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By Morgan Stinson | AEC firms win when purpose, not profit, drives client experience.

By Mark Zweig | Annual performance reviews fail AEC firms because real leadership requires continuous feedback, not once-a-year management theater.

By Michael Sanderson | The future of professional services depends less on hours logged and more on trust, ownership, and meaningful results.

By Morgan Stinson | Lessons from The Bear show AEC leaders the value of purpose, process, development, and treating every client like a VIP.

By Javier Suarez | Companies should focus first and foremost on “doing” and then worry about “saying” what they are doing.

By Janki DePalma | Small actions today can reduce stress, improve efficiency, and make life easier for your future self.

By Janki DePalma | Late bloomers gain wisdom, resilience, and unique insights, proving there’s no fixed timeline for achievement.

By Mark Zweig | To have extraordinary success, you need to make an extraordinary effort and have your full attention on the business.

By Liisa Andreassen | CEO of Psomas (Los Angeles, CA), an employee-owned firm providing engineering, environmental, construction management, and survey/geospatial services.

By Liisa Andreassen | CEO and chairman of the board at MG2 (Seattle, WA), a global architecture, design, construction, and branding studio.

By Mark Zweig | Our industry is one of the best places for anyone to build a career, and we owe it to our children to expose them to the work we do early.

By Stephanie Warino | How employees answer a question about where they see themselves in two years, and what their responses really mean.

By Adam Zach | Whether it’s by reading a book or going to a seminar, taking an active interest in your personal development could be the best thing for your career.

By Mark Zweig | Marketing starts with identifying who your target clients are. Your entire business needs to be focused on them.

By Mark Zweig | Best practices may be safe, but they won’t differentiate your firm. Make these changes and your firm will stand out.

Managing partner at Method Architecture (Houston, TX), a firm that practices ego-free architecture, creatively solves problems, and provides unparalleled customer service.

“People who show any signs of a lack of character must be confronted and dealt with immediately.”

“Square peg for a round hole? No thanks! My first preference is square pegs in square holes!”

Our success, as people and as businesses, depends on the quality and speed of our response to problems and opportunities. This play on the word responsibility is not new, but it has never been more...

If you’re a CEO, you need to take a good look at your team. Their passion projects outside of work could end up being multipliers for your firm. The title printed on my business card...

Do you need shoes on your feet, a roof over your head, and food on your plate? If you don’t have a plan, start working on one! More than one-fourth of firms in the AEC...

By Scott Johnston | Time is a luxury AEC teams do not have. And time spent on a losing effort drains resources, morale, and bandwidth on existing projects.

In this episode, Randy Wilburn speaks with an up-and-coming project engineer with BIG RED DOG, Shaun Theriot-Smith. Shaun is a veteran who graduated from the University of Houston as student body president. He's declared himself...

Did you ever hire someone who didn’t work out? Someone who effectively “fired themselves” by either refusing to accept your coaching and input or recognize the signs that they were in trouble and change their...

Break free from immediate metrics and returns, because with marketing, the ROI could take months or even years to realize. Growing up in the ‘80s, the recent passing of George Michael brought a lot of...

Too many owners/managers/leaders in AEC firms are obsessed with looking in their rearview mirrors when instead, they should be looking far down the road. Doing that – as I was taught at Freddie Spencer’s Superbike...

1. Stodge will continue to be the preferred cultural thrust for firms in 2017. Touting flexible hours, casual Fridays, and no tie Tuesdays, firms will continue to innovate as much for themselves as they do...

Anyone who knows me can tell you I’m about as “New Age” as the 1930 Model A Ford sitting in my garage awaiting its flathead V-8 transplant. That said, there really is something to the...

As with most things in life, there is a point of diminishing returns when it comes to going after new work in the AEC industry. This is especially true when times are good, as they...

A professional firm should have professional collateral, but all too often, bad photos, poor design, and sloppy writing dilute the brand. Of course you’re not an amateur. You are a professional. You work for a...

Here are a few tips on ensuring that potential employees accept your job offer, and have a back-up in case they don’t. It’s a big problem today. You go through a long search process, interviewing...

Over-confidence going into a proposal or interview can create a self-fulfilling prophecy; front-runners must be sure to wow clients. We have all been there. We find out we are short-listed for that project that we...

Marketing is the area of your business intended for giving to others. I was on-site with a client recently and we were discussing a business development strategy for their new planning group. One of the...

Mark Zweig offers remembrance on passing of dear friend and firm leader Joe Lalli. We lost a great leader, design professional, and friend with the passing Joseph J. “Joe” Lalli, FASLA, in Fort Lauderdale on...

This over-used word can be working against you. In one of our seminars, we ask the attendees to spend 5 minutes developing a short pitch to convince a potential client why they should hire the...

Mark Zweig provides 10 tips how to treat potential new employees right. One of the things we do at ZweigWhite is a limited amount of executive search consulting. Most people don’t really understand that. They...

Pent-up demand means more hiring, so here are some critical musts for attracting and retaining great people. July is a time for grilling hamburgers by the pool, packing everyone into the family Denali or minivan...

This article first appeared in The Zweig Letter (ISSN 1068-1310) Issue # 1000 Originally published 3/25/2013 Follow your passions, people – for a rich and successful life! It was an interesting week for me here...

By W. Hobson Hogan ZweigWhite Principal, Investment Banking I have represented many businesses in M&A processes and I have analyzed both great and not-so-great firms. In all of these M&A processes, I have witnessed some...

Over the years of working with A/E and environmental firms, I have run into those who will try to tell you that some managers are “too intense.” It’s as if these people are saying there...

When the company sold many years ago we learned in business school that the greatest asset of the Reader’s Digest was its subscriber database. Supposedly, it contained so many names of people who could buy...

If you look at why most A/E firms just sort of muddle along, and yet a few are growing by leaps and bounds, you’ll find the “secret ingredient” in the growing firms’ recipe is often...

For my kickoff presentation at our eighth annual The Zweig Letter Hot Firm Conference and Awards Celebration in Boston last month, I decided to talk about the differences in entrepreneurial A/E/P firms from those that...

For each of the past five years since we created The Zweig Letter Hot Firm List, there have always been readers out there who write in to ask why we are so obsessed with growth...

George Alexandra was fed up. He was tired of always having to take a back seat to his partner, Mick Flashyman. “Just because Flashyman started the company (Godlike Architects, Inc.) didn’t mean it wouldn’t be...

What is it with some people? We have all had the opportunity (or misfortune) to work with a man or woman who finds fault with everything and pours cold water on every hot idea. These...

Here are 10 things about the A/E/P and environmental consulting business that they don’t teach you in college. The best clients get crapped on. I hate to say it, but sometimes we treat our best...

From my experience, I’d say that most owners and managers of A/E/P and environmental firms have forgotten that recruiting is selling. Instead of trying to create the best impression they can on every person who...

I am continually reminded of the bizarre sense of risk some principals in A/E/P and environmental firms have. I am talking about the obsession so many principals seem to have about extracting as much as...

As someone with a business orientation and education who started competing at a young age, competition is something I’ve always been interested in. I take pride in being a pretty competitive guy— one who likes...