[Note: This transcript is automatically generated and may contain errors.]

Transcript

[0:00] Just quickly before we get started. I wanted to let you know about free e book.
I wrote a little while back called Engineering Leadership 101 practical insights for becoming a leader at any stage.
It shows you how to grow his leader no matter where you are in your career, the important differences between management and leadership.
And it dispels some of the common myths engineers have about leadership.
And like I said, it’s free. So if you’re interested, you can go ahead and download your copy at engineering and leadership dot com slash leadership 101,
That’s engineering and leadership dot com slash leadership the number 101.

[0:41] For those who know that management skills ought not be bypassed, this is the engineering and leadership podcast,
smooth and welcome to Episode 14 of the engineering and Leadership podcast.

[0:48] Music.

[1:02] Show dedicated to helping engineers thrive In today’s episode, I chat with Matthew G.
Dick, engineering manager and author of See ah, hard science fiction novel about survival, colonization and leadership growth.

[1:20] Hey everyone, Pat sweet here all the way from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Halifax. Of course, being in the home of the Halifax wanders football club.
I’m already wearing my jersey. The team is playing in the Canadian Premier League championship game today, and oh man, I’m excited.
I can hardly contain myself now. By the time this episode actually airs, we’ll know whether or not my team won. But here’s hoping, anyway.
But listen, we’re not here to talk about soccer. We are here to become better engineering leaders, so I will.
I will set the soccer talk aside for the moment.
To that end, I’ve got something I wanted to share with you before we actually get into that interview in the main content with Matt G.
Dick, which was a lot of fun. I’m really excited about that.
But first I wanted to share with you the upcoming launch of my very first course.
Really excited about this last week, I started asking people what they would want toe learn about if I were to launch a productivity course designed for engineers, and I’ve been working on something for over a year now.
But I really wanted to make sure that whatever I was doing really answered the mail, so to speak, really addressed every last single thing that an engineer might want to know about productivity and,
the response was fantastic. They’re a couple of really interesting takeaways from that.

[2:38] The number one request of all the people who responded was about prioritization. Most engineers have crazy workloads.
And what help figure out what should be worked on first and what things can wait.
And that was kind of interesting to me, because I really didn’t expect that I feel, personally that prioritization is critically important.

[2:59] My guess would have been that most engineers would have asked about things like how to do things faster, how to do things as intelligently as possible, as opposed to doing the right things in the first place.
But I’m really glad I was wrong about that. That shows a certain level of insight, so I’m excited about that.
Another thing that came up quite a bit was the idea of avoiding distractions and firefighting.
Uh, staying productive while working from home, obviously during a pandemic is very, very important.
And I suspect that moving forward even once we see our way through Cove in 19 working from home is very much going to be something that is part of our lives, I think his engineers and knowledge workers in general.
I think working from home is here to stay. So staying productive from home was another big theme and overall balancing work and home life came up quite a bit of well.
So what was refreshing about this is that it tells me that by and large, engineers all over the place are having many of the same issues, regardless of industry and company size.
And I heard about a lot of stuff that I had already anticipated in the development of the course, so that’s really validating. That was really great.

[4:08] I had answers from an engineer from NASA that looked almost identical to someone working at a small waste management company.
So the idea that engineers a unified in the challenges they face, regardless of the specifics of their job was really interesting to me.
The other thing that was interesting about this is the answers that I got from people reminded me of my own story.
And my story is that as a junior engineer, I was enrolled in an engineering leadership development program at a mid sized consulting firm.
Three idea was that participants in the program would be pushed both to develop their technical skills because it was just a school, but also the business skills as well.
And let me tell you, they pushed, and at first I was completely overwhelmed by the pace of work.
The ever growing to do list, juggling multiple projects, stakeholders, the endless meetings and reports.
I was very intentionally thrown off the deep end, and I felt it. I absolutely felt it.
My solution at the time was simple. It was work Mawr.

