Operations / Communications / Outreach
Does this sound like your current engineering team?
- ambiguous, confusing communications to other team members
- frequent mix ups on facts and jargon (typos and thinkos)
- time wasted on bogus troubleshooting paths
- engineers/technicians who nod yes but who don’t actually understand
I believe my specific experience positions me to address these problems, via the following techniques:
- Streamlining operations, in particular via information resources that assist operators and provide engineers with quick reference tools
- Explaining complex technology solutions (or underlying science) to lower-skilled staff, e.g. for onboarding of new staff or for outreach purposes
- Evangelizing of new systems and processes to team members
- Creating documentation that understands and empathizes with the audience, considers how the reader might misread, and creates true understanding
- Paying attention to whether other team members are absorbing and understanding new information, and adapting accordingly
I write internal communications that is competent and direct:
- my emails get to the point but also provide context / background, including referencing prior discussions
- any adhoc training that I conduct will actually educate, rather than just soaking up time / budget and leaving the student as lost as before
- I won’t pretend to know something I don’t, won’t answer questions with BS, and will communicate uncertainty
I have years of experience performing internal outreach, explaining to other employees and departments what we do, and what our value to the company is.
I have some experience performing informal external outreach, explaining to visiting customers and vendors what we do, participation in regional professional societies, and attending industry conferences. Note: I can certainly do formal external outreach, in the form of presentations, media interviews, etc., but that should not be my primary role. I believe that my primary strength is in being the engineer on the team who creates and maintains systems, process and resources that help the organization run at peak efficiency and maximally exploit ALL of its assets.
