I was recently reminded of a poster I saw when I was much younger, probably in my early twenties. While the original poster actually had a picture of a young child seated on a potty, during toilet training, the version at right has the same text and works for the purpose of this discussion.
Now to the real subject of this post.
Recently, there has been discussion in one or two MySMPS groups about suggestions for getting technical folks (architecture, engineering, planning, surveying, construction management, landscape architecture, environmental staff) to help with the creation of marketing documents that require their skills, knowledge, and experience to write—more specifically, project descriptions and cut sheets, website text, professional articles and white papers, and technical sections of proposals, all with appropriate photographs and other images.
It is a fact of A/E/C life that the technical staff in every firm have supervisors standing over them, pushing them to maximize billable hours. So they tend to shy away from, or totally ignore, or refuse to participate in any task(s) they perceive to be overhead—i.e. unbillable hours. Any task not billable as part of their current project(s) falls into this category. The task can be marketing-related, drafting project invoices, making presentations at conferences, and others.
My response to the question of how to get technical staff to participate is to open a discussion with Human Resources staff about altering the job descriptions of all technical staff at or above the level of project manager (PM). This alteration involves a statement that relevant paperwork is part of their job. So a PM must get invoicing done timely, get paperwork on new projects to the Accounting department timely, create new project descriptions and/or get information to the marketing staff timely, update project information for marketing every time a project modification is filed, and do a final edit of all marketing information when a project has been completed.
Once the new job descriptions have been approved by senior management, rolled out to the relevant staff, signed-off on by that staff, and implemented, these new tasks become "part of the job" and must be done as part of project opening, project modification, and/or project close-out. If they are not done timely, the result could be a smaller raise or no raise at all when someone's anniversary date comes around, because they haven't done the whole job. The result could also include a smaller annual bonus or no bonus at all, regardless of the profitability of that PM's projects over the previous year.
In pursuing new work by responding to an RFQ or RFP, one of the owner's main questions is, "what have you done lately that is like my project?" The technical staff are the ones best equipped to answer that question, whether it involves generic project sheets, specific project challenges and solutions, individual professional resumes, or discussion of awards and other peripheral information.
Getting this cooperation and the needed information requires that marketing staff build and maintain strong relationships with technical staff, based on respect for their responsibilities and schedule challenges, and a commitment to taking as little of their time away from billable ("real") work as possible. How marketing staff do that is a subject I have addressed elsewhere, and will be happy to discuss with any readers who contact me for more information.