[5:10] As a junior engineer, I thought that’s what I had to do. It was absolutely the norm in the office, the norm in the consulting industry.
And since I didn’t have AH home or kids or anything like that to take care of outside of work, the burden of the extra hours at first didn’t feel so bad.
But eventually it caught up to me, just like it catches up to you. Everyone, I started to burn out.
I was working 50 60 70 hour weeks. Work was all I did, and it was all I had until one day I made a key realize ation, and this was really a turning point for me.
What I realized was that I’m never going to have more time or fewer responsibilities in my career.

[5:50] No matter where you are, you will never have mawr time than you do now. There are only so many hours in a week, and if you are someone who wants to progress in your career, chances are you’re going to have mawr and more and more responsibility.
So what I realized is that since I was never gonna get more time and I was always going to be getting more on my plate and not less.
I needed to do something different.
Working Mawr was unsustainable and wasn’t going to get me to where I needed to be. So what I did is I hit the books.
I started reading everything I could on personal productivity. I started experimenting with different systems, tools, approaches, mindsets and slowly.
Over the course of more than a decade, I developed a unique framework that I could use to make sure that I was being both efficient and effective.
And today it’s kind of funny to look back on on how stressed out I was a junior engineer because,
today I’ve got 10 times more responsibility than I did back then, and my prediction that I’d have the same time and more responsibility absolutely came true.
The difference is that I’m not stressed out the way I used to be.
I mean control and I’m living my life outside of work, too, despite the fact that I’ve got much, much more on my plate.

[7:07] I’ve got direct reports, I’ve got corporate responsibilities, I’ve got bigger projects, harder projects.
It’s a it’s a totally different world. But at the same time I’m in a much better spot mentally.

[7:20] So I wanted to tell that story because in this course that I’m about to launch,
I’m going to teach that system that I’ve developed and how I apply it to really world situations, like meetings like email, like taking on new tasks and projects, taking on new responsibilities so that,
students in the course concede not.
Not just the theory, not just the framework, which is important but not good enough on its own, you need to see how it actually gets applied.
So that course is gonna be a live webinar style. And people are gonna be able to interact with me and with the other students, get questions answered.
Needless to say, I am super super jazzed about this.
Maybe even more jazzed about my Halifax wanders game later today. This is this is going to be a lot of fun.
So, like I said, I’m gonna be launching the course this week. So do keep your eyes peeled on social media or the mailing list Or, heck, you can even write me an email if you’re interested, and I’ll make sure that you get the information you need.
Uh, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn.
It’s easy to find Patrick Sweet, um, or email me at Pat Engineering and leadership dot com.
I’ll have all the information you need in the show. Notes at Engineering and leadership dot com slash Episode 14 Super Super Excited, Really looking forward to seeing you in the course again.
If you need any information, just go to the show notes.
Okay, that’s enough of that. Enough soccer, enough course stuff. Let’s turn to our conversation with Matthew G. Dick.

[8:50] Music.

[9:00] Matthew. Dick is an engineering manager working in the rail industry in the Washington D. C area.
And besides that, that is also a published author, which is why I wanted to have a chat with him here on the show.
He has been a long time science fiction fan and, after two years of hard work, finally released a sci fi novel of his own called Seed Ah, hard science fiction novel about survival,
colonization and leadership growth and is released on Amazon in July of this year.
Here is my conversation with Matt Matt, thank you very much for joining me on the engineering leadership podcast.

[9:33] Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, no problem. Just to get started. Why don’t Why don’t you tell us a little bit About what you what you do for your day job?
Yeah, So I’m a ninja nearing manager at a company that happens to be involved in the rail industry on DWhite I am involved in is developing and delivering technology that helps the rail industry be be safer.
And as part of that, I manage all of our commercial operations, which is about 100 people of that. That’s about 60 people that report up into me and another 40 people that air dotted line.
And so, as you can imagine, it’s a very busy, busy, job, like way more than 40 hours a week kind of job.
Andi, I’ve been a nen jeering manager, actually for the last 15 years, Um, and over those years, growing my team and growing, in my experience, being a manager and a leader.
And it’s definitely been a very interesting and challenging career so far.

