Engineering Management Under Pressure | 5 Strategies to Optimize Team Efficiency

If you're an engineering manager who is under a lot of pressure to produce, it's tempting to point fingers, but here's something you need to hear.

First we've all been there. Squeezed by deadlines, shrinking teams, ambitious roadmaps that seem to stretch further and further every day. When this becomes the norm, it's tempting to point fingers at your boss for not getting it, or the faceless suits up above that are demanding more with less resources. It's easy to get frustrated and point the finger at your customer and the evolving market. Customers just seem to want things faster and faster, beyond reason.

There's plenty of other places to point the finger to like that under-qualified colleague who just got promoted, who has no business being in that role. Or it's easy to get frustrated with things like the younger generation. They come off as being entitled and lazy and not showing up for work on time and not staying until the project's done.

My point is there's plenty of areas to get frustrated and point the finger, but here's the truth. Blaming only gets you stuck. So instead of stewing in that frustration, you want to channel that energy into proactive problem solving.

You're an engineer, not a complainer. This means you thrive on challenges, and this is just another one for you to solve. You need to approach this situation with the same analytical mindset, the creative ingenuity and the collaborative spirit that you bring to every technical problem and project that you work on.

5 Step Gameplan for Optimizing Team Productivity

I'm going to use the rest of this episode to give you the game plan and the tools that you need to navigate through this environment.

But first I want to quickly introduce myself. I'm Doug Howard. I'm a leadership coach and consultant for engineering and tech companies. I use this channel to help engineering leaders like you increase your impact at every level of your organization. The tools, the strategies and the insights I cover in each episode are all applicable from all leadership levels, from emerging leader to CEO.

So hit that subscribe button. So you don't miss out on any of these insights.

Reframe the Problem

Now, getting back to your game plan. The first step is you have to reframe the problem.

Instead of seeing this as a burden, you need to think of it as an opportunity for you to innovate. Think of it this way. How can you do more with less? Can you optimize any existing processes or automate any tasks or leverage new technologies?

Another thing to consider is, are there people that you're under utilizing. A lot of times there's a lot of wasted resources within your team because you're not utilizing the unique strengths of each person on your team. I will come back to that.

The Need for Effective Communication

Step two in this framework is you gotta make sure you're communicating effectively.

Don't let that frustration fester. Instead you have to proactively engage with your boss and upper management. You need to explain the challenges that you're facing and you also need to propose potential solutions. But you need to propose them in a way that's going to resonate with them.

You can't go in there angry and upset and sounding like the sky is falling. You have to go in there calm, cool, and collected and show that you're a strategic thinker. You've got to gain their buy-in on these ideas.

Remember, it might feel like they're against you, but they're actually on your side. They all want what's best for the company. They just don't have the same level of perspective as you, because there are a couple layers above and you're working closer to the ground level.

Measure and Iterate

Step three in this framework is measure and iterate.

So don't just throw solutions at the wall and hope something works. A lot of companies make this mistake of just throwing money at the problem by mass hiring or mass outsourcing. Then this buries them deeper in the hole because they weren't prepared to go all in on those plans and strategies. Or they weren't prepared to do the time it takes to reiterate and test and see what's working and revise and adapt along the way.

What you need to do is you need to track your progress when you're trying something out. You need to measure the impact of the changes that you're implementing and then be prepared to adapt as needed.

Remember the key to growth and the key to problem solving is there's an exploration time. Then you got to review to figure out what's working and then you need to exploit whatever it is that's working. If it's one part of that plan, zero in on that, and double down on that one thing. Don't just throw everything at the wall and then throw the baby out with the bath water, because one of the things didn't work or didn't go according to plan, look for the areas that did work and try to build on that.

Again, this is an iterative process. You're an engineer. You know how this works, you know what to look for patterns, diagnose the root cause, solve the problem. It all boils back to reframing the situation of. How do I accomplish more with less resources? How do I do that? You know, it's reframing this as a problem, an engineering problem for you to solve.

You want to embrace the learning curve here. Embrace the iterative process. Try to look for some fun in it to. Create some curiosity. How can I solve this? Make it a fun game, a fun challenge for you.

Get Resourceful and Break Down Silos

Step four in this framework is get resourceful.

Don't be afraid to think outside the box. You need to break down silos. You need to tap into your team's diverse skill sets. Get people working together and sharing ideas more. You need collaboration across multiple departments.

A quick sidebar on this. One of my clients that I was working with in a one-on-one capacity, he's an engineering manager. The thing that was burning his team up, they were very understaffed that he was not getting approval to add any more headcount. They're just buried in work, working 60 hour weeks. The thing that was eating up most of his time was not the actual production work. It was the busy work that was created from the other teams in his company.

Sales was selling projects that they shouldn't have been taking. They were there projects that his engineering team was not qualified to do. They shouldn't have been taking these products as a business. So it was burning more resources on his team, per pound of product going through his team, to get these things done. They're all doing something for the first time. They're having to do research on these new materials that they're working with. That was because of sales.

Then on the other hand, he had some cross-functional engineering teams that were basically throwing incomplete handoffs at his team. They were throwing projects that didn't have all the information it needed for it to be ready for his team to accept and receive the work.

The way he described it to me was a lot of his team was spending time just doing detective work. Gathering the information they needed and pushing back on other departments to get what they needed from them to do their job.

