Human Frailties: Springboard to Increased Systems Engineering Influence

Abstract

One responsibility of systems engineers is to improve the quality of project decision-making. Systems engineers often struggle to deal effectively with key decision-makers who ignore critically important information. It is easy to bemoan human limitations, but in this paper, we advocate something different: using human frailties for constructive purposes. We believe that it is possible to leverage human frailties to ethically increase the influence that systems engineers have on key decision-makers. Advertisers have been using human frailties for their own purposes for centuries, and we think it is time for systems engineers to capitalize on strategies advertisers and other influencers use successfully. In this paper, we identify the human frailties which have the greatest potential leverage to increase the influence systems engineers can have on key decision-makers and suggest specific strategies and tactics systems engineers can use to increase their positive impact.