On Monday, December 20, 1993, William Edwards Deming, the 93-year-old management guru of Total Quality Management (TQM) died in his sleep. A statistician with a doctorate in Physics from Yale, Deming was credited with engineering...
We were talking in our office the other day about the “Big 6” accounting firms and their problems. One of our newest staffers just joined us from a Big 6 firm, and, believe me— those...
Although I dislike corny slogans and management propaganda, one of our fast-growing clients asked me recently if we had some sort of “employee credo” they could provide to new employees. This firm’s owners were concerned...
Have you seen the bumper sticker that says “Question Authority?” One thing is for sure— now’s the time to question conventional wisdom with respect to marketing A/E and environmental consulting services. Many of the experts...
No matter what the self-appointed experts are telling you, right now is a great time to buy a firm or to be acquired by or merge with another firm. But, like most things, it’s not...
We constantly get asked by principals in A/E and environmental consulting firms about what or where the next “hot markets” will be. It seems that these people have read about market life cycles in the...
Contrary to what pop management “guru” Tom Peters may say, no architecture, consulting engineering or environmental consulting firm really “thrives on chaos.” Some companies may do well temporarily, but not many are able to “reinvent...
Throughout my working career, I never asked for a raise. I never asked for a bigger bonus. I figured if my employers weren’t smart enough to pay me what I was worth, I’d go somewhere...
In seven years at XYZ Engineers, Bill Jones had become one of the firm’s most dependable project managers. Bill’s jobs always made money, and his clients loved him. Unfortunately, XYZ had gone through three bad...
With more than 40,000 architecture, engineering and environmental consulting firms in the U.S., most of which have less than 20 people, no one is going to tell me that design professionals aren’t entrepreneurial. If they...
No small company— particularly an architecture, consulting engineering, or environmental consulting firm— can afford to ignore cash flow. Consider that a firm billing $5 million a year in fees can raise $137,000 in operating capital...
It’s the time of year when you can’t reach anyone on the telephone, when important decisions seem to be postponed, and when, as one CFO who participates in our ZWEIG 100 index remarked recently, firm-wide...
It has come to our attention that a number of our readers are flying high right now. Business is great, you’re growing, you’re making money— it’s an exciting time. It seems like you’re getting every...
The ability of an A/E or environmental consulting firm to quickly hire qualified people for any opening affects virtually every aspect of its management. I call it “supply-side human resources management.” If you think about...
Good professionals have a lot in common— no matter what their profession. Take my six year-old’s kindergarten teacher, Ms. Donohoe. Many of the professionals working in design and environmental consulting firms could learn a thing...
We’ve all heard it before from people we work with: “I’m going to...” or “We’re going to...” or “I would have, but....” or “Some day, we’ll...” These “do-nothing” people may work for you, with you...
Everyone knows the old adage: “You have to spend money to make money.” But who follows it? Take the example of two of my wife’s friends. Both are smart, educated, and come from good families...
One of the key determinants of any architecture, consulting engineering, or environmental consulting firm’s ability to get work at decent fees is how well “positioned” it is. Positioning means becoming established as an expert service...
If I weren’t so optimistic, I could easily get discouraged. As an owner in a small, growing company, it seems that every time you make a buck, someone is there to take it away from...
What differentiates a “hot” firm from a “not-so-hot” one? In our experience, virtually all successful, marketing-driven A/E/P or environmental consulting firms are doing something that the mediocre firms are not. They’re developing a marketing process....
Ask anyone who has risen to the top of a consulting engineering, A/E, or environmental consulting firm where are the greatest weaknesses in their staff, and they will almost always say it’s in their “soft”...
In any number of surveys conducted over the years on what demotivates professionals in the workplace, “not feeling in on things” always ranks at or near the top. By “demotivation,” we are referring to what...
The importance and difficulty of maintaining quality was driven home to me personally last month. We sent out 12,000 pieces of mail promoting a new book, only to discover after the fact that the price...
We’re convinced that 1993 is going to be a good year for the A/E and environmental consulting industry. No matter how bad the last few years have been, every single firm has the potential to...
