The engineer's potential as a manager
Page 44
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
by Ron Cater • Provided an engineer could be dispassionate about his own particular specialized field and was prepared to accept that no one section of an organization was self-sufficient, he could certainly possess the qualities and know-how to become efficient management material. That was one of the general conclusions reached at a meeting of the South London centre of the IRTE at Kingston, Surrey, last week.
The occasion was an address by Dr. S. Hyman, of the Kingston College of Technology, under the title: "Can engineers become managers?"
Making the point that engineers were concerned with machines. but managers with people, time and money, Dr. Hyman explained lucidly how management tasks could be broken down so that a manager could assess how usefully his own time and that of his staff was being employed.
Answering questions from the floor which were directed towards the tendency of industry to employ accountants rather than specialists as top management, he said that the accountant was also a specialist and ideally should be employed in a service branch to management. But because the accountant's training tended to develop a keen but dispassionate view of the financial requirements of an organization, he quite often proved the best management material.
One should not assume that because a man held considerable paper qualifications this automatically fitted him for top management responsibility and neither should one assume that the holding of qualifications prevented a person from having the necessary experience and ability to become a good manager, said the speaker. Because a knowledgeable specialist who lived close to the problems of an organization was obviously suitable as management material, it was not necessarily so that a person with purely administrative qualities and coming from outside the particular organization could not be equally suited to the same position.
To further questions. Dr. Hyman answered that specialists who had previously held management positions but who, because of reorganization of their companies, were being diverted into specialist advisory jobs should not feel that they were taking steps downwards. It was quite often the case, he said, that this sort of move resulted in their influence becoming much stronger within the organization.
"Spending wisely is the key to efficient costing", was one answer Dr. Hyman included in a reply to a question from the floor as to whether engineers should receive some training on the financial implications of business. While accounts and costing could be produced either on fancy ruled sheets of foolscap or on the back of an envelope, the end result would be no different if the monies involved had not been put to good use.