Episode 76: Guru Madhavan
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Think Like an Engineer
A combination of structure, constraints and trade, those are the essential ingredients of an engineering mindset. But those traits have benefits and applications to many other scenarios outside the world of engineering. So why aren't they being used?
Guru Madhavan is the Senior Scholar and Director of Programs at the National Academy of Engineering, as well as the author of Applied Minds: How Engineers Think, and the upcoming Making Better Choices.
Listen as Guru and Greg discuss what makes the engineering way of thinking so distinctive, the crossover between invention and innovation, and break down modular systems thinking.
Episode Quotes:
Why learning from and sharing information with other domains is so important
“There are so many examples where engineers have found themselves in frustrating circumstances where they are expected to do one thing and not allowed to contribute beyond what they're capable of. And the exact opposite, where they expect engineers to contribute a more vibrant, acceptable solution. And then you get a point solution that's useless and probably even backfires. So I think, how do you seamlessly transfer some of the generic ideas across the context is the challenge that we all as professionals have to face.”
When a complex system becomes maladaptive
“How organizations have achieved a level of refinement, specification justification, legitimacy in their functions, to the point that they're not able to relate to one another. And whatever action one might take, squarely conflicts with another. And therefore you have an ultimate maladaptation, maladaptive system from each of these individual adaptive systems.”
Why aren't there more engineers in politics?
“Being so outcome oriented, good or bad, sometimes could be lethal and a bit threatening for the social fabric. And I think, to be in politics you have to oppose this - it's a generic point that I'm making - you have to be smooth around the edges, not be so fixed. That's why I think it's a complicated phenomenon where engineers are professionally so astute at making sacrificial judgements when it comes to certain forms of design, but not when it comes to civic matters. That's an open puzzle.”
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