[10:38] Yeah, absolutely. And and I think some of my audience will already know that that I’ve got a background of the rail industry as well. So before recording you and I nerd it out a bit about that, that’s really cool.
Um, and I had read I had read on LinkedIn, but the size of your team that that’s that’s an enormous amount of responsibility. So on. And that’s something I’m gonna I’m gonna touch on a little bit later.
Because really, why I wanted to bring you on the show is talk about ah, project that you recently completed and launched. Could you tell us a little bit about that?
Yeah, absolutely. Eso What I had done over the last couple of years is I had actually written a sci fi novel on Done that all my in my time between work.
But it was actually a really big part of getting through that period of time in my career, and it also helped me deal with some leadership items going on in my career, so.

[11:37] What the book was is over the last two years, I’ve been working on it primarily while traveling for work.
I’d say about half while traveling for work and the other half like on weekends and vacations and things like that to finish it up.
And, uh, what was very, very important about it is during those two years at work, it was a very stressful time.
I had a situation where I had to take over two projects from somebody that left the company.
Those two projects, We’re in a very bad shape. Um, uh, probably worked the most I’ve ever done in my career.
During that period of time toe pull those nose dives up out of the problems on a zit.
Turned out working on this book was the hobby that really fit my lifestyle to give me something else to think about other than work.
And that helped me keep saying during all that craziness.
And it was the first time that I’ve been able to find a hobby that fit with the fact that I traveled so much I could do it anywhere.
I wrote most of it on a Google doc, Um, which I could do anywhere in the airplane and the airport, whatever it ISS. So it worked really worked really well for that.

[12:59] So what’s the book called? What’s it all about? Yeah, So what the book is called is it seed?
Ah, hard science fiction novel and so hard science fiction. What? That tries to be a scientifically accurate as possible.
So it on I did legitimately try to make it is scientifically accurate is possible.
And what it does is it follows an astronaut that is trying to set up a colony on Mars but runs into a lot of engineering problems.
And when you look at him, there all seem very plausible and he gets back.
On his way back to Earth. He’s starting to realize this isn’t gonna work out on Mars.
A side story going on is this particular astronaut has this new technology, which is called a dick low additional clone.
And so, through his whole life, growing up as a toddler, he had to wear special glasses that would record everything.
Everything he saw, heard, said brain waves, even that sort of stuff and his whole life of this stream to the cloud. And it was stored there.
And at the time, there was no way to use that data until he got into really his mid thirties.
In which case, uh, deep learning neural network modeling had gotten to the point to take that just masses and masses of data to make a digital clone of himself.

[14:26] And then he realized the game plan with that all along was toe have a second life.
But what he realized on his trip back from Mars is, Well, I can put that into a robot. I can shoot that across the galaxy 5000 years, light years away and start a new colony that way.
And so that’s the point that the book really starts eso all of its his backstory upto that point. But where the book really gets interesting is he literally walks out of his lander and has to build everything.

[15:03] Hey will grow humans out of embryos. He actually grows goats. A swell grows the plants, builds the buildings, does everything.
But the major part of the book is that as he’s going through this process,
he has to pick up the leadership skills to have a civilization that will stand up on its own after he’s gone, because he’s got a finite life in his robot body.
And that’s the part of the story that I think is really interesting, is he starts as an engineer that has zero leadership skills, and it finishes at the book a great leader.
But it goes through a lot of conflict in the process toe to get to that point.
So I would imagine that this leadership element would would be drawn very much from your own experience as an engineer leading large teams. Is that fair?
Yeah, absolutely. And I Actually, when I was writing the book, the.

