Photo credit: Flickr/ David Goehring

Do you work in an environment with high levels of uncertainty?

Uncertainty is characterized by high complexity (that is, many players or factors are at work) and high instability (things can change in a moment). If you have both complexity and instability, you have what’s called an uncertain environment.

This is exactly the kind of environment I work in, and it can be brutally difficult to stay on top of things. I work in the rail industry. As you can imagine, building a new rail vehicle is a massive undertaking with 100’s of people spread out throughout the world with competing demands and shifting timelines. It’s hard, and exhausting, and exciting. I’m sure you feel the same way at work sometimes.

One thing I’ve noticed is that engineers who are able to cope well with, or even thrive in uncertainty are those who find success in their careers.

Engineers are in a bit of a pickle, though. We’re supposed to pay close attention to standards, laws, regulations, design best practices, specifications, requirements, in-house design books, etc. All of this infers a very regimented, methodical approach to design. It requires control and structure. In organizational theory, they call this a “mechanistic” approach. However, this is in direct conflict with the need to deal with uncertainty, which requires flexibility and adaptability.

So, what’s an engineer to do?

I’ve compiled a list of 5 ideas that you can use to deal with uncertainty as an engineer below:

5 Ways Engineers can Handle Uncertainty

1. Document obsessively – Probably the most important thing you need to do is to document things obsessively. If you don’t take careful note of basics like your to do list, meeting minutes, important conversations you’ve had, on-site observations, etc., you’re toast. In a world where there are so many different things to keep track of, and they can each be changing unpredictably, there’s no way you’re going to be able to keep it all in your head. Get it on paper or in a digital notebook.

2. Master email – One of the reasons it can be difficult for engineers to handle uncertainty is that they don’t handle their communications well. Email is especially bad for getting unruly and out of hand. Engineers that don’t master their inbox miss important messages and aren’t able to stay on top of their project’s goings on. I’ve written a lot about how to manage email effectively here on the blog.

3. Understand the bigger picture – Often, I find engineers can lose sight of the bigger picture on the projects they work on. They lose their bearings with respect to why they are doing certain things, filling out certain forms, or making certain requests of vendors. I recently overheard a conversation where an engineer was asked why he requested a certain deliverable from a supplier. He had no idea. The point here is that in highly uncertain environments, it’s easy to put your head down and just do your work. This can be dangerous. It’s important to look up every so often to try and understand what’s going on around you so that you know the work you’re doing is actually on track. You might be surprised how often you need to pivot.

4. Pursue the truth actively – In highly uncertain environments, it’s very easy to satisfy yourself with simplistic answers to tough questions. For example, how many times have you heard “We’re designing it this way because this is how we did it on the last project”? That may be a totally valid design approach… but maybe it’s not. Often, the decision to reuse an old design is made out of laziness as opposed to strong engineering. It may be very difficult to determine why something was done a certain way in the past, and if that same approach is appropriate today. In this kind of environment, you need to have the determination and perseverance to sort out what you need to do.

5. Accept risk – Many engineers tend to be risk averse. They love to come up with the perfect solution – one that will always work. In a complex world of rapid change, this is not possible. You can never know every factor at play, and even if you did, you can’t rely on them to remain constant. In order to get things done, engineers need to learn to assess risk and accept a certain amount of it. In most cases, if a risk is realized you can fix your design. It may not be pretty, but it’s the reality of your environment. One caveat to this point: public safety can never be compromised. No system is ever 100% safe at all times and under all conditions, but this is one area where you have a professional obligation not to skimp out. You can’t experiment and just “see what happens”.

Moving Forward

How do you handle uncertainty at work? Tell the E&L community using the comments form below.

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