You never asked.
That was the moral to the story about a group of well-meaning Italian missionaries who ventured to a small African village in the 1970s with the hope of providing more food.
When the missionaries arrived to spread their good will, not a crop was in sight. How could this be? The villagers had lived on this land for thousands of years. Instead of asking questions, the missionaries got right to planting. Soon after, some of the largest vegetables they had ever seen began to sprout.
But one night, while the village was asleep, all the crops vanished.
A herd of hippopotamus had come through the village and ate ’em all.
Flustered and in disbelief over this “unforeseen” circumstance, the missionaries asked the village leader why he never mentioned the hippopotamus. The village leader’s response was simple, “You never asked”.
What questions should you be asking your employees right now?
There are more good questions to ask than can be covered in one sitting. What matters is relative. But let’s assume you’re a business owner or department manager that doesn’t want to take a step backward in 2019.
With that assumption, there’s one question you must be asking your employees right now:
What is your biggest challenge in this business right now?
Simple question right? Well, business is simple.
Business people, if you don’t have your finger on the pulse of this answer at all times, you could wake up one morning dealing a hippopotamus sized “unforeseen” circumstance just like the well-meaning Italian missionaries.
I asked this question of project managers in the engineering business across the United States.
Their responses touched on a few different types of common problems. One problem in particular stood out more frequently than the rest:
Invoicing
“I’m still relatively new to the field so I may not be the best resource for this. But from what little I’ve done, I think that as a manager, the biggest issue I’ve had is invoicing/contractor disputes. I’ve noticed that on more than one occasion I’ve had to press a client to send me payment for a completed project, even if it’s been weeks after the invoice was sent. This has happened occasionally in Georgia but happens a lot in Puerto Rico.”
— Project Manager from Georgia (Professional Engineer with 5 years experience)
Staff Overload
“Hi Emmanuel. One of the main challenges I see in our industry is the coming of age of critical infrastructure such as water/wastewater treatment and transportation, combined with new challenges from climate adaptation and growing population increasing the demands on an aging system. This, in the context of limited tax revenue and funds means infrastructure project managers are facing stricter requirements that result in higher capital costs (say we now design things to be taller, thicker, etc to minimize the impacts of flooding, for example), with tighter budgets. For engineering consulting companies, this translates into the need for higher production efficiencies (i.e. need more projects to increase/maintain revenues), which results in overloading engineers across the spectrum of professional level of experience. Another factor contributing to work overload, is the shortage of experienced engineers and of young students pursuing this career… this drives up salaries which in turn makes project budgets tighter.”
–Project Manager from New Jersey (Professional Engineer with 15 years experience)
“As an employee (and a big reason why I decided to try to find work on my own), the big problem was uneven work loads. Some managers I’ve had in the past would not exactly delegate work appropriately at the beginning of a project, which led to work piling up, which then led to long nights and weekends in the office trying to finish the work. It wasn’t as bad when I was paid hourly, because I’d get overtime at a 1.5 rate. But I had a brief stint as a salaried employee, and there was no overtime pay there (but a lot of overtime work)”
— Project Manager from Georgia (Professional Engineer with 5 years experience)
Volatility
“Emmanuel, I would say the most difficult challenge is discontinuous change within the industry. Never before has the industry been so dynamic. From changes to personnel / staff, Clients are less loyal, industry standards are constantly being updated, BMPs are being updated and interpreted differently at faster rates. As a manager you have to keep up with the rapid changes on all fronts and this can make it hard to create momentum.”
— Project Manager from North Carolina (Engineer with 11 years experience)
Quality
“Time constraints and getting people, particularly younger staff, to focus carefully on quality of deliverables seem to be recurrent for me.”
— Project Manager from Ohio (Professional Engineer with 31 years experience)
“Yes to all 3! (Inexperienced Staff? Dealing with invoicing/contractor disputes? Irregular work load presses staff for time?)