[16:04] I tried to place myself, where am I personally, in the spectrum of no leadership and at the end of the book where he’s the great leader and I would say, I’m not at the end of the book, but I’m striving to get to that point.
A big part of what he was challenged with while he was building up a civilization is,
there was two, um, styles of management that there was an article in the Harvard Business Review at one point where they did an analysis of what leadership styles work and which ones don’t.
And two of them that didn’t work was pacesetter and the drill sergeant And so this particular character has both those flaws he struggles with, Um,
but at the end of the book, he is much more of a coach and a passionate visionary.

[16:58] That instills the, uh, the ideas for folks to go further with when he’s when he’s gone.
And that was really the transition he had to make to make sure that the civilization keeps going after he’s gone.
So this this is fascinating stuff. This is really cool. So what do you What do you think?
You learned about your own leadership style and, you know, like you said, you’re not at the end of the book was, did the writing process bring out for you?
Ideas and what you want to do in your own practice and areas where you want to develop and if so, what? What are they?
What did you learn about yourself? Yeah, so e definitely.
During this process, I definitely learned that I personally have a problem with pacesetting.
So I’m one of those types of individuals that I like to work fast. I worked very hard, and I have a problem that I look, look around and if people are keeping up with me, I get agitated.
And that’s not the right way to be a leader. That’s a vory poor way to motivate other people. Toe work, just as hard is to get on them saying, Well, why aren’t you keeping up with me?
And I definitely recognize that in myself, and I’m striving to remove that.

[18:21] The second thing is is the The character also has a challenge with getting stressed and agitated and, uh, myself.
I definitely have that challenges. Well, that’s another thing that I worked very hard at is to keep those cool as a cucumber.
And but it’s tough, you know, in the rail industry, it’s a stressful industry.
Ondas well managing a lot of people on deadlines and projects and lots of money. It za stressful, stressful job, and so.

[18:56] The major growth element that the character goes through is recognizing how to control that and not let it taint people around him.
Uh, because if you’re agitated and angry, you tend to make other people agitated and angry around you. That just doesn’t help anybody.

[19:18] So this is all this fascinating to me.
One of the things that I’ve read a lot about in in in personal development on and self help books and the like, is the value of journaling, right?
This process, at the end of the day, where you kind of capture your thoughts, what worked, what didn’t how certain events made you feel.
And I look at a project like this where you’ve infused the main character with some of your own experience, and I see it Well, well, it’s not a journal, right?
That’s not really the point. I could see some of those same benefits being gleaned from it, right?
Being forced to put your thoughts and feelings into words must must do a lot for for an understanding of who you are as as manager and as a leader.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I would say so It, like you said, it’s not a journal.
But it definitely made me think about the challenges that the character is going through and the recognition that he needs to grow as a leader to succeed,
and then reflecting back on myself on, Well, what am I doing wrong here?
And what do I need to do to change and that that was interesting. That was really interesting.

[20:32] That’s awesome. One of the things that I was planning on asking you about, and you’ve ruined it for me in a good way.
I was gonna ask you about how how did you fit in this huge side project while working And you mentioned something off the top.
That was really fascinating to me. Is that this was your This was your safe place, right? This was your way of disconnecting from work.
And it was instead of this additional stressor it actually, it kept things in check.
Is that is that what you expected when you started this project?

[21:05] That’s a good question. I would say I didn’t know what to expect.
Um, it turned into it. Started out as something different.
Something that’s not work, something I couldn’t take my mind off of work and As I got further into it, I realized that yeah, exactly. It was my safe space. It was my time to think about something else.
But what was E Think what made it work for me is it did take a fair bit of brain power to deal with the plot and work out plot holes and put together the possible pieces.
And that engaged me pretty deeply into it. That so much so that I couldn’t even think about work at the time and that I think that was the key. That was the magic that made it work for me.

