The Default Engineer

The Default Engineer is still in the driving seat of most organizations.  Although many organizations and society in general have attempted a STEM reset, the Default Engineer still rules.  You can spot the Default Engineer via the following:

• White, middle-class, heterosexual, and male.  The Default Engineer is part of a tribe that historically has been almost perfectly Caucasian in appearance and values.
• Are more comfortable with hierarchy and old-fashioned command and control organizational systems.  They see organizations as a linear consumption experience.
• Are governed by title and status.  The Default Engineer exists in a world of it's not about what is right, it's about who is right.
• In terms of democratic obligations, ambitions, and citizenship - they are usually passive.  They have no manifesto for action in terms of social justice and opportunity.  The Default Engineer prefers to sing the chorus versus being the lone voice of cantor.  The Default Engineer has transformed the notion of being unideological into an ideology.
• The Default Engineer has a very small Circle of Empathy.
• They prefer to stay within discipline silos and are not interdisciplinary in their thinking.  The "solution bureaucracy" of the Default Engineer dislikes the idea of combining, connecting, and constructing ideas across disciplines.
• They are suspicious of ideas that are not invented here.  They are not concerned regarding a firm understanding of the real ideas and issues driving the world.
• They are easily detached from the purpose - they also have low sensibilities to context.  The default Engineer will never be accused of being a contextualist.  They are not "many sidedness" in their thinking on issues and solutions.
• They work hard, have good intentions, and may have no ambition to change the framework they inhibit.
• Revolution (technological, economic, and/or social) puts at risk the comfortable and predictable.  The Default Engineer is all about incremental thinking and change.
• They don't understand their potential to change the world. 
• They are not comfortable in a more engaged, more collaborative, more open, and more farsighted world.