As I wrote about in a previous blog post, culture is an incredibly important and powerful force for architecture and engineering (A/E) firms. It is likely a primary element and driver of your strategy. I also discussed why it is important to understand your culture because decisions you make that affect structure, systems, and […]
Growth is great for a business. Growth creates opportunities for employees, helps companies attract top talent, creates economies of scale, and creates shareholder value. When done successfully, growth just seems to make running the business easier. The trick is that successful growth is not that easy. You need to have the right structure, capabilities, activities, […]
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” This is a quote that is often attributed to Peter Drucker, but it’s not clear if he actually said it. This thought has appeared in several other forms over the years such as culture beats strategy, culture trumps strategy, etc. This quote, in any form, seems to make the assumption […]
You have a great idea to expand your business by adding a new service or entering into a new market segment. The first thing that you need to do is to dive into a detailed business plan, preferably starting with the financials, to show that the concept will work, right? This is standard operating procedure […]
In a previous blog post, I outlined some measures to help architecture and engineering (A/E) firms manage productivity. The key measure presented in that post was Revenue Factor. Revenue Factor is a combination of Utilization Rate and Direct Labor Multiplier. I have defined these below for reference. Utilization Rate = Direct Labor / Total Labor […]
When the topic of strategy is discussed, often it is done so in the context of strategic planning. The process of strategic planning is where most people are first exposed to the concept of corporate strategy. If you asked them about strategy, they would likely describe it in terms of the planning process. There is […]
There are many different approaches to and views of strategy that have been developed since the field of strategic management began to develop nearly a half a century ago. Many of these are great for industries in manufacturing and consumer products – you almost never see case studies for professional services in this body of […]
Productivity and efficiency… These are pretty simple concepts, right? Productivity is typically defined as outputs divided by inputs and efficiency as actual output divided by standard output. But there is a little problem here for the type of work we do as Architects and Engineers (A/Es). What is “input’? What is “output” and how […]
We are making a small profit; all is good, right? The answer to this question all depends on how you define profit. The standard accounting definition of profit, revenue minus expenses, unfortunately does not tell the whole story. The management guru Peter Drucker put this more eloquently than I ever could when he said the […]
Whenever a group of architects and engineers get together, invariably someone will bring up the topic of commoditization and what it is doing to our profession. They talk about commoditization like it is a natural phenomenon that we can do nothing about. The truth of the matter, though, is that commoditization is a choice and […]