[21:54] Yeah, it really forced you to use your brain, but in a different way.
Uh, which this is. This is really important.
And that’s something that when I, uh, take on coaching clients, for example, I talked about the importance of disengaging right. And one of the best ways to disengage from work right is to engage in something else.
And this is this is an excellent example of that.
Have you always been a writer? Is this something that you’ve always enjoyed? Or is this something new that you’re trying a relatively for the first time?

[22:26] Yeah. So, interestingly, I’ve been a writer of engineering proposals for the last 15 years, and this is the first time I’ve I’ve written something substantial. That was a fiction, right?
But one thing that was funny is when I finally got my manuscript to the editor, she came back and said, You write extremely clearly my my response back to that Well, at least the last 15 years of proposal writing.
Then it goes away. So So this is something This is another thing that I I preached quite a bit, is the value of writing in engineering.
It’s one of these skills that in school I don’t know what the case was for you, but certainly for me, writing was something we were forced to do at times.
But certainly not something that we’re was really drilled into us.
Not something that a lot of focused development went into as students.

[23:26] And then in industry, you realize, holy cow. This is this is critical. You’re you’re writing constantly between presentations and reports and emails and, you know, huge huge projects like proposals or management plans like writing is fundamental, so.

[23:42] What would you What would you recommend? People who?
Maybe writing isn’t their strong suit. How would you go about developing this skill?
Yeah, So there’s a couple important parts of this.
So there’s writing for engineering and then writing for a book or fiction, and I realized that that’s a little bit of two different things.
So writing for engineering or even business in general, I found that short and succinct is the most important thing.
No one wants to see an email that’s just the wall of text.
You know, I usually write my emails, just one sentence lines, keep it at a couple of lines, and that’s to try to keep it as short as possible.
And then another trick that I’ve seen is any way that you can shorten your sentence on still convey the the same thing that’s always good.

[24:39] That and getting to the point. Getting to the point is probably one of the most things, so whether that’s in an email or in a proposal or in a report, everyone just wants to get to the point as quick as possible.
Visa ST Be short and you’ll do great.

[24:58] That doesn’t work so Well, when you write a fiction book, that was That was a challenge that I had to deal with is, um, making sure that.

[25:08] I would, um, disengage that everything I learned about being short and succinct and being willing to expand on. Well, I’m just gonna talk about this more.
I’m gonna add more flowery detail here, and I’ve I think I’ve gotten decent at being able to do that for the book, but still maintain my engineering style. Writing at work?
Yeah, that’s good. That’s eso. You’ve expanded your own writing repertoire. So to speak through through this project that z that that’s really cool.
That’s cool. Um, eso what’s what’s next for you? Now you’ve got this.
This book is is on shelves, right? What are you planning? Another one? Is there? Is there some other Some other big thing that you’re you’re looking to try your hand at next?
Yeah, Eso I’m I’ve already started on the next one.
Um, and I’m hoping to do a couple sequel books.
I’ve I’ve also mapped out a parallel book, Another fiction parallel sci fi book,
and then, um, a few other ideas that air down the road, but the short story is is I’ve I think I found a hobby that I can keep busy for quite a long time.
Uh, interestingly enough, one of the challenges that I’m having right now is because I’m not traveling as much because of the pandemic.

[26:32] I haven’t been writing as much, and so my writings actually slowed down a bit.
But I’m hoping Thio wrap up the next book and another two years or so and just keep going.
That’s exciting. We’ll have to stay tuned for the next one. If people are interested in the book, where can they go? Thio to pick it up?
Yep, so the book is only available on Amazon.
It’s available both an e book and paperback, and if you go to Amazon, it is search for seed Matthew G. Dick.
It should pop right up. It’s a bright green cover, and I’m the only person named Matthew G. Dick on Amazon.
Hey, that’s great! Just before we wrap up, Is there any any lessons learned through this whole through this whole project that you think you think engineering leaders and managers should hear about?

