Source: Flickr/ kenteegarden

[Note from Pat: This is the first instalment of a two-part series. For your reference, the second part is here. PS 03/11/2014]

Strategy is absolutely critical for a company. A business that doesn’t have a strategy for how it’s going to compete in the marketplace is a company that’s going stay mediocre at best, if it survives at all.

Without a strategy, it’s nearly impossible to differentiate yourself from your competitors and to focus your time and attention on what makes your company awesome.

If a company wants to deliver the highest quality product or service on the market (as compared to the cheapest, for example), they need to know that that’s their way of competing. They need to focus their attention on doing everything the can to actually be the best on the market. It takes focus to be able to do that.

I believe professionals, and engineers especially, should have the same mentality about their careers.

Engineers should have a strategy for how they are going to progress and succeed in their careers. If you don’t have a strategy for how you’re going to differentiate yourself from your peers, then the chances are you’ll never develop any real differentiation, never really stand out, and never really make progress.

Today, I want to share a bit about business strategy, and how you can use it to create your own strategy for crushing it in your engineering career.

Strategy 101

Michael Porter, a professor at Harvard Business School and one of the world’s greatest thinkers on business strategy suggests that businesses have a few basic ways of competing in the market. They can become:

• Differentiated from their competition
• Cheaper than their competition (cost leadership)

Differentiators can either offer something different, or in a different way, than their competitors, and command a high price for their products and services for their effort – as long as the market values what they’re doing. Cost leaders tend to do the same thing others are already doing, but do it so efficiently that they can offer lower prices than their competitors. This allows them to capture more of the market.

Apple is a good example of a differentiator. They aren’t trying to be the cheapest technology company. They differentiate in terms of the quality of their product. Walmart, on the other hand, is an example of a successful cost leader.

A company can also chose whether they are offering their services to a broad or narrow market. Walmart, as mentioned above, has a broad market focus. They’ll sell to anyone. Lululemon athletica, on the other hand, has a narrow market focus on women who are into yoga. Both are successful companies.

I’ve got a chart below for some examples of companies that fit each description, just to illustrate what I’m talking about.

How does this apply to engineers?

So, we know that strategy is important for companies, but why is it important for engineers?

Strategy is important for engineers because it allows you to stand out from your peers.

Plain and simple, since strategy is about how you will do things differently than others, engineers need a strategy in order to stand out from their peers. The more you stand out, the more obvious it is that you have special skills, aptitudes, or abilities that others don’t.

When you demonstrate that you have certain skills that others don’t, you often get the chance to put those skills to work. This has two major benefits:

• If you have a special skill, its likely that you actually enjoy putting it to use. The more you use it, the better you get at it and the more fun you have.
• You become indispensable. If you’re the office’s one real pro at a given thing, it’ll be important for you to be around.

Having a strategy for your career helps you stand out. Standing out helps you put your special skills to work. Putting your special skills to work leads to more fulfillment and better job security. Boom.

How Business Strategy Translates to Engineering Strategy

I mentioned above that Michael Porter came up with a few different basic strategies for companies to pursue. They could be cost leaders or differentiators, and they could have either broad market focus, or narrow focus. Unfortunately, I don’t think these categories necessarily translate 100% to a professional’s domain. For example, nobody wants to be the cheapest engineer (i.e. cost leader). While that might make you employable, it’s no way to make a living.

That being said, I do believe that engineers need to have some kind of differentiation strategy. That is, they need to come up with some way to stand out in terms of the value they can offer their employers and clients. I think there are two streams of expertise through which you can do this: technical, or managerial.

Further to that, I think that Porter’s broad/ narrow market decision makes sense to engineers if you think of it in terms of industry focus. Would you rather be a specialist in a very specific industry, or would you rather your skills be applicable to a number of industries?

Here’s my modified version of Porter’s four strategies for engineers, which I’m calling (shockingly) Sweet’s Four Strategies for Engineers.

Where do you go from here?

In the next instalment of this two-part series, I’ll teach you more about each strategy to help you chose which is best for you.

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