9
O P I N I O N
Youthful exuberance
A s a younger engineer, I occasionally spent time doing the wrong things. My eagerness caused me to accept work with unconfirmed assumptions. This led to repeat work and disappointment from my managers. My focus was on activity, not results. In the early rush to make our names in the AEC business, we often overlook the basic building blocks for a great career.
“As a younger engineer, I occasionally spent time doing the wrong things. My eagerness caused me to accept work with unconfirmed assumptions. This led to repeat work and disappointment from my managers. My focus was on activity, not results.”
Kyle Cheerangie GUEST SPEAKER
Keeping a journal helped me learn that I was spending much of my time doing tasks that did not contribute to my team. The best engineers perform the necessary work and delegate or eliminate the unnecessary. For example, spending weeks to create a report with multiple iterations for comments and changes, when a simple technical memorandum would suffice. Young engineers typically go through this problem and most managers don’t have the heart to say, “Stop! This is not what I want.” Learn these following skills to improve: ❚ ❚ Allocate your time effectively. ❚ ❚ Think of results, not activity. ❚ ❚ Produce results through your strengths, not your weaknesses. ❚ ❚ Pursue excellence in your work.
❚ ❚ Make the right decisions.
Record your time. Eliminate time wasters. Consolidate your tasks. To make it to the highest brackets of engineering, your time must be worth
See KYLE CHEERANGIE, page 10
THE ZWEIG LETTER February 18, 2019, ISSUE 1284
Made with FlippingBook Annual report