[27:24] You know, I think the a key item that I feel that the character had to go through that I had to go through to become better at leadership is self reflection,
and the character in the book actually has a couple periods of time where he really dives down deep into what am I doing here?
Um, I doing this wrong. What do I need to do to change?
And I think that’s very key. Probably one of the most key things that growing as a leader.
Because if you don’t have that feedback loop, you’re just never going to get better at it.
And recognizing areas where you can approve is the first step to improving.
That’s fantastic advice, Matt. Thank you so much for joining me tonight. It was an absolute blast chatting with you.

[28:17] Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Thank you so very, very much.
Matt, I really, really enjoyed chatting with Matt, and I was surprised about some of the things that he had to say.
I was surprised to hear about the fact that writing the book wasn’t the stressor in his life.
It was this important escape, this way of giving him a break from his normal work and the fact that he didn’t have toe move heaven and earth to make time to write.
It’s something he wanted to do and something he frankly had the opportunity to do. And he took advantage of that.
So really, really interesting stuff from that.
If you’re interested in picking up mats Book. The Kindle and paperback editions are available on Amazon right now.
Just go to engineering and leadership dot com slash seed. And that’ll ford you right to the Amazon page.

[29:03] Next up, we’ve got the engineering and leadership mailbag.

[29:06] Music.

[29:17] This is the part of the show where I read your mail, comments, tweets and messages and answer your questions.
I promise to read everything you send me, and I’ll share my very favorite messages here on the podcast.

[29:27] First and foremost, I wanted to thank everyone who sent me their questions about this upcoming productivity course.
Uh, it was super, super helpful. I really appreciate the candor and the level of feedback.
I got some excellent input. So thank you so, so much. It’s great.
I also wanted to give a shout out to Sigh, who recently joined the engineering leadership community.
Sigh is a structural and project engineer looking to grow in her leadership skills. So she wrote after reading some posts on the blog’s Thio Connect. So thank you very much for reaching outside.
And George wrote to thank me for the show as well, and because he was having a little bit of technical difficulty with one of my download pages.
So here’s Here’s something just a public service announcement.
If ever you’re having any trouble with my website or the show, or you catch some weird editing glitch, absolutely reach out to me. I’m more than happy to hear from you.
And if if there’s anything I can do to better serve you or produce better stuff for fix an issue with my website, let me know.
I really do appreciate that help and just a quick reminder.
If you’d like to be on this show, you can leave me a voicemail at engineering and leadership dot com slash contact.
Just let me know what you think of the day’s show. Any ideas you have Any criticisms?
Feedback. Whatever you’ve got. I’d love to hear it again.
Just go to engineering and leadership dot com slash contact and look for that voice mail, but near the top of the page.

[30:53] Music.

[30:59] That, my friends, is all the time we have with show today. Don’t forget to grab your copy of,
engineering Leadership 101 All you have to do is go to engineering and leadership dot com slash leadership 101 And if you enjoyed the show, please click that subscribe button,
using whatever pod capture you use. That’s the best way to keep pace with show.
And while you’re there, if you wouldn’t mind, leave me an honest review.
I’d really appreciate that again. That helps me to make the show better and hear about what’s working, what’s not, and help others find the show as well.
If you want to look into anything we mentioned today, just check out the show notes at engineering and leadership dot com slash episode 14.
There you’ll be able to find all the resources links, etcetera that have been mentioned again.
That’s engineering in leadership dot com slash Episode 14 Until next time this is Pat sweet, reminding you that if you’re going to be anything, be excellent.
E

[31:53] Music.

[31:58] Thank you.

[32:01] Thank you. You’ve been listening to the engineering and leadership podcast with Pat Sweet.
If you’d like to learn more go to engineering and leadership dot com, where you’ll find MAWR free articles, podcasts and downloads to help engineers thrive.
That’s engineering and leadership dot com.

[32:19] Music.