Change Management: Combining Management with Ancient Philosophy:

The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) is one of the rare Indian government undertakings that are completed on schedule and within budget.
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DMRC’s uniqueness lies in how it has managed “soft issues” related to the general public affected by it. To ease out traffic snarls and general chaos around construction sites on main roads, DMRC deployed special personnel to assist Delhi Police. Cars driving through muddy construction areas were treated to washes by DMRC personnel. Other similar initiatives showed DMRC’s commitment and built strong public opinion in favor of it. DMRC’s concern for the commuter can be gauged from the fact that even the elevators feature ’sari’ meshes to stop the flowing robes from getting caught in the gap. And now that the Metro Rail is in operation, DMRC is training National Cadet Corp (NCC) students (NCC is similar to Boy Scouts) to teach travel etiquette to the infamously unruly Delhi public.

The man behind this is a 74-year old, yoga practicing civil engineer. E. Sreedharan is famous for building Konkan Railway, the biggest railway project since India’s independence. With the public sector’s reputation so tainted, Sreedharan has attained an iconic status and is one of India’s most respected personalities. And business management students as far away as Harvard are visiting India to study the secret of its success.

There is more to engineering than, for example, calculating that the design will work in practice and not fail under real world conditions. That is obviously very important. Additionally, successful engineers manage projects in a way that not only result in safe and efficient systems but also that make those that take into account the people that will be impacted by the systems (as the system is used and, as in this example, as the system is being created).

The ability of engineers to understand the mechanical, project management and financial realities is a big reason engineering is the leading field of study for S&P 500 CEO’s, in my opinion (add to those qualities leadership, vision and understanding the human impact of product features… and you have a great CEO candidate). The data shows that engineering (23% are engineering graduates, economics is next at 13%) is the leading field of study - the reason for why so many engineering graduates become CEO’s is what is my opinion. Engineers get a great start by having to find solutions that work in practice. Given those that want to move into leadership a great base from which to build - perhaps all the way into the CEO’s office.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 20th, 2007 at 4:37 pm and is filed under Society, The Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.