Why engineers don’t become CEOs

Moksevi Prelis, a veteran banker and engineer, recently raised some pertinent issues and useful insights relating to the engineering profession and why many don’t reach the top which is often dominated by accountants.

“Isn’t it ironic that with a century of civil engineering history in our country, all the top construction companies except one, have been started and are now owned and controlled by non-engineers, mostly by accountants? The situation is not very different in the case of other enterprises,” he said in address at the 2007 convocation of the Moratuwa University.

Here are excerpts of that presentation:
One of the early observations many of you may make in your job is that the key decision makers in the organisation you have joined, its CEO and the owners are mainly non-engineers (probably accountants if you were to work in the private sector).

You may even be a subordinate of someone who has far less academic accomplishments or who may even have tried and had been unsuccessful in gaining entrance to an engineering degree program.

As time goes on, many of you as engineers may find yourself increasingly in an isolated position in the corporate hierarchy, doing operational work such as production, maintenance, supervising a construction site, or in a designs office.

You may perhaps be disappointed to find that you are not in the key strategic decision making loop of your organisation.

Contrary to your expectations, the organisation may be placing a higher value on professionals of other disciplines, thus enabling them to dominate the higher positions in the organisation, and also reap better remuneration.

It may gradually dawn on you that as an engineer, you are “Always on Tap and never on Top.” Or you may feel that as a highly qualified engineer you have become something akin to a “useful piece of equipment which will be bought when needed and got rid of when not needed”.

You may get disillusioned and angry to find that the decision makers in your organisations consider that, as an engineer you just cannot be a future corporate leader, or a CEO and should not even be trained and nurtured to become one.

They may hold the view that, in depth technical knowledge is a burden, and may even be a hindrance towards developing a broad understanding about administrative, financial, marketing and psychological issues which are essential to become a successful corporate leader.

In frustration, you may even consider leaving the country and getting a job overseas, most probably at a much higher remuneration but even lower down in the corporate hierarchy.

Perhaps some of you may feel that I am speaking hypothetically or I may be taking a few isolated cases. But I assure you that these are real life scenarios with respect to a large number of engineering graduates produced by this country, about whom I have been able to observe over a long period of time, from the vantage position of a banker and CEO who deals closely with a variety of institutions and the key decision makers in them, as well as from my own personal experiences as an engineer.

In our country today, you will notice that very few of the large corporate bodies or even technology oriented enterprises are headed or controlled by those with an engineering background. Even among those few, the majority seem to be headed by engineering graduates from overseas universities.

Regrettably enterprises started and controlled by engineering graduates from our universities as entrepreneurs are conspicuously few in number.

However it is very different when you leave the shores of our country. Whether it be in India, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, China, Japan, Europe or USA majority of the large industrial corporations and technology based enterprises are headed and often owned by those having an engineering background. It has been estimated that 90% of the technology oriented firms in the USA are started by engineers.

In a recent survey made about the CEO’s of the Fortune 500 corporations of the world which included the likes of General Electric, Toyota, Walmart, Sony, Seimens, Matsushita etc. revealed that, by far the largest segment among them had a background in engineering and technology. Among the CEO’s, 22% had undergraduate degrees in engineering as compared to 9% with finance.

Compared to this the local equivalent the LMD-50 had only eight percent CEOs who have engineering background whereas 50% have an accounting background!

Why is it that the scenario is so very different and abnormal in Sri Lanka?

* Is it a problem with the curriculum and training in our universities?
* Is it due to the orientation and attitudes of the faculty members and university authorities?
* Is it due to the psyche or some inherent weaknesses of the engineering graduates themselves?
* Or could it be something to do with the background and culture of the Sri Lankan people and the nature of our economy?
Perhaps the honest answer could be a little bit of all of the above!

One could not help but notice that the senior engineers in our country have a sense of grievance and appear to blame ‘others’ for not giving the ‘rightful place’ to those with an engineering background.

In real life, we must realise that nobody will give us our due place.

We have to win that by using our own capabilities, our own initiatives and our own actual performance in competition with others.

One must accept the fact that if others have edged us engineers out, it is very likely due to the fact that they were better in what really matters in practice, namely leadership qualities, initiatives, and entrepreneurial skills.

Will you be contented to retire merely as a senior engineer? Even a very good one? Who will be on tap and never on top? Is this all you expect to achieve in your career? Is this the vision you have for your future?

This is where I would like to suggest to you that the vision you have for yourself, should not be to become only a good engineer.

Your vision should be to become a Corporate Leader, a CEO, and above all to be an Engineer- Entrepreneur who is a builder of enterprises rather than a builder of products and the one who really adds value to the economy.

Contrary to what some may say, engineering is a particularly appropriate and valuable discipline, for corporate leadership and successful entrepreneurship.

A widely accepted distinguishing characteristic of entrepreneurship is taking intelligent and calculated risk. There again an engineer should be comfortable, since analysis of risks and mitigating risks are also very much the tools of an engineer. Another common characteristic between an entrepreneur and an engineer is the feel for future trends and innovation aptitudes.

As such an engineer can be viewed as a Natural Entrepreneur, who can understand not only how to design good products, but also how to design good business ventures.

This is not to say that an engineer per se is a ready made corporate leader or successful entrepreneur.

Generally speaking engineers have some inherent weaknesses and disadvantages in this regards, mainly in the fields of communications, marketing skills and people skills. However the hopeful thing is that all these can be learned, practiced and mastered by an engineer, provided one makes a determined and sustained effort.

The time to start is now, that is if you have not already started along these lines at the beginning of your engineering course. Which perhaps would have been better. This way you will realise your full potential as an engineer and achieve your vision.