September 21, 2004

Alumnus James Lewis Mixes Engineering, Psychology for New Project Management Recipe

Dr. Lewis (Photo: David Frame)

Dr. James Lewis (EE ’75, PSY ’79, PSY ’86) might jokingly suggest a group hug at his next project management workshop. But don’t worry — “I’m not into that,” he grins. He has, however, built a career helping engineers embrace a new way of thinking about project management.

	So you want to be a great project manager? Here are the top three things Lewis says you should keep in mind: Choose your direction. “At some point, an engineer ought to decide if he or she wants to be an engineer or a manager. Companies tend to trap engineers into becoming managers — but they’re really two different kinds of work activities. If you love engineering, you may find that you hate managing. You don’t want to get trapped into doing something that you don’t want to do just because it pays more money.” Soft skills are essential. “Project management is not a technical discipline, it’s a people discipline. The top three things I look for in a project manager are people skills, people skills and people skills. Everything else comes after that. Still, you can’t effectively run an engineering project without an engineering background; you need to at least understand the essence of what people’s problems are.” Adjust to your role. “The role of a project manager is to facilitate work, not to be the technical expert or to do the work yourself — not even to do the planning — but simply to make sure the planning gets done. In fact, the more you become a manager, the less technical expertise you can retain. This poses a dilemma for some engineers. If you really love engineering, you hate to lose that skill. But you can’t be really good at both.”

Lewis entered NC State in 1959 to study electrical engineering, but he dropped out in 1964 to take a job developing radio equipment for local telecommunications companies and worked in this capacity for the next 15 years. During that time, he held positions ranging from chief engineer to quality manager. He returned to NC State in 1973 and completed requirements for his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering.

Over time, he realized that the project and production problems he experienced were typically not the result of technical problems. “The problems I had most often were people problems,” he said.

At the suggestion of a friend, he took a class in organizational behavior at NC State. “After that first class, I said ‘Man, that’s what I want to do.’” Lewis went on to get his doctorate in psychology from NC State — but he insists he’s not a shrink. “I consider myself an engineer with great people skills,” he said. “Having been in the industry for 15 years also gives me instant credibility with my clients and, I believe, helps make me more effective.”

Interestingly, Lewis doesn’t find his vocational evolution all that unusual. “Engineers are interested in how things work, whereas psychologists look at how people work.” He added, “There are more engineers out there than you think who turn to psychology. Engineers just love knowledge.”

Lewis first started teaching leadership skills for project managers through an agency in New York City. He formed the Lewis Institute in 1981 and in 1983 started teaching what he calls the tools of project management — planning, scheduling and control. He has since taught his methods all over the world and written a dozen books on project management. He also teaches a course on “whole-brain” project management through the Industrial Extension Service at NC State.

While Lewis agrees that the “thinking out of the box” tag line is over-used, “It’s also accurate. You need to be able to think creatively to improve projects.” This concept doesn’t apply just to the engineer or the manager, but to the company as a whole, he added. Therein lies his biggest challenge.

“Organizations rarely recognize the correlation between soft skills and the bottom line, so they won’t pay for people to be trained in leadership or communication or team-building. But if you think about most projects, they don’t generally fail because somebody doesn’t know how to create a schedule; they fail because people fight or have ego problems or won’t cooperate. It’s invariably people problems.”

Lewis said most of the companies he deals with are more receptive to soft-skills training now than they were 20 years ago, but they still have to fight the program-of-the-month mentality. “There needs to be an ongoing relationship between the instructor and student. Hit-and-run training by itself is notoriously ineffective, but commitment breeds progress.”

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