Ever wonder how you are doing on your job? You could think in terms of how you fit the job description or how you are coming in on time and not leaving early. You could also think about what challenges you have overcome, what standards you have produced or how many seats of CAD you have installed.
I like to think a little broader and ask myself – Would I hire me?
Knowing what you know about yourself includes the achievements and the disappointments. You know more about your accomplishments or lack of them than anyone else. You know what you try to do and fail at. You know how you operate under pressure and how you get things done in spite of obstacles.
Knowing all these things you can take a real hard look at yourself in the mirror and see if you are the best candidate for your job. Is it you?
We – as CAD Managers – have to work pretty hard to stay ahead of things. We have to stay alert, focused and have constant vigilance against the drifting quality of our system and files. This makes it tough to remain in top form. So asking tough questions to ourselves and motivating ourselves is often required.
To do this we must ask ourselves some seriously tough questions so that others cannot. Here are a few that you can keep handy to renew your vigor.
If your company were hiring a CAD Manager today – would they hire you?
Would you hire yourself?
Is your firm getting it’s moneys worth from your position?
Are you moving your good to better and your better to best?
Can anyone else do a better job at your job?
Keep on your toes!!!
Continuing on with comments on “Extreme Jobs – the Dangerous Allure of the 70 hour Workweek“, Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce found from their research that people with extreme jobs may not always experience burn out, but rather what they call “Brown Outs”.
From the perspective of Van Halen – it means no brown M&M’s backstage. Brown outs from a point of view of electricity are another thing. A power outage may be referred to as a blackout if power is lost completely, or as a brownout if the voltage level is below the normal minimum level specified for the system. (check wikipedia).
A Brown Out, from the authors perspective, is when a worker reduces the level of effort or output because they are overtaxed. They state the 45% of extreme workers experience Brown Outs on a weekly basis. This can happen with CAD Managers if they are pushed too far in too many areas. You cannot work at a breakneck pace for very long. Keeping so many balls in the air can physically exhaust a person.
Have you ever experienced a brown out? Have you had days when you just could not think straight? Have you been running too fast for too long? Time to rethink some things?
In the December 2006 issue of Harvard Business Review, Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce outlined what they called “Extreme Jobs – the Dangerous Allure of the 70 hour Workweek“. They search for answers as to why people spend this level of time at work, what drives them and what, if any, are the rewards. They outline how some people gladly spend extreme levels of time at work and actually love doing it.
They list 10 characteristics that they think define extreme jobs. I want to review a few of their definitions of what makes an Extreme Job and see if they apply to CAD Management. Not all of them apply, nor must they for it to be thought of as an extreme job. They state that only 5 of the 10 need apply. Any 5 mixed with the requisite 60 hours per week can move you into the extreme zone.
Here are the ones I think apply to CAD Managers:
1. Unpredictable flow of work. CAD Managers must always adjust to the feast and famine, stop and start, get it done yesterday kind of environment.
2. Fast paced work under tight deadlines. CM’s must work to other peoples deadlines. Working under the pressure of multiple deadlines and projects funneling through their systems.
3. Inordinate scope of responsibilities that amount to more than one job. Ever feel like that? You know that you have – especially if you have project duties and CM duties.
4. Work related events outside of regular work hours. Do you belong to a user group? This qualifies you.
5. Responsibility for mentoring and recruiting. You may not be recruiting much, but you are constantly mentoring, training, and moving people forward.
6. Physical presence at workplace at least 10 hours a day. Well some of us may not actually do this but we easily could.
These are 6 from the list. Does they describe you? Do you have an Extreme Job?
I was checking my blog stats and noticed that I have just passed the 300,000 page view milestone. That included 29,318 people as return visitors. And an average of 150 first time visitors showing up each day.
Now – to the big boy of blogging that may not seem like a big deal, but to me it seems like a huge number. I am amazed that so many people check my blog on a regular basis.
