Umicore’s Post

Like the multiple “eras” of Taylor Swift’s albums, I think we can all have multiple eras – of our careers.      After squeezing every bit of learning out of each of my company experiences, I earned degrees where there was opportunity for growth: chemical engineering, business, education. And what I've found is that the learnings really do carry over from one era to the next.      This came to mind recently as Todd Zenger and I were working on a consulting engagement as a part of the work we do at the Goff Strategic Leadership Center.  To help an organization (re)imagine the strategic direction of a valuable and long-standing program, we were conducting interviews with key stakeholders.     As we participated in multiple hours of video calls, I was reminded of doing the very same thing for a large investment firm roughly 15 years ago as a consultant at Bain & Company and during my dissertation research at the University of Pennsylvania (though, we didn’t have Teams and Zoom back then with their amazing transcription capabilities....am I right, Kelly Grimaldi, Veronica Borgonovi, and Ashish Bhatia?!). Now, whenever I geek out about conditional formatting, a good ol' VLOOKUP, or even a clean Pivot Table, I think back to my ChemE days in the lab at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and many hours with Carol Uy having "fun" in Excel while we sized heat exchangers.    Some might look at my career and say it’s sad that I didn’t “find” higher ed until later in my career, but I don’t feel that way.  Just like Goff talks about organizations needing to be relentlessly focused on creating value, that’s what we can all do in our careers – not settling for what was but, instead, seeking what could be.        After all, this IS (Ruchi’s version), right?  😉

Last year we heard about and articulated a vision for the #researchculture chemical scientists want to work in. Achieving this vision will involve a range of conversations, actions and decisions. To catalyse those, we are holding a series of webinars on 'Taboos and tricky topics' to explore some of the real tensions in research culture. The first is on 14th February, they are free to attend and further details are here https://lnkd.in/erYMwuUU

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. This famous phrase by Drucker encapsulates why values, attitudes and behaviours underpin the delivery of change, positively or negatively depending on the culture of an organisation. On Valentines Day, if you love science, tune into the panel discussion hosted by the Royal Society of Chemistry to explore the importance of research culture in driving change in the chemical sciences.👇🏾 If the chemical sciences are really for everyone, the culture needs to reflect this.

Panel Discussion: Promoting Diversity & Inclusion for Engineering & Technology Education in Emerging Areas. The panel will highlight avenues & tools from their Society/Council that will help nurture members’ potential for education in Engineering and Tech. https://bit.ly/3UgaspB

A look back to history... The 1998 Williams Report was one of the earliest reviews of the engineering profession in Australia. This report includes the results of a survey of engineering graduates, with some questions similar to those asked of BeLongEng participants. An interesting change over time is the educational background of the graduates' caregivers. In 1987, between 9-20% of the graduates' caregivers had completed a university degree. By 2022, this figure had risen to nearly 46%. Satisfaction with the qualification has also increased significantly, from 70% in 1987 to 90% in 2022.

You would like to start your journey to a #sustainable lab? Then watch this inspiring video where you can learn a lot about #greenlabs and #greenchemistry. And very importantly, you don't have to make any major investments - you can achieve a lot with just a few changes to your workflows and processes. Something that I also see a lot in my work with laboratories. So - be the change and start today! #sustainablescience #sustainablelabs

A big impact we can make in this new industrialization era is driving new advanced materials out of the lab and into commercial production. At lab scale, new materials don't make a dent in how we live, work and play. Most people wouldn’t want a cubic centimeter of steel. I've been meeting and working with teams who have exciting ideas and designs for the future of the American industrial economy. But the new materials needed to really poise us for the future have been really early for a very long time. Industrial R&D Labs like Bell Labs use to work on tough problems like this. Curious, should we bring back the industrial R&D lab?

Today was discussed Graduation thesis in the industriel maintenance Branch

Sharing a few more professional highlights of 2024, as promised! Like the last paper I posted about, this paper (in print at Organization Science earlier this year) also focuses on identity conflict, but a specific, especially tough to deal with type of it. We theorize about working in a role that has oppositional, incompatible demands, and how occupants of these roles navigate the expectations. We offer a model of responses that enable employees to work in these roles, describe when each response is most likely, and the associated outcomes. Working with the brilliant theoretical minds of Blake Ashforth, Beth Schinoff and Don Lange was terrific, or course, and a great learning experience!