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BILL MURPHEY, from page 5

daughter is doing for the company. It helped the new professionals connect with the com- pany, because their leaders took a few min- utes to recognize their contributions. Don’t forget to include your business card with the letter so the parents can reach you. ❚ ❚ Read the sports page. For many people, sports are a way of life. Many people follow their favorite sports teams and love to share the latest scores, statistics, and game high- lights. Spend a few minutes each morning reading the headlines in the sports page of your lo- cal newspaper or check out the home page on espn.com. See which team won the latest game or who had the fastest time. I’m not suggesting that you fake interest in sports. I’m recommending that you take time to un- derstand what’s important in your employees’ lives and find a way to stay connected with them. One area I can’t cave into is the celebrity world. I don’t care which Hollywood personal- ity is seeing whom, nor will I ever care about what somebody wore to a movie premier. Some people find enjoyment in that, but as a strategic thinker, I have bigger thoughts to ponder. You’ll have to decide what works for you. There are many distinctions between leaders and great leaders, but you won’t learn many of the techniques at your run-of-the-mill leadership course. Avoid the programs that speak in the language of bumper stickers. For the architects, engineers, and consultants, I’ll shamelessly promote Zweig Group’s The Principals Academy program as the best in the AEC industry. We provide industry professionals with practical information about what works and what will make you a great leader. BILL MURPHEY is Zweig Group’s director of education. Contact him at bmurphey@zweiggroup. com.

Each month, I would write and sign notecards congratulating each employee on their birth- day. In a 400-person organization, that’s an average of more than 30 cards each month. It’s a lot of work, but they were appreciated by my team and were personally rewarding for me. A word of caution, once you start a pro- gram such as this, you must be diligent about doing it every year, because your employees will remember when you miss their birthday. “There are many distinctions between leaders and great leaders, but you won’t learn many of the techniques at your run-of-the-mill leadership course.” ❚ ❚ The lost art of writing. I wouldn’t say I’m old-fashioned. I’d say I’m classic, in that I ap- preciate the art of writing. I enjoy sending and receiving letters and notecards. For me, a letter or thank you card in my hands will always beat a well-written email or text mes- sage. During my Air Force years, for new parents, I would mail a letter to the new baby welcom- ing him or her to the organization. In that letter, I would provide a brief summary of that day’s events: “On the day you were born, your mommy helped load 435 passengers and 34,000 pounds of cargo on eight airplanes that flew all over the Pacific.” I later found out that many of the parents kept those letters as a keepsake along with the baby’s first foot- prints and lock of hair. If you have young employees, consider send- ing their parents a letter. This may sound odd or a little invasive, but it’s amazingly power- ful. I would write letters to the parents of my new employees telling them what their son or

A NEW SEMINAR FOR A NEW ECONOMY The Principals Academy 2.0 is an updated version of Zweig Group’s crash course in all aspects of managing a professional service firm. TPA 2.0 is continuously updated with the latest approaches to leading a successful firm in this new economy. TPA 2.0 is like a two-day MBA for technical professionals and is the most impactful two days you can spend learning to build your career and your firm. The two-day agenda covers six critical areas of business management from the unique perspective of architecture, engineering, and environmental consulting firms, and is presented in tutorial and case study workshop sessions. The six critical areas include:

❚ ❚ Business planning ❚ ❚ Marketing/business development ❚ ❚ Financial management ❚ ❚ Project management ❚ ❚ Ownership transition planning

❚ ❚ Recruitment and retention To sign up or for more information, please visit zweiggroup.com/seminars/ or call 800.466.6275.

BUFFALO, from page 7

investment in Buffalo, and, in particular, of luring tech titan Musk and his SolarCity factory to town. At the local level, city government is rewriting the city’s ar- chaic zoning code, and renaming it the Buffalo Green Code. Addressing land use, development, waterfront revitaliza- tion, urban renewal, and brownfields, the new code is ex- pected to guide Buffalo for the next couple of decades. Even if Buffalo has seen a welcome uptick in progress dur- ing the last decade, it’s still true that there’s a long way to go. Buffalo, still mired in population decline, is half the size it was during the ‘40s and ‘50s Golden Era. For Tunkey, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. “There’s still a lot of opportunity for growth,” he says. “Buf- falo has great bones.”

“We would be in the running for it,” Tunkey says. As the One Seneca project is just beginning, another is well underway. A massive factory for Elon Musk-backed Solar- City, a maker of solar panels and solar roofs, is expected to be finished next year. Even as SolarCity has experienced a downturn – lethargic sales, a flagging stock price, and sub- sequent layoffs – a recent listing of SolarCity job openings at the Buffalo location included at least 26 engineering po- sitions, reflecting Buffalo’s pivot toward a modern economy. The redevelopment of Buffalo has been helped in large part by the public sector. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo pledged his “Buffalo Billion” for revitalization, and though, accord- ing to multiple news sources, that program is facing alle- gations of corruption, it’s still credited with jumpstarting

THE ZWEIG LETTER September 26, 2016, ISSUE 1169

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