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By Jigar Desai | As AI raises the appearance of capability, AEC leaders must get better at identifying real competence.

By Ying Liu | Ownership mindset starts before equity, with the clarity, trust, and responsibility people need to lead like owners.

By Mark Zweig | AEC firms that want better marketing need to sound more human, move faster, and stop hiding behind safe, forgettable messaging.

By Brandon Pinkerton | People-first leadership demands balance and recognition that caring for individuals shouldn’t come at the cost of organizational purpose.

By Ying Liu | The essential structural and tactical elements that underpin successful strategy execution in AEC.

By Liisa Andreassen | CEO of MKSK, a collective of planners, urban designers, and landscape architects who are passionate about the interaction between people and place.

President and CEO of Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc. (Northbrook, IL), a global firm that’s committed to helping clients solve, repair, and avoid problems in the built world.

Current world events are changing the way we value everything. This pandemic highlights the need for collaborative and equitable decision-making between leadership and staff.

If you request even a minute of precious time to meet with your firm’s leader, make sure you don’t waste the moment. If there is one thing I have learned growing up in an increasingly...

Get the word out to your people that any form of illegal conduct – bribery and racketeering among them – will be grounds for immediate termination. Last week, attorney G. William Quatman, FAIA, Esq. wrote...

Campaign finance laws, bid rigging, price fixing, and bribery. We hear about this with contractors, but how about design professionals? Several times each year, there is an article about some contractor being debarred or convicted...

The fact of the matter is that design and environmental firms are not easy organizations to lead. Their cultures are fragmented. The people who work in them are all too smart, their egos too big,...

I have never been big on “business is a game” analogies. The people I have met over the years who’ve used this analogy never seemed to exemplify the kind of values that I think you...

Anyone who studies human behavior in business organizations can tell you that confidence is a critical quality for leaders to have. This certainly applies to A/E/P and environmental consulting firms. When the leader is confident,...

Call me any names you want. It won’t be the first time. But it doesn’t matter. I’m tough. I can take it. I have the power of my own convictions and conscience to get me...

There are lots of different success formulas for A/E/P and environmental consulting firms. It’s always interesting to me when one of our consultants discovers that a company we are working with is successful in spite...

It has been said that the only thing an A/E/P or environmental firm can do in a presentation is “not lose the job”— meaning that the selection decisions are made before presentation time, and can...

Management junkies— There is a whole cadre of “management junkies” out there working in A/E/P and environmental consulting firms. These are smart people. But as a friend-of-a-friend of mine, Tony Pirrone (an octogenarian Cadillac salesman)...

There really is something to the notion that you do your best work when you feel good about what you are doing. This is especially true when you are under stress. Any professional working in...

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”...