Wednesday is usually my biggest day for hits and the highest hit rate I got in one day was 1501 on Dec. 18, 2006 with people reading about AutoCAD Home Use after it was picked up by CAD Digest.
I get the most hits when I am mentioned on Shaan Hurley’s blog.
I ranked #10 on the NOVEDGE list of top ranked CAD blogs and have been a TenLinks Top 10 site for CAD Management for the since 2005.
I am really not trying to blow my own horn here. If you have listened to me speak or read what I have been writing, you know that is not what I am all about. I am really posting these numbers because I am a glutton for useless stats and so you can see what kind of company you keep.
There is so much more that I would like to do on my blog and my website, but I just don’t have the time to do it all.
Thanks for reading and feel free to send me your ideas for posts or articles that you would like to see me “yap” about.
In a recent AIA publication entitled “The Business of Architecture” they stated that information from a survey of member firms indicated that 16% of the firms were using BIM with 10% of them using it for billable work.
Autodesk announced that they passed a milestone of 100,000 seats sold in a June, 2006 press release.
ArchiCAD disputes the claims of Autodesk about which of them or others may be on the top of the heap.
Bentley Architecture displays 38 firms or more as using their product on their web site.
What I keep feeling is that the mass migration to BIM is over inflated. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I love the stuff and firmly believe that it will continue to take over seats within Arch and Engineering firms. But do you get the feeling that the marketing hype outstrips the installs? Is the way the software is presented truly reflected with “overwhelming” adoption by all firms? Is it BIM or die?
I would like to see some real numbers…
How many seats of each software have actually been sold?
How many seats have been installed?
How many seats are actually in use?
Define what is meant by “using” the software?
How many projects have gone cradle to grave in the tool?
How many trained users?
I want BIM to push ahead – but I want to do it with some real data!
CADD Manager Code Link!
I have used this program forever. And it is GREAT!
XRP – generate relative paths for XREFs – Xrp2004.lsp – created by Mark McDonough
From the author – “I wrote this for AutoCAD R14 (7 years ago) and I keep waiting for AutoCAD to fully embrace “Xref Relative Pathing”. But even with AutoCAD R2007, one still needs a utility to convert full XREF paths into relative paths. AutoCAD 2004 was the first release that allowed specifying a relative path when first attaching an XREF, it still does not allow automatic conversion of existing full XREF paths into relative paths. Nor is there any support for relative pathing for IMAGES. XRP makes the conversion of full XREF & IMAGE paths into relative paths easy. For AutoCAD R14 – R2006 (not yet tested in R2007, but feel free to give it a try). After loading the lisp file, the command name is XRP.”
See more code at https://www.caddmanager.com/Programming.html
Are you a subscriber?
Checking the Standard – a plan for proper reviewing
A CAD Review Process
CAD File Review Checklist
Survey Says – Are you contacting your reseller?
Go to the January 2007- CADD Manager Journal
I have provided training and management in CAD for many many years. One thing that I have to constantly remind myself about is that the speed of learning differs for each and every person. Some may catch on quick and others may take time before it sinks in.
I need to be willing to explain the same concept over and over until the lights go on. I need to be able to explain it in different ways. I may have to discuss the same subject with the same people several times before they “get it”. Patience is a valuable commodity to a teacher.
The CAD “Learning Times” tables can be all over the map. Some may always be high on the curve and others may be low. Some may learn better by reading, some by hands on, some by show and tell demos. You need to cover every area that you can.
So just because you state that 12×6=72 does not mean that you are done. You may need to show the “new math” of the problem and the solution.
Just because you have “presented” something to someone does not mean that you “taught it”. In my opinion learning does not take place until the teacher has effectively transfered the knowledge to the student. It is not completed until the student learns. Learning has begun when the student can reproduce the procedure. The fact that learning is complete is best proven by the student being able to teach someone else.
A CAD Manager has to teach students and help them become teachers for others.
Where will you focus most of your time and efforts in 2007?
What was your greatest accomplishment in 2006?
Click here and let us all know
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