January is a great time to review my year and plan for the next. I have done this for a couple years and find it a great way to sharpen my thinking. I am combining my review and roadmap in a single post this year. Links to prior years: 2022 Roadmap, 2021 Review, and 2021 Roadmap.
2022 Improvement Review
Time to take stock of last year’s efforts at becoming a better engineer.
- Writing this Blog – I did not write near as much as I hoped. Only five posts in the year, and one of them was about me struggling to post. The good news is I have overcome my fears about sharing these posts on LinkedIn. I attribute that to the positive encouragement I have received from my coworkers and friends. I plan to do a better job of writing more this next year. I think writing is valuable in pushing me to do more than I otherwise would.
- Improving Teamwork – This was my personal improvement project that stretched across the whole year. I wrote two posts, one describing my goals (link) and one book summary (link). I have a few other blog posts with different thoughts that I still have yet to finish and post. In addition to the one I wrote about, I also read a couple other books that were okay but not great. The main benefit from my efforts was clearer thinking which has lead to more intentional action. Instead of just trying to be a good team member in general, I am now focusing on specific things to do. I used the framework of clarity, competence, and control just this morning.
- Learning at work – I learn a boat load of stuff every year as I work on different projects. I got really good at CAM programming this year and learned a lot about CNC. I also learned about market analysis and user interviewing. I really loved this, and hope to be able to continue it someday. Recently I have been getting a crash course in radiation detection. As always, if you are a consulting engineering, then you better love learning new things.
2023 Skills Roadmap
My system for skill evaluation involves breaking down my engineering work into 10 skill categories. I then rate my strength in that category, the percent of time I spend, and the importance to my job. I multiply those together into a composite score, higher number means higher impact. Something really important, that I do a lot, that I’m not very good at would be the absolute highest priority. For more detail about what these categories mean to me see original post from 2021 roadmap. Below is my current analysis:
| How Important | % of Time | Strength | Composite Score | |
| Learning/Researching | High = 3 | 10% | Strong = 1 | .3 |
| Design | Med = 2 | 5% | Strong = 1 | .1 |
| Analysis | High = 3 | 10% | Medium = 2 | .6 |
| Prototyping | Med = 2 | 5% | Strong/Med = 1.5 | .15 |
| Testing | High = 2 | 15% | Weak = 3 | .9 |
| Communication | High = 3 | 15% | Strong = 1 | .45 |
| Documentation | High = 2 | 15% | Strong/Med = 1.5 | .45 |
| Time Management | Critical = 4 | 5% | Strong/Med = 1.5 | .3 |
| Teamwork | Critical = 4 | 15% | Strong = 1 | .6 |
| Mfg Optimization | High = 3 | 5% | Medium = 2 | .3 |
There are a ton of major changes from last year to this year. I recently became the technical lead for our product line of radiation detectors. We are in the middle of a major government contract, and are actively selling them around the world. Instead of primarily doing design work, I am doing a lot of product testing and sustainment. I’m also working with and coordinating a lot more people than before. With the changes to the importance and % time on different categories a lot of things have shifted. My new highest improvement priorities are:
- Testing – I like to think of radiation detectors as fancy lab equipment that is then subjected to grueling environmental conditions. There is a lot of performance testing that needs to be done and experiments to run when troubleshooting. My first improvement project on this front is to learn some basic scripting in python. I now generate and analyze a lot of data, being able to not do that manually in excel will be a game changer on productivity. Its time for this mechanical engineer to learn some software skills. The other things I need to improve are being more thorough and methodical. This is a mindset change more than anything else. I’m sure there will be other weaknesses I need to address as they come up. I will definitely get a lot of opportunities.
- Teamwork – This is the skill set that has continued to rank high as an improvement category. It is just always so high leverage. I love working with a team of talented coworkers, and I hope to be the best kind of leader that they deserve. I am going to continue improving on this in a purposeful way.
- Analysis – I mentioned above that I am getting a crash course in radiation detection. This is the most complex and rigorous product I have worked on from a mathematical standpoint. I don’t have an improvement project planned for this category. I’m just going to keep drinking from that hose and applying it day by day. In 2021 this was one of area I focused on, and I still have a lot of ideas from that time.
One other thing that changed is I dropped the Business Skills category and replaced it with a Manufacturing Optimization category. I still have a strong interest in business, I just don’t currently have that as a job responsibility. Instead, I am now doing a lot of improvements to manufacturing throughput. Luckily, I have experience with that from my days working in a job shop.
I’m trying to not stretch this too long. This post is especially for my own benefit. The short summary is that I have a lot of fertile ground for improvement and I am excited to write about that over the course of this next year.