Biography
Steven earned his ME in Engineering Management in 2007 and is currently President of the .Ā He is not only an engineer, but also spent a year travelling Europe studying sword making, and hasĀ a black belt in aikido. These three things inform every word heĀ writes and how he works with every client.
AsĀ an engineer, SteveĀ sees complicated issues as processes with inputs and outputs. Running a business is a very complicated process, but there are only a few things we need to understand and control in order to have large effects. In his practice, theyĀ focus on the creation of an integrated set of metrics that define success for the business, andĀ translate these down to every individual. This gives visibility to what is actually happening so that managers and leaders can make well-informed decisions about how to improve.
Steve graduatedĀ from the Colorado School of Mines andĀ was awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship and traveled most of Western Europe studying medieval swords and sword making. HeĀ found that people everywhere were helpful and friendly, doing the best they could with whatever they had. This resonated deeply with him as he worked first as an engineer, and later as a consultant. Steve believes that if a manager finds that their people can't get the job done, most of the time it is not the willingness of the people, it is the process that management has provided their workers that is incapable of producing the results that are needed, and this is where the focus for improvement needs to be.
After his Fellowship, he worked for for five years as a senior metallurgical engineer. HeĀ found that heĀ was fascinated by process control, experimental design, and business processes, so heĀ joined a consulting firm doing just that. After six years there, heĀ spun off his own consulting firm, The ROI Alliance.
TheĀ Engineering Management Program further honed the tools he had learned, and heĀ ended up teaching there for years, teaching most of the quality and statistics classes.
Q&A
How would you summarize your experience with the program?
It was a great experience getting to work with (and be taught by) some of the best in the business.