating system and your leadership behaviors across the organization:
- Allow CEs to focus on their products and do not overburden them with major people-development responsibilities … However, always solicit their input on the people that contribute to their program.
- Establish your most important team metrics based on product success.
- Build CE-centric tools and methods into your development process. (The concept paper, kickoff meetings, and CE reviews are examples.)
- Create CE-centric senior leader forums within your operating system to promote a product-first focus.
- Groom some of your best people for the CE role and provide appropriate recognition.”
It’s all about “responsibility without authority”
Source: Chief Engineer: The Ultimate Working Together Leadership Role by Jim Morgan
“Sure, the ability to communicate, technical acumen, understanding the customer, entrepreneurial risk-taking, and just plain grit are all important. But in the end, I believe that inspiring a technically diverse group of people to focus on a common goal and work together to create new value for their customer may be the ultimate test of an outstanding CE.
I say ‘inspire’ because the role typically has little direct authority over the people working on their program. And that’s just one reason why the job can be so tough. Individual people and individual functions naturally want to optimize locally—to focus on ‘their deliverables.’ Worse, many organizations reward local and individual performance, even at the expense of the company. The CE must overcome this powerful organizational inertia and get people to commit to the almost unnatural act of value stream optimization. In other words, get the entire organization—design, procurement, manufacturing, service, etc.—rowing in the same direction.”
“Responsibility without authority” requires soft skills
Source: The Remarkable Chief Engineer by John Shook
“One thing I thought I knew about Toyota’s product development was that chief engineers were kings … So, imagine my surprise the first time I heard a CE say, ‘I have no power.’ I heard it a second time and considered that it might actually be true—I was already familiar with how the ‘responsibility versus authority’ dynamic worked out in other parts of the company. But, at the same time, the CE was surely the most powerful person in the company. The third time I heard it was from a functional department manager who stated, ‘We can say ‘no’ to the chief engineer if we think he is heading in the wrong direction.’ This was fascinating—a real archetype of the dynamic of leading with no power …
The CE has no choice but to lead by the soft skills of true leadership. By soft skills, I am referring to the suite of skills written of in books about leadership or management books and taught in leadership training—characteristics such as ‘leading through influence’ or ‘servant leadership’ or ‘win-win negotiating.’ Choose your favorite. For the CE, those characteristics and skills are not optional. He is unable to simply pull rank, to put his foot down and demand that the functions do as he demands. Functional resources can and do tell him ‘no’ if and when they have a good reason. He can only lead by being knowledgeable, proposing good ideas, expertly negotiating multiple priorities and wishes, and being very strong. In short, he has to lead by exercising true leadership skills, not relying on the authority vested in him by virtue of his position on an organizational chart.”
Mental toughness is key
Source: The Making of Chief Engineer by Steve Shoemaker
“Few things in the engineering world are as challenging as dealing with a disappointed and angry customer or facing an assembly line shutdown because of parts you are responsible for. This is when mental toughness grows and refines. There is a vast difference between the problems I faced early in my career and the ones I encountered later. The difference wasn’t in the magnitude of the problems I faced but in how I learned to approach them. As a chief engineer, mental toughness is crucial because it gives your team and the entire organization confidence that the issue will be resolved. Like a ship in a storm, a passenger is comforted by the captain’s calmness and would be terrified if the captain screamed and shouted as if things were out of control.”
Chief Engineers welcome generative conflict and encourage curiosity
Source: Lean Product and Process Development, Second Edition by Al Ward and Durward Sobek II
“Always surface conflict. We asked one Toyota chief engineer, ‘What makes a great car?’ He answered, ‘Lots of conflict.’ Conflict often occurs when everyone is honestly representing their points of view. Absence of conflict usually means that someone is not speaking up, and therefore, some vital knowledge is being omitted. The trick is to create an environment in which conflict is expected and handled calmly, with curiosity instead of defensiveness. Curiosity leads to shared knowledge, which leads to creativity and agreement.”
You don’t have to be Toyota to build a chief engineer system that works
Source: Designing the Future by Jim Morgan and Jeff Liker
“Some [companies] realistically observe that they have not developed people who are capable of being successful in [the chief engineer] role … Some don’t believe that anyone called ‘engineer’ can possibly lead all aspects of a production program, and prefer technical leads who report to business-minded program managers. These are all legitimate concerns in organizations that have not developed the unique leaders who have the right blend of deep customer understanding, systems engineering capability, and business sense … Yet we have seen companies that did not start out with these special leaders persevere, and they worked both to develop qualified people for the position and to create an environment in which they can be successful. In each and every case, we witnessed step-function improvements over their previous development-by-committee approach. With the endless reviews, constant oversight, and focus on compromise, maybe nothing really stupid will happen without a CE–but neither is anything truly brilliant likely to occur.”
Introduction to Lean Process Development
Design better processes that deliver results—on time and at launch.
