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By Mark Zweig | In a world of constant distraction, true effectiveness comes from knowing your priorities and having the discipline to follow them.

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

By Ezequiel Tovar | Engaging with employees at all levels fosters respect, uncovers issues, and strengthens company culture.

By Matthew Miller | By understanding and addressing the factors that contribute to scope creep, project managers can mitigate its impact.

By Liisa Andreassen | President of MG2 (Seattle, WA), a global architecture, design, strategy, construction, and branding studio.

By Ezequiel Tovar | Deciding what you will do with your firm, whether you decide to sell internally or externally, will be life-changing.

By Samantha Boeck | This type of culture drives people to compete at their best, challenges everyone on the team, and pushes boundaries to elevate the entire game.

By Mark Zweig | We all need new challenges, variety in our daily routines, and to see tangible results from our efforts to be fulfilled.

By Rachel Wilde | We must seek out the rare opportunities for safe failure and make the most of them to help our employees reach their full potential.

By Stephen Dominguez | AEC firms struggle to retrieve all of the revenue they bill out, however there are some solutions firms can use to counteract commonplace issues.

By Danielle Eisenstock | Three questions managers should begin asking themselves and their team to ensure employees are growing and enjoying the work they do.

By Adam Bugielski | Burnout is a serious condition that can lead to decreased job satisfaction, productivity, and overall well-being – but there are steps you can take to prevent it.

By Ezequiel Tovar | The four pillars of ownership transition strengthen your firm and provide a foundation for success.

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

By Cindy Sevilla Esparza | As long as learning is at the forefront of your goals, these skills will help you reach your career milestones.

By Ezequiel Tovar | Transition planning takes time, and the results are gradual – but if you do it right, the rewards are endless.

By Megan Chang | Delegating is one of the best ways for senior staff to train and transition responsibility to junior staff, but many leaders find it challenging. There’s a better way.

By Kyle Ahern | Gathering data on your employees’ experience is the first step, then you have to create action items to effect positive change.

By Stefanos Word | Investments of time and effort need to be made with younger engineers to effectively transfer technical and communication skills and establish robust future leaders.

By Scott McNally | If you swing for the fence, remember the fans, watch for curveballs, and rally your team, your firm will be successful.

By Amber Milot | Creating a recruiting culture and focusing on retention are business savvy strategies to help your organization continue to thrive in today’s job market.

By Mark Zweig | Give yourself a chance to get a lot done and you may be surprised at your ability to keep all those plates spinning.

By John Bray | There is no perfect buyer or seller in the marketplace, but how do you attract the best possible partner?

By Justin Smith | There is a disconnect between the training and skills that firms want and need for their project managers and what they provide.

By Justin Smith | When done well, this approach allows you to create a lean, flexible process that empowers your project managers to focus on maximizing value.

By Liisa Andreassen | Vice president of Morrison-Shipley Halff (Richardson, TX), a consulting firm with a passion for providing smarter solutions with a distinctly human touch.

By Liisa Andreassen | President of Galloway (Denver, CO), a firm with a streamlined process that addresses all its clients’ design needs – from architecture to civil engineering and survey.

By John Bray | How will the new infrastructure bill impact M&A activity in the AEC industry?

By Keyan Zandy | Many firms have been slow to engage in conversations with their employees about mental health. It’s time to make a change.

By Liisa Andreassen | CEO of Hardesty & Hanover (New York, NY), a world-renowned full-service engineering firm with more than 130 years of experience.

By Peter Atherton | Most leaders haven’t taken the time to reflect on their reasons to grow and, once understood, articulate them to others.

By Liisa Andreassen | They are the founder and principal of McKinney York Architects (Austin, TX), a certified HUB and WBE that creates beautiful, responsible architecture in a culture of collaboration.

By Jane Lawler Smith | Make sure your marketing uses fresh ingredients, is thoughtfully assembled, and temptingly delivered.

By Liisa Andreassen | COO of CEC Corporation (Oklahoma City, OK), a multidiscipline firm with a focus on eliminating aging infrastructure and driving community growth through innovative design.

Managing principal at Inventure Design (Houston, TX), a firm that transforms the client experience in design and architecture by creating smart, human-centered spaces.

When you don’t meet your commitments, you disappoint people and they remember it. If people can’t count on you, they won’t hire or promote you.

Leaders of employee-friendly firms talk about recruiting, culture, and the importance of employee feedback.

By Will Swearingen | In recent months, long-time issues like communication have been trumped by new challenges: loneliness, problems with technology, work-life balance, and distractions.

Managing principal of Woodblock Architecture (Portland, OR), a firm that sees each new project as an opportunity to create something awesome and build new relationships.

Finding and hiring good engineers is critically important, but difficult to accomplish. Don’t be afraid to seek outside help or use assessment tools to help you along the way.

