As the battered economy limps toward 2009, principals of architecture and engineering firms are being stretched to their leadership limits. Yet many A/E firm leaders are still being drawn into the day-to-day grind. Since demand for your visionary and decision-making skills is at an all-time high, give yourself enough time to think about how you are going to lead your business through 2009—a year that will be full of landmines, but opportunities as well. Start by asking yourself these five critical questions:

1. What is truly driving my business?

• Within each business unit, determine what is in your control, such as marketing, business development, collections, etc., vs. what is out of your control (e.g., stimulus package, stock market, etc.) With those factors in mind, determine whether you can increase your competitiveness in specific business lines, and how.

• Find out what your clients need from you right now, and what will they need 18 months from now. Understand what they are willing to pay for, and what they plan to live without. If your firm is losing clients, find out why. Is your firm being replaced by other service providers, or are clients simply going into hibernation?

• Observe how your toughest competition is adapting to these same drivers. How are they being innovative about marketing and business development? Are they hiring key staff, unloading costs, and pursuing relationship-building as opposed to individual projects?

2. Am I hanging on too long to strategies and
    people that aren’t working out?

• You need to be decisive in this economy. Put the right people in the right roles. Don’t let fear, turf, or ego hold you back from making the moves you know need to be made for the good of the company.

• If you need to abandon a business line, do it, and do it fast. Do not support a service that is no longer valued by your clients. If there is potential upside to underperforming business units and offices, keep them on a tight leash.

3. Am I on top of the cash situation? What about
    senior management?

• Not only do you need to be aware of the firm’s cash situation, you need to be regularly updating your senior managers as well. They need to understand the firm’s cash position so they can positively influence it. Shielding managers and staff from the firm’s actual financial performance will do more harm than good.

• Continue to challenge your firm’s current rate of spending. Revisit your lease agreements to see if you can reduce monthly payments for office space, negotiate lower interest rates on loans and lines of credit, reduce vendor and supplier costs, and ramp up collections efforts.

• Send your invoices electronically—it saves time and it’s green. Also, accept credit cards for payments on projects in addition to checks. It has done wonders for firms that are doing it.

4. What parts of your business need investment?

• Look at your business units as though they are part of your own investment portfolio. Which businesses would you invest in and why? Some of your businesses likely feed others, so that value must be taken into account. Develop a simple filter that allows you to compare the growth opportunities that exist within your firm’s business lines. Does the business have the potential to position the firm as an industry leader? Does the business allow us to provide superior service? Does the business lead to the firm being a great place to work? Do we have a champion for the business? Do we, as an organization, have a passion for the business?

5. Do the employees see me as a strong leader in
    this uncertain time?

• All eyes are on you. You need to keep your staff engaged, confident, and busy. And to do that, you need to be engaged, confident, and busy as well. If you are not coming across that way, don’t expect morale to hold up. Connect frequently with the staff, let them know where the company stands and what they can do to help the firm make the most of a bad economic situation. And tell your top performers how much you value them and why. This type of recognition can go a long way in encouraging your staff to do all they can to help the firm survive and thrive.
  
  If you haven’t been affected by this downturn yet, you likely will be. So answer the tough questions honestly and take action—now.

Use Personality Typing to Increase Profits
- LORI OAKES-COYNE

Given that labor is typically an A/E firm’s largest single expense, it makes sense to do everything you can to maximize your return on that investment. Personality profiling is one tool you can use to help leverage individual strengths, build trust, and increase collaboration throughout your firm. This kind of cultural transformation increases productivity, improves project management and client service, and ultimately leads to the creation of high-performance teams that generate superior deliverables, greater revenue, and increased profitability.

A few examples of the many typing tools in use today include the DISC Assessment, Keirsey Temperament Sorter, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the Predictive Index, and Socionics. And each of these typing tools can be used in a variety of ways to increase the return on the investment you make in your people—here’s how:

Hiring: The candidate assessment and selection process in A&E firms can be inconsistent, subjective, and inefficient. And hiring the wrong person for a position, or someone who doesn’t fit well into your firm’s culture, is a costly mistake. Personality typing, as one of the evaluation tools, can help you to select the best candidate for a specific role and for long-term fit within your firm.

Individual Integration: You may or may not have used personality assessments to hire your new principal, but you may want to consider it for getting him quickly integrated with his team. One of the best ways to “onboard” a new team leader is to provide valuable insight on his team members so he can know how to work with them more effectively. Personality typing can provide that information at a glance and significantly reduce the learning curve, leading to a higher level of production.

Communication/Conflict Resolution: In A/E firms, how well internal teams work together directly impacts the bottom line. Part of the problem affecting team efficiency may be a basic lack of understanding of team members’ differing perspectives, priorities, and motivators—and a lot of time and energy gets wasted on misattributing behaviors and attitudes. Typing tools often provide a mechanism to gain that understanding and help team members break down barriers to healthy debate and collaboration.

Teambuilding: For teams that exhibit dysfunctions like a lack of trust, a fear of conflict, or a lack of accountability, personality typing can provide the basic understanding to begin improving the communication process and helping the individuals within the team to become more reliable, responsible, and engaged. Once people are aware of how their teammates prefer to communicate, process information, and be rewarded, they can learn how to work together more effectively.

Merger/Acquisition Assessment: In the same way that you might evaluate the character traits, preferences, and motivations of an individual in comparison to the requirements of a particular position, you can compare the measured traits of a firm being acquired against those of the acquirer (buyer). Statistical comparison either of all employees or a comparable subset in both firms (project managers, principals, etc.) could show how compatible or incompatible the personalities/cultures of each firm are and pinpoint the differences.

Merger & Acquisition Integration: A/E firms can also conduct a global personality assessment after a merger or acquisition to understand where the overlap and differences are in the overall personalities and cultures of the two firms and to speed up integration. Once the people in each of the firms begin to understand each other, they can accommodate for differences in communication styles, preferences and motivations, and more rapidly learn how to work together as a more cohesive team.

Personality typing can be a valuable tool in helping your firm transform the way it does work, which can be a significant advantage in this economy.