If you want to become a great engineer (particularly a great global engineer), then there is one capability that matters more than most people realise.
It is not domain knowledge. It is not even intelligence. Most people think of those.
It is your relationship with time.
This idea is explored in The Time Paradox, by Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd. I also noted this in my book. The Time Paradox examines how people orient themselves toward the past, present, and future; and how those orientations shape behaviour, achievement, and satisfaction.
The important orientation I am talking about here is the future focus – because of its link to successful people.
The key to the future focus is the attitude that what you do now will pay off in the future.
You don’t try to frame problems, or apply first principles, or think systemically, see no immediate change in outcome, and then think: well, that didn’t work; what a waste of time!
You work on these skills now, and tomorrow and the day after that. Knowing that each time you do, you get a bit better at it.
If you go to the gym each day and lift weights, then you’re going to get muscles. If you keep on working deliberately on developing core engineering skills, then you’re going to become an excellent engineer – and keep getting better.
You probably already have a strong future focus – but there is likely room for improvement.
Because you are an engineer, you had to get through your degree. You gave up a significant number of years to invest in your engineering knowledge for a better outcome.
Still, you might have just taken it one step at a time or simply responded to each task put in front of you during your studies – viewing this time as a student as simply what you do and making the most of the present.
Think now about how you viewed this when you studied. Were you thinking about how each action was going to make for a better future or were you just doing what you did and making the most out of your situation at the time? This will help you work out your future focus tendency.
Does it work?
Have you ever noticed some people who are not that bright, but have still been successful?
You have likely come across people where you have thought “How did they get to that level?”
They simply do not seem to have that much going on upstairs and yet they have a senior role.
They might have been lucky, but the likely had a strong future focus. So they were able to keep on working on mastering key skills that were needed to get the role they wanted – and they are probably still working on getting the next role.
That can be you!
But what could be stopping you from having this perspective.
Have you ever met someone who just seems to react to everything? They don’t plan, they never seem organised, and they never seem to just pull it together.
These are people who have no future perspective. The things that rob people of a future perspective are:

• Culture – some cultures are more hedonistic, and they focus more on enjoying the present.
• Stability – if you come from a place or time that was economically or politically unstable, then you learn that there is no benefit in long-term plans. You simply focus on surviving each threat and stay ready for the next.
• Bad luck – some people have just had plan after plan invalidated by circumstance. Probability says it will happen to someone – even in a stable place and time. So that someone has misfortune, and then they lose their future focus.

Ask yourself now if your background discourages a future focus. If it does, then you know you need to start thinking more about how your actions now will pay off in the future. Especially when it comes to improving your engineering skills.
If your background does encourage a future focus, then you can probably still improve it further.
You have likely heard about the idea that you need ten thousand hours (or ten years) of practice to become skilled at something. So you likely know, logically, that time is needed. But is it having a strong future focus that allows you actually to put that time in – and keep at it after that.
So think now about maintaining a future focus so you can stay on the journey to engineering excellence and all that will come from it – be it material or personal gratification. 

This newsletter is all about how you can be the sort of engineer who can work, and be valuable, in any company in any part of the world.
Obviously, to do this, you need to be a good engineer.
But is that all?
This edition is about how being a good engineer can actually limit your ability to be a global engineer.
How is this so?
An interesting piece of research that I note in my book – The Global Engineer – found that people who are competent often fail when deployed in new cultures and places whereas those who are less competent show higher levels of success.
Why is this?
The research found that competent people were unaccustomed to finding things difficult. Because of their competence, life had, on the whole, been easy. Then, in a new environment, where they had less experience, they encountered challenges. This made them feel less adequate – a new feeling for them and one that is unpleasant. They simply could not handle this – and they quit.
Less competent people, who had numerous struggles in life, were, on the other hand, robust. They were familiar with these experiences and the associated feelings. Because of this familiarity, they knew how to push through and carry on. Thus, they were more successful.
The lesson for the global engineer?
Yes, you should always work on your engineering skills. You might even be lucky enough to have had them all the time – or at least for long enough that you can’t recall being incompetent. But, if you do wish to ply those skills in a new context, then be ready for a period of discomfort and displeasure – the type that makes you feel less than you used to feel about yourself and question if you were ever truly a good engineer in the first place.
Ask yourself now these two questions:

1. When was the last time you felt discomfort because your competence seemed lacking?
2. Would you be able to endure a period of such “incompetence” as you moved from one role to another (and it might be because of things outside of the role – say a new country or culture) in your efforts to be a global engineer?