We are dealing with the symptoms of a booming economy that has outran the typical growth/recession cycle by a mile. Although we are working with great clients on world class projects, we lack the time and resources to complete them in the way that built our reputation.
A key part of my role as a leader in my organization is to keep inspiring the next generation. We need to get them up to speed quickly, but cannot let them forget the foundation of our profession, solving our clients problems. Not causing more problems because we are too busy or we are working so fast that quality suffers.”
— Project Manager from California (Professional Engineer with 19 years experience)
Mentorship
“Without writing a complete book based on your inquiry, I would say the main obstacle in managers is inexperience. Most managers either come up from the technical side or are pushed into management shortly after getting their Professional Engineer’s license (4 years experience). Neither of these tracks are trained or mentored on how to manage projects, people or departments. The technical guys/gals can at least talk with clients, and people technically, but have trouble in getting too detailed, when all anyone wants is a brief overview. The less experienced guys have trouble all the way around.”
— Project Manager from Canada (Professional Engineer with 12 years experience)
“To answer your question, I believe the biggest thing plaguing the engineering industry right now is not simply a single item, task, or issue, but rather the fact that mentorship is all but non-existent in the fast-paced, profitable market we’re currently in.
I believe that, at the core, many of the problems or challenges that engineers deal with on a day to day basis are self inflicted because of their inability or desire to delegate. Young project managers are having a tough time delegating because they aren’t being mentored in project management AND they are being asked do perform all tasks (design, drafting, pm) on a project for the first 4-5 years of their career.. resulting in poor delegation (leadership) skills at a minimum OR burnout at the worst.
I could go on and on, but that’s my $0.02.”
— Project Manager from Texas (Professional Engineer with 8 years experience)
Experience Shortage
“inexperienced staff”
— Project Manager from Missouri (Professional Engineer with 39 years experience)
“Emmanuel, interesting question. I think often about the state of our industry and its trajectory. I’ve got many thoughts on this but if i had to distill it down to one or two succinct answers, I’d say the experience/competence of personnel, and the often cumbersome processes that many owners have put into place which impede progress and can have an adverse affect on quality.”
— Project Manager from Pennsylvania (Professional Engineer with 9 years experience)
“I can only speak for Fresno. The High Speed Rail, the largest infrastructure project in the country, has taken a ton of our local engineers and has made it extremely difficult to find anyone with 3-10yrs experience. They are paying national and international wages and we can’t compete. We are left with recent graduates we have to train, which takes time.”
— Project Manager from California (Professional Engineer with 18 years experience)
“Multiple challenges in the industry, but to me the biggest challenge is lack of mid-level, experienced staff. Nobody can find the 10 year professionals who blend experience with cost effectiveness.”
— Project Manager from North Carolina (Professional Engineer with 20 years experience)
“Emmanuel – The biggest challenge we face is finding qualified staff members in the mid-level experience range. Younger staff that are inexperienced are asked to fill roles that would typically require more experience. This lends itself to a great opportunity for growth, but puts additional strain on PMs and Sr PEs. The accelerated growth of the staff ends up being a positive, even with the growing pains that everyone experiences along the way.”
— Project Manager from Colorado (Professional Engineer with 13 years experience)
“For me in mid-level management it’s the pool of young folks and 0-5 years guys that know technology and time management. When I speak of technology I don’t mean word/Excel skills but actually how a computer works. Also, by time management I mean getting a task done in a period of time requested. I recall getting out of school and being ready to not study and just Do!!”
— Project Manager from North Carolina (Professional Engineer with 12 years experience)
I can relate all of the answers above to my own experience as an engineer for one of the world’s largest civil infrastructure firms. And I bet the other engineers reading this right now can relate as well.
Thanks to the existence of the Internet, industries will only become more efficient over time.
Businesses who continue to neglect or overlook their hippopotamus size problems will have to yield to competitors who understand their business simply.