Name: Stuart Siegel; Current Primary Role: Grandpa
My purpose in producing this material: Over time, I think everyone would like to have a legacy that preserves and shares the important lessons learned from their values and experiences in life, both personally and professionally.
In summary, Siegel’s Rules / People Skills for Survival & Leadership capture key lessons learned that I believe can help many on-the-job, as well as in personal relationships; and the technical material I’ve presented is my take on what I believe is useful and not just esoteric in the areas of Program & Proposal Management of Tech Intensive Projects.
Some context and purpose for creating Siegel’s Rules for survival in a high stress inducing management style / environment:
I am or was (I’ve been retired for several years) an electrical engineer (BSEE, Polytechnic Institute of NY; MSEE, University of PA, Post Graduate Studies in Engineering and in Executive Management) and have held hands-on design engineering roles, high level positions in engineering management, program management, and business development, as well as senior executive level (VP) management with full P&L responsibilities in the defense industry.
The economic times over my career in the defense industry had resulted in a fair amount of turbulence that I had to contend with. Mergers and acquisitions in the industry coupled with challenges for companies to remain viable and profitable in an ever changing and mostly shrinking military environment put great pressure on businesses and their executives to achieve objectives. This ‘stress level’ in-turn was routinely flowed down into the organization impacting all who desired to work and thrive. Much of what became the order of the day was more akin to ‘how to survive’.
As said, I was caught up in this and notwithstanding the level of rank one held in a particular organization, dealing with demanding executives to whom you reported was a challenge. Most consequential was the experience I had in dealing with high-level type A executives and the learning I had to develop to survive their style.
When it became known that I was being successful in dealing with this style of management, I actually mentored informally several engineers, managers, and executives to help them manage themselves when confronted with the management style I am alluding to. Since the feedback was so positive I decided to document the ‘rules’ that I determined were key to survival in a tough management environment for more widespread sharing. I captured this into a relatively brief document, synopsizing each rule followed by some contextual development, and interspersed with some humor as well as advice. In so doing I believed it would make it something that folks would both enjoy reading and choose to have handy as a guide if the need for its use ever arose.