Engineering and Understanding the World Around Us

A paragraph to ponder by Adam Steltzner in The Right Kind of Crazy: A True Story of Teamwork, Leadership, and High-Stakes Innovation.  The book tells the story of the engineers behind NASA's Curiosity.

"Beyond the importance of human judgement is the need to understand what makes other humans tick.  The English world engineer comes from the Old French engin, meaning "skill or cleverness." The act of engineering is to solve a problem by being clever and utilizing our understanding of the world around us.  In an era of projects with billion-dollar budgets and head counts in the thousands, part of "the world around us" that needs to be understood is the people involved.  If you're going to succeed in that kind of creative, collaborative environment, especially if you're going to lead and manage the development of something innovative, you need to engage a lot more of yourself than your knowledge of fluid dynamics or stress analysis."