What we did when working together was we found a way for him to actually motivate the other departments, to give him what he needed. He created incentive for them to deliver complete handoffs to them. He actually motivated the sales team to not sell projects that they weren't capable of handling.

That's a whole longer story, but, but just the idea is don't rule out collaborating with other departments. You want to build those relationships with those cross functional leaders and figure out how you can work together to solve each other's problems because, believe it or not, they're probably experiencing the exact same thing you are.

You can use that as a starting point to work together. Hey, you know, I'm struggling with these things. What are the things you're struggling with? How can we work together? How can we support each other? How can we leverage each other's resources.

Again, think outside the box. As engineers, we tend to think very rigidly. Okay I need to do more, to produce more. But when you collaborate with cross-functional teams, you'll find that the solutions actually require a lot less time, energy, and resources than you might think when you just get other people working together on the same page.

This is what I mean by breaking down those silos. Sometimes the best solutions come from the most unexpected places.

Utilize Proven Leadership Strategies for optimizing Productivity

Step five, now this is the key that ties it all together. You need to utilize proven strategies.

So let's take a step back for a moment and acknowledge the fact that over the last few years alone, we've seen some huge paradigm shifts that have ushered in a whole new wave of challenges for engineering leaders to navigate through.

The first big shift has been related to sourcing people. What I mean by people is talented roles. Some companies they're struggling to find qualified professionals that are just capable of performing the job. They might end up hiring under-qualified people, people without the relevant experience or they're taking entry-level people for medium level jobs, cause that's all they can find. People that are just directly out of college and looking for their first job.

On the other hand, some companies are facing economic uncertainty in their industry and they're implementing hiring freezes and they're pulling back on resources just to create some stability and control right now.

Now, I'm going to bet that you and your company are experiencing at least one of those two situations right now. But in either case, the result is the exact same. Engineering managers and their teams are getting squeezed to produce more with limited people and limited resources. In many cases, you, as the manager, you're not equipped with the tools and the training that you need to manage through this environment.

All of this increased pressure is taking an overwhelming toll on you as the leader, and it's taking an overwhelming toll on your business and your team. You're seeing it through burnout, turnover and quiet, quitting.

In addition to all of this. We also have four generations making up a sizeable percentage of the workforce for the first time in history. That's Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. Each of these generations have their own unique communication preferences, core values, working styles, and expectations in their job and from the company. They have their different comfort levels with technologies, tools, and systems. It's a diverse complexity that we're not used to seeing in the workplace and it's happened overnight.

Managing diverse teams like this to work together, to operate cohesively and to pull in the same direction is not automatic. Especially with remote and hybrid teams. Amidst all these challenges, your company is asking you and your team to produce more with less.

If you're an engineering manager or a tech leader, who's struggling to navigate through these challenges, it's going to take a lot longer without a roadmap that you feel confident in. A roadmap that you know is going to get you results.

So if you can relate to what I'm talking about, I want you to stop spinning your wheels and stop struggling to figure this out on your own, because you can download my free handbook, Optimize Engineering Team Efficiency.

You're going to learn the five essential strategies that you need to dominate productivity in today's shifting landscape. In an era where economic uncertainties and talent shortages have become the norm, you can use this handbook as your guide. It teaches you how to increase productivity individually and collectively throughout your team through lean budget, friendly strategies for optimizing your team's performance and you can put these strategies into action immediately. These don't take long implementation cycles. These are things you can do right away.

This handbook also covers how to reduce turnover and burnout on your team. Remember if you're either on a hiring freeze or if you're struggling to find talent, it means you need to optimize your current people. You need to invest in the people that you currently have, and you need to make sure they stay. You do this by cultivating a contagious leadership culture where your team is fully engaged, self motivated, working collaboratively, taking ownership and proactively seeking ways to improve team performance.

The other area that this handbook covers is how to future-proof your team. The market is changing. Technology's changing. Demands are changing. Adaptability is key. What you need for adaptability is you need to eliminate the bottlenecks and create more adaptability so that your team is capable of stepping into different roles to ensure that projects progress without disruptions in the absence of someone, or if someone leaves, or if there's a new demand in your team. You need people that are adaptable.

The last area that this book covers is it teaches you how to make a positive impact from every level in your company. What I mean by that is you're going to learn how to apply all five of these strategies from any level of your organization, whether you're an emerging leader, an experienced engineering manager. Maybe you're a senior leader, like a director or an executive or maybe you're an HR. You're going to learn how to implement these strategies from any level in your organization through real stories and practical examples, both from my career as an engineering manager and director, as well as stories and examples from my leadership consulting and training for engineering and tech companies.

Whether you're contending with hiring freezes, aggressive growth goals, burnout, or just the intricacies of managing diverse multi-generational teams, the strategies outlined here are tailored to empower you and your engineering team to increase productivity in the face of adversity.

I included the link to download this handbook in the description for this YouTube episode. Again, it's 100% free. I know exactly what you're going through. I've seen it all before I've been there and I want to help because I know how frustrating it is to figure these things out on your own when you don't have someone that you can go to for help.

Download your free copy of Optimize Engineering Team Efficiency handbook right now.

check out my FREE pdf download - “OPTIMIZE ENGINEERING
TEAM EFFICIENCY”

Strategies to Dominate Productivity in Today's Shifting Landscape

Your company is tasking your team to produce more, with less - and you're struggling to figure out how to get it done.

Download this FREE handbook to gain insights into the 5
essential strategies engineering leaders and companies need to catapult your team's efficiency - even with limited resources!