Why we need more engineers in our boardrooms—and better STEM teaching in our schools
GEreports: What sparked your interest in mechanical engineering?
Mary: I was 16 and I was good at maths, so the likelihood was that I was going to go down the science route. My sister was already doing science at uni and two of my brothers were doing engineering. But my sister’s point was, “Don’t just do science. Do engineering. Reach for the stars. Make it something that really extends you.” Then she said to me, “And 90% of the class is going to be boys.” At 16, that just sealed the deal!
I’m encouraging my own son and daughter to do engineering, the brain development you get as an engineer is significant. There’s a logic you develop that becomes central to you, a formative part of your personality and your future way of doing work. Engineers have a disciplined approach to thinking and a disciplined approach to outcomes. What I developed from being an engineer makes me a different type of leader. I’m a different mix. I’m not saying every leader should be an engineer, but it’s another form of diversity.
GEreports: Do engineers make good leaders?
Mary: About 10 years into my career, I sat on a committee with the Institute of Engineers for an engineering leadership conference. The question that was posed as part of that conference was: Why don’t engineers get a seat at the board table? It was a really interesting process for the committee to go through, to consider, “Well, why is it that accountants and others gain entry, while engineers are generally absent?”
One aspect of it is that a lot of engineers are career engineers, so getting satisfaction from the technical solutions. But I think the other point is that their methodical approach can lead to risk aversity. So I think the one important thing for an engineer to do is to be mindful of risk, but to treat it in a way that it extracts value, rather than being daunted by outcomes.
I tend to have quite a large number of engineers reporting to me, and developing them and coaching them in a different way of managing and understanding risk has made a difference to their progression to more senior roles. We are seeing more engineers in the C-Suite and at Board level in our industry. I believe that comes with a greater appreciation of diversity of thinking and valuing broader skills at a leadership level.
GEreports: When did the segue come for you, from working as an engineer to working as a manager?
Mary: I got my first big management role by accident. I was on the commissioning team for an offshore facility; it’s an oil facility off Western Australia. The construction manager left about three months before start-up, and he anointed me as his successor. And people ‘on the beach’ — the people back in the office — said, “How did that happen?” Nobody approved it; it just happened. But it was the most exciting thing I’d ever done. I was leading a big team at a highly critical point of the project, and you can imagine three months before start-up there’s a punch list – the list of things to do before you can start the plant – and it was enormous, thousands and thousands of items.
The name of the game was to get rid of all the category A items, which stop you starting up, and diminish that list to a point that it was manageable, so that we could hand over to the customer and really give them a good shot at a good start-up. We did, and that was the magic, that was the game, that was the score—that as a bunch of people you could create something outstanding. And I’ve never left that behind.
I’d just turned 30. I remember saying to my husband, “This is it. I want to be a manager.” He said, “I don’t think you’re ready,” which was a very gutsy thing for him to say at the time. But he was right. I had so much more to learn. Yes, I could go out and ignite a workforce with a really clear vision and a really clear outcome. I mean, I didn’t have to sell a vision—it was there, it was obvious—all I had to do was lead to the finish line. What I’ve had to learn is when the finish line isn’t that clear, how do you create vision, how do you create energy to then get people motivated and excited, year on year on year?
GEreports: Did you do that through formal education?
Mary: I haven’t done an MBA, but a lot of what I’ve learned has been through leadership courses. And really it’s on-the-ground experience—I don’t think you can exchange that. I’m sure I still have gaps and blind spots, but my biggest gift has been 360-degree feedback. If you can get it and believe people when they give you feedback, and not go into excuses, not go into the whys and wherefores, if you can really take it on and swallow it, digest it, and change from there, I don’t think there’s anything can stop you.
GEreports: You’ve observed at least a couple of education systems, in Ireland and Australia. What could our education systems do to encourage young people into STEM subjects?
Mary: The world is transforming. Microprocessing speed is increasing exponentially. So in technological capability, we are growing exponentially... But I don’t think our teaching methods are keeping up with that. So there are all sorts of counteractions that will stymie the growth that technology could give us, and it’s a matter of creating the space around those so that man and machine can work together.
Our school systems are not set up to have people understand what true success really looks like. I’ve got this belief that [the value of] competition is a fallacy. We totally overplay competition. We’re not competing with each other; we are acting together. Competition, where it’s effective, is where it forces us to raise the bar. But we’re not actually competing to eliminate each other and I think schools traditionally have been in the space of saying that success is about beating others. Sport in particular gives us that view of the world.
The most heartening thing I’ve seen lately was at my son’s school. He’s gone into Year 12, and they had a “What this year’s about” event. The piece of advice that blew me away was, “You smarter boys need to bring the other boys up with you, because the higher the average of the school the better you will be treated in the moderation of the results.” It is the first time I’ve ever heard a school or teachers talk to kids about helping the others, making sure that everybody is coming up to the same level. And I thought, “Wow! This is a shift. This is something different.”
Collaboration is what the future is about. As we deal with customers, collaboration will give us the advantage. There are a few things you must hold tight, but the rest of it is about creating collaborative environments, as opposed to beating each other.
GEreports: How can we help schools be more open-minded, especially in promoting collaboration around STEM subjects?
Mary: I think as an industry we’ve got to get into schools more, we’ve got to be presenting. A career in STEM is just phenomenal but it has become a little bit unpopular.
Being a science person is not something that’s been celebrated. I don’t think we celebrate science enough, and we’ve got to find opportunities to do that. GE has so many exciting things, we’ve got to create that space, and build the excitement.
Anybody, anybody, can do STEM. It’s about getting a solid education. It’s about ability for logical thinking, and that’s it. Somehow we’ve just got to have kids understand that this is a great place to stretch yourself, grow your brain. Between 15 and 22 or 23, you want to expand your thinking as much as you possibly can. STEM is such a great foundation.
GEreports: Are there projects or moments in your career so far that you’re most proud of?
Mary: My most proud moments are people. The things you do yourself are neither here nor there in the scheme of things. But when people say, “It was because of you I did this,” ... that really is the tear-in-the-eye moment. I’m not going to be a great inventor, I’m not going to add those things to the world. Hopefully what I can add to the world is a level of encouragement, motivation and inspiration, particularly to women. That’s why I encourage people to go and talk and inspire ... you don’t know the long-term effect you’re going to have on people’s lives.
GEreports: What inspires you now?
Mary: I’ve achieved reasonably well. My inspiration now is that the dial of gender balance hasn’t shifted, and that I’ve got so much more to do to shift that dial.
At the beginning of my career everybody was vying to do engineering … it was so competitive. Now it’s not. That’s nuts when you think of where technology has taken us. It’s going to be engineers, physicists, geologists, geophysicists who shape the future. It’s people with the analytics capability who can really figure what are the questions that need to be answered. It’s so essential given the exponential rate of the growth of technology that we have these capabilities to complement it.