The Engineering Leader

Past Issues

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5 Nov 26 A design review can look rigorous from the outside: the right people in the room, a full agenda and a unanimous decision at the end. It can also be pure theatre. The test is whether anyone genuinely established that the technical solution is safe, secure and in accordance with the custom...

by Steve Strange — Nov 05, 2026 newsletter

#129 - The Transition Debt!

29 Oct 26 An Engineer's career is a series of transitions: from education to a first job, from graduate to Chartered status, from technician to team leader, from team leader to Chief Engineer, and from one programme, platform or employer to the next. Every one brings anxiety, uncertainty, imposte...

by Steve Strange — Oct 29, 2026 newsletter

#128 - Governing Governance!

22 Oct 26 I've seen documents with at least ten signatures on the front cover. It doesn't make them safer. It makes them slower, feeds egos and quietly turns the governance system into shelfware. In the gaps, people develop their own unwritten philosophies about how to deal with the rules. In saf...

by Steve Strange — Oct 22, 2026 newsletter

#127 - Risk, Cost, Consequence!

15 Oct 26 Boards don't need to understand how it works. They need to understand what happens if it doesn't, what it will cost to fix, and what it will cost to ignore. Most Engineers spend their time on the first and run out of it before reaching the other three. In the Navy, a shared mission made...

by Steve Strange — Oct 15, 2026 newsletter

#126 - Three reports, but only one truth!

8 Oct 26 Every week I produced the same information three times, in three different formats, and for three different recipients. It cost me two hours a week. Across my peers, it cost the company around 40. Nobody was asking whether any of it changed a decision. Trial Brief Data drives decisions, ...

by Steve Strange — Oct 08, 2026 newsletter

#125 - 130 people, one pressure hull!

1 Oct 26 In 1991 I surfaced through the arctic ice pack at the North Pole in a Royal Navy submarine alongside USS Pargo. At the time I was too focused on qualifying as a Submariner to fully register what we were actually doing. Looking back, it stands out as one of the clearest illustrations of e...

by Steve Strange — Oct 01, 2026 newsletter

#124 - Simplifying complexity!

24 Sep 26 I've watched senior people walk out of briefings before the Engineer got to the point. Not out of rudeness but simply to protect their programme. Time is precious for the people you most need to influence, and most Engineers have never been taught how to respect that. Trial Brief Being ...

by Steve Strange — Sep 24, 2026 newsletter

#123 - Don't show me your wallet, don't show me your watch!

17 Sep 26 The friction between Engineering and delivery is well documented, mostly because of what happens when it all goes wrong. The Space Shuttle Challenger is the case everyone reaches for, and for good reason: it shows exactly what happens when Engineering advice gets weighed against a launc...

by Steve Strange — Sep 17, 2026 newsletter

#122 - The square root of a jam jar!

10 Sep 26 There used to be a saying about certain Engineers: they could work out the square root of a jam jar, but couldn't work out how to remove the lid. It was an insult, and a fair one in some cases. It also points at a gap that never fully closed, and still hasn't. Trial Brief Being able to ...

by Steve Strange — Sep 10, 2026 newsletter

#121 - The Ambidextrous Engineer!

3 Sep 26 Some of the most valuable skills I ever used as an Engineer weren't Engineering skills at all. They include project management, and the ability to ask a subject matter expert exactly the right question at exactly the right moment. Neither shows up on a technical qualification, yet both w...

by Steve Strange — Sep 03, 2026 newsletter

#120 - Thinking out loud!

27 Aug 26 The best problem-solving lesson I ever received wasn't a lecture. It was a Submarine Captain narrating his own thinking, out loud and in real time, while he worked through a genuinely difficult call. He wasn't performing for an audience, he was thinking and letting us watch him do it. T...

by Steve Strange — Aug 27, 2026 newsletter

#119 - Welcome to the grey zone!

20 Aug 26 Engineers are trained to trust cause and effect. Press the button, get the response. Write the sub-routine, get the behaviour...reliably, every time (once it's been tested and debugged of course). People don't work that way, and that mismatch catches more Engineers out on the way into l...

by Steve Strange — Aug 20, 2026 newsletter

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