The Zweig Letter

With clients not in any hurry to pay their bills and banks clamping down on firms that are non-compliant with their loan covenants, now more than ever is the time to do what it takes...

The bad economy of the last couple years, with the A/E/P professions being particularly hard-hit, has created a serious problem for many firms today— that being disillusioned workers. It is not easy to pin down...

2010 is here. And, it’s going to be a year like none before. If you aren’t particularly happy with your firm’s performance these last couple years, it’s a great time for change— radical change. Out...

It’s that time of year again. Time to dig out my crystal ball (I keep it in my sock drawer, in a pile of rarely worn argyles for safe keeping) so I can try to...

The first time someone suggested that I needed to have an “ice cream social” to help motivate my employees, I wanted to strangle the guy. Are you kidding me? We have professional employees. Sure— morale...

Although there have been many compensation-related articles over the years in the pages of The Zweig Letter, I thought perhaps it was time to clearly articulate my own strategies for compensating employees in A/E/P and...

As I begin to write this article I am sitting at “The Tournament of Kings” show at The Excalibur in Las Vegas with my two oldest daughters. Earlier today we finished off the 10th annual...

Project management training tends to emphasize the legal and liability aspects of what we do, along with scheduling and budgeting techniques. But, there is so much more to it beyond the science of project management....

As the year starts to wrap up, most A/E and environmental firms begin to rethink their incentive compensation plans: “Is our plan right for our company?”; “Does it reward the behavior we want to reward?”;...

The 10th annual The Zweig Letter Hot Firm Conference is about to take place in Las Vegas. There will be untold celebrating (what happens in Vegas stays there, remember) from this year’s winners. But, what...

While I have probably written about business planning in the pages of The Zweig Letter a dozen or more times over the years, it seems necessary to do so again. As you read this, A/E/P...

I was talking with an old acquaintance recently— a principal in a very successful international planning and design firm— about how things were going for him and his firm. In spite of some rocky times...

Everyone thinks they know why clients hire their A/E/P or environmental firm. Sometimes you DO know— but sometimes people make bad assumptions. Those bad assumptions will HURT your future selling efforts because you will be...

It’s popular to say these days that “the world is flat” or we live in “one world.” While there is some truth to these statements (thanks largely to high-speed and high-bandwidth electronic communications), this kind...

Probably no one warned you before you started your A/E/P or environmental consulting firm about the slipperiest of slippery slopes— one you don’t want to go down— that of not paying your bills on time....

Making money is rarely the reason one either buys into or starts their own A/E/P or environmental firm. It certainly can work out that way— i.e., that one makes a lot of money in this...

In these hard times we live in, many companies in our business are not performing like they once did. No question about it— there’s been plenty of suffering to go around. Fewer projects, lower profits,...

No movie was better than “Wall Street” at capturing the spirit of the go-go 80s. Michael Douglas played the role of Gordon Gekko, a charismatic “rock star” investment banker who gave a speech on the...

Short term marketing fixes? There aren’t any. You can hold a lot of meetings, make some calls, and get out and aggressively try to sell some new projects, but it probably won’t make any real...

One would think that with the business climate being what it is for A/E and environmental firms (lower volume and less profit), that everyone would be staying on top of their accounts receivable. But, guess...

Getting new people productive sooner is something that everyone who owns an A/E/P or environmental firm should be concerned about. This is NOT a topic that only H.R. managers should worry about. Principals and line...

With this kind of a statement, you might assume I am either stuck in a 90s time warp, or that I have finally lost my mind. But neither is true. Yes— I know times are...

Many firms in the A/E/P or environmental business today have some sort of designated market leaders. Usually, there’s a new business plan and part of it requires a “realignment” to a more market-driven structure. Then,...

Economic crisis or not, there’s a lot of it going on these days— firms in our “industry” buying other companies— for a variety of reasons. And while there is lots of information out there on...