They will help you determine if you have or if you need to develop this toughness to be a global engineer.
For all your engineering ability, it might be this mental toughness, needed to get through such periods, that actually makes you a global engineer.

In this article I am going to go over 3 case studies from different engineering fields to show:

1. How sometimes you need to resort to experimental methods.
2. And, when you do, how you might, or might not beat the competition.

Case study 1 – Materials Engineering
Are you familiar with the development of the vulcanisation of rubber?
If you are, then you know how remarkable and strange that story is. If not, then be prepared to be amazed or maybe even disappointed at how much randomness can be a major influence over engineering success.
Charles Goodyear had become obsessed with doing something with rubber.
He believed that he was directed by God to take rubber and turn it into something beneficial to humanity. This obsession drove him to bankruptcy numerous times (meaning his imprisonment for a period), and his family into poverty. To top it off, he almost killed himself a number of times experimenting.
Despite the consequences – his obsession drove him on. Some call him an eccentric, but mentally unbalanced could be a better description.
While he had shown technical insights as a child, he had not been given any advanced education.
He was more a tinkerer. And it was a tinkerer’s approach he used to improving rubber.
A number of experiments had shown some promise, but they ultimately failed. Then, either by accident or elimination of other options, sulphur was mixed with the rubber.
This cross linked the molecules in the rubber – making it tough and durable while keeping its compliance.
Some say he called in vulcanisation and some say it was a contemporary British inventor of the same process. Personally, given his religiosity – I think he would refrain from giving praise to any god but his own.
See below for the short video showing a perspective on Goodyear and how he made this discovery/invention.

Something to note. Charles Goodyear did not found the company Goodyear. The company was named after him by others who wanted to recognise his achievement.

Case Study 2 – Electronics Engineering
Are you familiar with the development of the blue LED? Watch the video below if not.

The key points are:

• Shuji Nakamura was obsessed by the development of the blue LED.
• He focused on growing the perfect crystal – to then make the LED.
• He really only ever had hunches.
• He went against the mainstream, and chose to explore gallium nitride over zinc selenide.
• He defied his boss after being asked to stop working on the blue LED due to a lack of success after decades of effort.
• He replaced the use of an electron beam with simple heating to generate light – this was another hunch – and then understood why the electron beam method worked.
• He at times used brute force approaches that were then later refined through adjustments.
• He continues to work on smaller LEDs after winning a Nobel Prize and developing the blue LED.
• No-one else had been able to create a blue LED.

 
Case Study 3 – Marine engineering
Everyone today assumes boat propellers are short. They are screw propellers, but they are not long like other screws. We know this because that’s how propellers have been for over a century. However, as you might infer from drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci, people first assumed screw propellers would be long – like the screw drill bits used to drill holes in wood or screw presses or water screws used to lift water. It just seemed obvious that screw propellers would also be long.
Around the 1830s there were many people exploring improved screw propellers.
One of them was Francis Pettit Smith. He had been fascinated with boats as a boy and later in life reached the conclusion that screw propellers were superior to paddles.
As did many others.
There was thus a competition on to find and patent the best screw propeller.
Most were doing the sensible thing of trying different configurations: pitch, speed diameter, length. They would build a propeller of one combination, note its performance, build another, note the change in performance, and then work out what to try next.
Our man Francis though ended up doing things a bit differently.
He was not known as being the most precise and methodical of his contemporaries. That probably would have been John Ericsson, and if not for what I am about to mention, John Ericsson, while being noted as a contributor to the screw propeller, would have likely been noted as the sole contributor. Thus, Francis was a bit more random than would normally be considered ideal for an engineer.
Despite this lack of method, Francis had the good fortune to have struck a log while testing a propeller on a boat.
This collision knocked the majority of the propeller off – leaving only a fraction connected to the shaft.
Wisdom of the time would have expected the boat to founder. However, instead, the boat surged forward.
Francis Pettit Smith had discovered/invented a far superior screw propeller. The one that was then adopted by later ship builders.
 
What do we take from this?
The above examples show how sometimes we need to use experimental approaches. Our understanding of the natural laws is insufficient. When we do, there is always the chance that someone else will try that near perfect permutation before we do.
Or maybe we will be the ones who try it first.
Regardless, the lesson to take from this is the same. This was not a matter of genius. Effort and commitments certainly played a role – but luck was the decider once those involved committed.
So don’t beat yourself up if you did not win in those circumstances, do not think you are amazing if you did win, do not lionise those who do win, and certainly do not think less of those who did not. Because, in such cases, all you can do is commit and hope.