By checking in either monthly or quarterly, you can ensure that those responsible take the time necessary to follow through on your marketing plan.

President and CEO of LACO (Best Firm Multi-discipline #46 for 2018), a California firm with a famously branded shirt.

We’re all busy with our personal and professional lives, but that doesn’t mean we should stop educating ourselves. I have spent a good portion of the last eight months crisscrossing the country training professionals in...

Change can be difficult, and sometimes it can feel punitive, but it’s crucial to the process of leaving those bad yesterdays behind. I’m a student of Lyndon B. Johnson. Being the father of a seventh-generation...

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...

Evaluate where you are, how you can improve, rank yourself and your team, and then work through every way you want to perform better. Between wrapping up business and preparing for family time most of...

Autonomous vehicles are on the way, and when they arrive, parking decks will increasingly become obsolete, and will need to be repurposed. Cars that can drive themselves, using radar, LIDAR, and other imaging devices will...

When taking control of proposals, squat down, get dirty, and just like a baseball catcher out on the diamond, manage your team. Johnny Bench, one of the greatest baseball catchers of all time, said: “The...

You might think about ditching the fancy slideshow in favor of something much more engaging and authentic – the story of your firm and its people! We’ve all been there; the highly anticipated meeting with...

Research shows that a good onboarding program is the best way to keep the people you hire, and save a chunk of change on recruitment and training. The process of accepting a job seems much...

The winning percentage in the A/E industry is not that good, so it’s vital that you learn how to take a punch and get back up to fight again! You’ve probably heard the quotes about...

If a firm wants to succeed at a high level, it must keep a keen eye on the documents, and have an ear for what the client needs. It’s my experience that too many firms...

Though harder to apply and evaluate, assessments of interpersonal skills can promote team performance and increase morale. I have had a number of discussions lately about how to measure performance. The people I’ve spoken with,...

Think of leadership not as a single person but as a team of individuals, each with his or her own strength and talent. For years I’ve watched firms struggle with leadership transition, particularly firms started...

Mark Zweig reflects on the passing of a friend and employee, and offers six tips about forming a winning team. A week ago Sunday, one of my best friends, and also the lead carpenter for...

Coach your staff on the small things that make all the difference and follow these four tips from Mark Zweig. So much of one’s success in the architecture, engineering, planning or environmental business has nothing...

This article first appeared in The Zweig Letter (ISSN 1068-1310) Issue # 989 Originally published 1/7/2013 Employ these three tactics in your selection process and you’re likely to begin seeing significant improvements in talent acquisition...

By Debbie Frederiksen Today I was sitting by myself on an outdoor patio eating lunch, checking email on my phone, scrolling through tweets, when suddenly this quote from an article resonated, “What is a place...

By Hobson Hogan I recently attended a conference on alternative investments for asset managers and investors. The attendees were mostly representatives from large institutional investors, endowments, hedge fund managers, and corporate bankers. The conference focused...

From the Chairman:Ed Friedrichs As the end of this rather protracted recession plays out (we all hope), I’ve been questioning lots of clients— both the architecture/ engineering firms to whom I consult and the companies...

I just saw a blurb in our ZweigWhite’s 2008 Marketing Survey of Architecture, Engineering, Planning & Environmental Consulting Firms that stated A/E and environmental firm’s number-one marketing strategy is “relationship building.” While most people in...

We all seem to spend a lot of money on training. That’s a loosely applied term. Many things fall into the “training pot” in a typical A/E/P or environmental firm. My anecdotal understanding is that...

Erwin Winter finally relented. For years, people had been telling him it was time for an image makeover for his firm, Winter Engineers. He couldn’t see it— the icy blue “Winter” script next to the...

I was sitting in a meeting of top managers in a fairly large A/E firm the other day when the topic of candidates for their vacant HR director’s position came up. The woman who had...

Doug Pocketprotectus sat in the high-backed leather chair in the executive conference room and desperately tried to stay awake. It was hard to do. The meeting was so boring, and he was sleep deprived as...

Schweitzer, Rosenblatt, Tunick, and McBlarsky had just ended one heck of a run. The 250-person E/A firm had grown from 40 people to 250 over the past five years. And while it was undeniably exciting,...

Raymond Stodge, managing principal of “Stodge Engineers and Architects,” was depressed. How would he get the firm’s executive committee to start taking action on the issues that had plagued the firm for years? And now...

Let’s face it. Some clients just aren’t worth dealing with. They are too much trouble, they are dishonest, they don’t pay, they don’t do what they say they will...and the aggravation that comes from trying...

We hear it a lot these days: “We can’t compete with the five-man firm across town— they’ll do the job for half what we charge,” or, “How can a big firm like ZH43C do that...