BuiltEnvironment

Cash for communications: incentives for publishing or presenting

Paraphrasing Shakespeare, "To incentivize or not to incentivize; that is the question."

It is difficult to get a technical professional to write and submit an article, or make a presentation about a recently completed project or what he/she does. It doesn't matter whether the audience is their peers reading an industry journal or a workshop for a public audience that needs to understand the information.

I recently heard that many colleges and universities will now confer a Bachelor's degree in architecture or engineering without a single required English class. Given this, it's no wonder that so many technical folks have such a profound fear of the blank page.

The same is true for "public speaking," regardless of an audience's make-up. According to Wikipedia's entry on "glossophobia" (speech anxiety, fancy names for "butterflies in one's stomach"),

"It has been estimated that 75% of all people experience some degree of anxiety/nervousness when public speaking. In fact, surveys have shown that most people fear public speaking more than they fear death."

It is accepted that having an article published, or being selected to speak at a conference or other event, confers a degree of prestige on the speaker and his/her employer in the form of peer recognition (and, possibly, envy!). Such exposure can help turn an internal technical champion into a Visible Expert.

So how do we convince technical folks that the rewards of writing and/or speaking far outweigh the angst they go through in the process. And how do we further convince them that it will get easier every time they engage in these activities?

 

Well, everyone likes a good ego stroking; everyone to be praised in front of one's peers. Personally, I love having my ego stroked, and wish for it every time I get an article published or get selected to make a presentation. But most technical folks still shy away from these activities.

For many of them, much as they want recognition for technical knowledge and skill, praise just doesn't seem to provide sufficient motivation for writing or speaking.

Maybe writing and speaking would be more popular activities with technical folks if their companies were to offer cash incentives!

Some A/E/C firms do give small cash bonuses to technical staff who complete an article for submittal, with a larger additional cash bonus if the article is accepted for publication.

By the same token, some A/E/C firms do give small cash bonuses to technical staff who are selected to lead technical sessions at conferences or present a paper, with a larger additional cash bonus after the presentation is made.

In addition, these activities often figure into a person's annual evaluation, impacting the assignment of salary increases and/or bonuses and the possibility of being promoted. And it is much easier to explain and/or justify a larger raise, bonus or promotion for an individual when that person has already been recognized throughout the firm for having an article published or making an industry presentation, and the positive public relations bump the firm got when that was accomplished.

 

A new kind of engineer?

 

In the January 2011 issue CE News, the "Professional Practice" column had an article entitled, "Change is good," by John P. Bachner. In his article, Bachner stated:

"The civil engineering business is not that much riskier than other professional service businesses. What makes it seem riskier is civil engineers. They have three strikes against them: Strike one - They are taught to be professionals, rather than businessmen. Strike two - many are ineffective communicators, so they find comfort in math and science, where communication skills don't matter as much. Strike three - many have weak interpersonal skills, except when talking to other civil engineers about civil engineering. Those few civil engineers who are gregarious extroverts have a huge advantage over their less-outgoing brethren because the professional service business is all about people."

I think the above was very true in the past when thinking about older, more senior engineers. Especially when you stop to think how many of them came from a time when advertising was prohibited and they were convinced that sales was demeaning and marketing was something an engineer should never do. For them, there was rarely any need to pull their attention away from the details and speak to anyone BUT other engineers.

But my own experience, even 10 or 15 years ago, was that many young engineers had chosen the profession because of a desire to help others, rather than a desire to bury themselves in the details and avoid having to talk to anyone else.

I have actually met a number of young engineers who genuinely like to go to professional meetings - not only ASCE or NSPE, but the meetings their clients would be attending - and network; who want to go to trade shows and work the booth, chatting with anyone who stopped by, not just collecting the "gimmies" from other vendors. They understand that you can't really help someone unless you take advantage of the opportunity to talk with them and learn to understand their challenges.

Many of these young engineers want ultimately to have their own businesses, or at least become principals in a business, so they have some control over the projects they work on as well as their physical surroundings. They are ready to have the external conversations required to bring in new projects and new clients, and the internal conversations that will help them learn and move up. Or successfully move out and into an environment of their own creation.

Finally, I remember that in early 2011, I watched a video that went viral, showing a 19-year old engineering student who stood up before the Iowa House of Representatives to speak eloquently about a topic that had nothing to do with engineering.

In fact, in February 2011, I wrote a post on this blog about this young engineer, who had enough poise to speak his heart and mind - with television camers rolling - on a subject that had no relation to engineering. I remember that I recommended that engineering firm watch and court this young man now, and not wait for him to graduate, because he was the stuff of which future firm leaders are made.

So my old stand-by joke about introverted and extroverted engineers notwithstanding, I actually have great hopes for the marketing skills of our younger engineers and the ongoing success of the seller-doer business model in the A/E industry. These young people will be the future stars of the industry; they will be leaders with solid communication skills and the right attitude about having the conversations that result in success.

Avoiding and/or ignoring strategic plans

Why do firms avoid strategic planning, or ignore their completed plans? Following are the answers I hear most often.

How can I predict the future in a roller-coaster economy?

The fact is, you can’t predict the future in great detail. But you can prepare your firm for a variety of possible futures. So it is important to remember that, no matter how detailed, your plan is not carved in stone. It is a preliminary roadmap to a destination you choose.

If you want to change your destination, or alter the route you take to get there, you can change your map. You can tweak the map, alter it, or totally replace it as changes in the overall economy and/or your specific market sectors result in a need to change your goals.

We don’t have the time

Generally, there is plenty of time to research clients and markets and develop a plan. What is lacking is a desire to spend that time on any activities for which the hours are not billable. In reality, A/E and related firms are the living embodiment of the cliché, “time is money!”

The research for a plan requires many hours of effort by many staff members at many levels. And even if the subsequent first draft of the plan is developed by only one person, that effort still represents many days of one senior person’s time on an unbillable task. Hammering out the final details and approving the plan can be an all-day event for many people.

We don’t know how to develop a plan

Actually, there are a number of good books that will take first-timers through the process. In fact, more than anything else, there is a lack of desire. Part of this can be chalked up to the attitude, “we’ve never done that before, so why should we start now?” or “we got this far without a plan, so why do we need one now?”

Also, there are a number of good consultants who can help a firm research and develop a plan. It is interesting that an industry of “paid experts” (architects, engineers, environmental scientists, planners, surveyors, landscape architects, etc.) should have such an aversion to hiring other paid experts to help with such a vital activity.

I don’t like to be boxed in

The strategic plan builds in a tremendous amount of fluidity and freedom. Indeed, good planners and followers of a plan know that you are allowed to – indeed have to – revisit the plan often to make sure it still accounts for the fluid nature of the economy and your markets.

But no firm should think it is a good thing to change its goals every day or even every week based on the hunches or “gut feeling” of its leaders. If nothing else, the entire firm leadership would be spending most of its time on plan updates, with very little time left for necessary leadership activities and billable project work.

A strategic plan does not box you in, but it does require that there be a real need for changes based on real changes in your market sectors. And when real changes are necessary, the means to affect those changes should be built into your planning process to make mid-year revisions fast and easy.