“Engineering is the closest thing to magic that exists in the world.” — Elon Musk
That quote lands differently depending on when you encounter it. Read it in an engineering textbook and it sounds like flattery. Read it on a morning when you have made a video call to someone on the other side of the world, checked a medical result online, turned on a tap, switched on a light, and driven to a meeting on a road that simply exists and it starts to feel like a statement of fact.
We are living inside the results of engineering ingenuity. We are just very rarely paying attention.
What engineering has given us #
Pat Sweet, President of The Engineering and Leadership Project, has written persuasively about the reality engineering has helped create and why that reality is, by and large, a beautiful one.
The case he makes deserves to be stated clearly, because we rarely hear it stated at all.
People have been brought together. Through the power of communication technology and transit systems, the entire world is accessible in ways that would have been literally unimaginable to every previous generation of human beings. The person in rural Scotland can collaborate in real time with someone in Singapore. The family separated by an ocean can see each other’s faces while they speak.
The world is generally a safer place, particularly for travel. Road engineering, aviation safety systems, maritime navigation technology; each of these has reduced mortality rates that were accepted as inevitable by previous generations. We now expect to arrive safely. That expectation itself is an engineering achievement.
Lifelong learning is there for the taking. Online resources and learning platforms have democratised access to knowledge in ways that would have seemed miraculous even thirty years ago. The university library that was once accessible only to students of that institution is now accessible to anyone with a connection.
We are kept healthier for longer. Medical research is highly dependent on tools developed by engineers. The same can be said for clinical medicine. The MRI scanner, the surgical robot, the ventilator, the insulin pump; all of them engineering achievements, frequently described as medical ones.
Engineering excellence has ensured our homes have power, water, and other utilities. We turn a tap. Water comes out. We flick a switch. Light appears. The National Academy of Engineering notes that many of the great technological accomplishments of the twentieth century: computers, spacecraft, health technologies, are largely products of engineering but are so often described as scientific advances that the engineering contribution goes uncelebrated.
The ingenuity is hidden inside the result.
Taking it for granted #
Yet it is so easy to take all of this for granted. To my way of thinking, this is wrong.
Ideas: we can act upon them straightaway, wherever we are in the world.
Communication: we can contact someone straightaway, wherever we are in the world.
Education: we can learn new things straightaway, wherever we are in the world.
These three sentences contain what would have seemed to any previous generation a description of pure magic. The ability to act on an idea immediately, from anywhere. The ability to reach anyone, instantly. The ability to learn anything, on demand. None of it existed a hundred years ago. All of it exists now, so seamlessly that most of us experience it as ordinary.
Engineering is, indeed, a beautiful thing.
A downside of modern life is that it is more difficult to switch off; the always-on nature of the tools engineers have built creates its own pressures and demands. But the upside is that we can use those tools to get ahead whenever we wish, on our own terms, at our own pace.
As a society, is it right that we always consume the content, thoughts, and opinions of others? Probably not. More than ever before, we can explore more widely and produce our own content, shape our own thoughts, and form our own opinions: content, thoughts, and opinions that become personal assets, or the assets of our businesses.
The Groucho Marx principle #
“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set I go into the other room and read a book.” — Groucho Marx
That observation, delivered with characteristic deflation, captures something genuinely important about the relationship between the tools available to us and what we choose to do with them.
Engineering gives us the tools. What we do with them is our responsibility. The same infrastructure that makes it possible to spend an evening passively consuming algorithmically selected content also makes it possible to write, create, connect, learn, and contribute. The access is identical. The choice is ours.
This has always been true but has never been more consequential. The information age has not merely given us more content to consume. It has given every individual and every business the means to produce content: to share expertise, to demonstrate value, to build relationships, to become a useful presence in the world of the people they want to serve.
Lead generation as an engineering discipline #
Lead generation as an engineering discipline? There’s a thought. And not as whimsical as it might first appear.
Engineering is, at its core, the disciplined application of process to solve problems reliably and repeatedly. It involves research, design, testing, refinement, and consistent execution. It values precision and patience equally. It builds systems that work not once but thousands of times, in varying conditions, without requiring heroic individual effort to produce each result.
So does effective lead generation. The call-back rota, the four-category pipeline, the cadence of soft touches, the discipline of following up when other duties press — these are processes, not performances. They require the same qualities that engineers bring to their work: clarity of purpose, consistency of execution, and the willingness to trust the system rather than waiting for inspiration.
New Era has and still is working with engineers specifically and the fit is natural. Engineers love process. They understand that a well-designed system, maintained consistently, produces better results than sporadic brilliance. They are, almost by professional formation, sceptical of shortcuts and comfortable with the unglamorous work of getting the fundamentals right.
I just need to keep cranking the well-engineered handle on creativity.
Engineers around the world, I salute you. Your gift to us is the world we live in and the tools with which we can make it a little better still.
Thank you for reading.
Author: Richard Bull-Domican, founder of New Era Financial Introductions, a B2B lead generation consultancy with over twenty years of experience. The perspectives shared here come from two decades in the field; not theory, but practice.
I create small, digestible guides on Gumroad for business owners who hate aggressive tactics and prefer relationship-led approaches. New resources are added regularly. For longer reads on lead generation and the human side of sales, follow me on Medium and join the daily conversation on LinkedIn.
Gumroad: https://richardbulldomican.gumroad.com/
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