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By Mercedez Thompson | As our industry and client expectations evolve, so must our strategies for winning complex, high-stakes project pursuits.

By Mark Zweig | Effective outside directors provide expertise and valuable relationships, enhancing AEC firm success with strategic guidance and forward-focused leadership.

By Kevin Johns | In order to remain competitive, AEC firms need to understand and embrace new technology.

By Keyan Zandy | The best way to foster a lean culture is by engaging with people, celebrating what they do well, and empowering them to be a part of the change you seek.

The next time you have a critical project or important concept to communicate, forget the jargon and consider telling a story.

Communication, decentralized decision-making, and rapid assessment and implementation are key, in both disaster response and your business.

By putting energy into the power of habit, deep work, productivity tools, and daily scheduling, you will see immediate and lasting productivity gains.

“I used to be addicted to social media … So I stopped. Today, I still use social media, though only for business purposes.”

“Social media is a virtual world. It’s a false world. Spend more time in the real world and less time on your individual PR program, and encourage your staff to do the same.”

Come to the 2018 Hot Firm + A/E Industry Awards Conference in Dallas this September 20-21, and bring your colleagues with you! People are understandably reluctant to leave the office and their clients to attend...

I was thinking about social media and what a phenomenon it is and how it is now such a big part of our culture. Even though the odds are against it, you may be someone...

If you don’t want scope creep and unforeseen expenses to ruin your profit margins, try improving your estimating process. You planned for your project to make 14 percent, but you end up with 8 percent....

Empty slogans and tired jargon don’t do the trick. To be a great leader you have to make a personal connection with members of your team. I’ve attended a lot of leadership courses over the...

The business is evolving faster than ever. Here are Mark Zweig’s eight steps for implementing change. I am convinced that both the world and the A/E/P and environmental business are changing at an accelerating pace....

The year is half over, so here’s eight things you can do now to improve performance, Mark Zweig writes. Time’s a-wastin’. The year is now approaching halfway (time flies, doesn’t it?). You cannot keep rationalizing...

A lot of design and environmental firm principals have been around a long time— they’re an average of 48 years old. That means that they have probably been doing this work for 20-25 years or...

Leroy Whiteside, president and CEO of Those Fabulous Architects, Inc., a 200-person firm based in Charleston, South Carolina, is a great guy. He is, in many ways, the archetypal design firm principal. He works 60...

I was out working in my yard this weekend, cutting brush and chopping up fallen branches with my 18-horsepower trailer-mounted chipper, when one of my friends and clients dropped by. He’s an architect and was...

“Training.” It sounds like a good thing, right? Everybody likes training. It’s supposed to make people better at their jobs, and that’s good for them. The business news media tells us that Generation X-ers will...

Although conventional wisdom says that an A/E/P or environmental firm’s greatest asset is its staff, that may not always be so. I don’t want to diminish or underestimate the importance of the workers to a...

Mention “human resources management,” and too many principals and managers working in A/E/P and environmental firms will turn their noses up. They immediately associate it with benefits administration or eight-page performance appraisal forms, instead of...

Client-driven organization structures for A/E/P and environmental consulting firms are built around serving particular client types. Sure— it’s a popular management trend right now to be “client directed,” or “client centered.” But don’t think these...

A/E/P and environmental consulting firms are really in the business of selling time— something there never seems to be enough of. That’s why it’s important that we all use our time wisely. Here are my...

Conventional wisdom (CW) isn’t always so “wise.” Let’s take a look at some of the wisdom frequently heard in the halls and conference rooms of A/E and environmental consulting firms: The company will be profitable...