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ON THE MOVE WILSON & COMPANY HIRES JOHN D’ANTONIO JR. AS WATER RESOURCE BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Wilson & Company Inc., Engineers & Architects, welcomes John D’Antonio Jr., PE, as the water resource business development manager based at the company’s Albuquerque headquarters to lead the growth of the water resource services in the Southwest region. “We are excited to have John join the team in this key role,” said Dan Aguirre, PE, CFM, senior vice president at Wilson & Company. “John brings tremendous experience in New Mexico and beyond. He has strong leadership and strategic planning skills, which combined with his technical knowledge, makes him an incredible asset to Wilson & Company as we grow our water resource services throughout the region.” D’Antonio brings more than 40 years
of experience in water resources engineering and regulation, water policy, water rights, infrastructure funding, water planning, dam safety, acequia rehabilitation, and construction. D’Antonio was the New Mexico State Engineer and Secretary of the Interstate Stream Commission under three different Governors and developed key relationships with the local, state, federal, and Tribal governments and helped negotiate three key Indian Water Right Settlements in New Mexico. These settlements have led to nearly $2 billion in infrastructure improvements and, more importantly, adjudicated Tribal water rights while bringing wet water to many Tribal communities and reducing conflict for competing water resources between Indian and non-Indian communities. Additionally, D’Antonio has a strong background in coordinating planning, design, cost engineering, construction,
and environmental restoration of many federal projects while focusing on key milestones and deliverables, with NEPA compliance to complete projects on schedule and within budget. In his 22 years with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, D’Antonio has served in the positions of hydraulic design engineer; chief of hydraulics, hydrology, sedimentation, and floodplain analysis; project manager for civil/military/ international and interagency support; deputy district engineer for programs and project management; and senior executive service roles as the program director for the USACE South Pacific Division and regional business director for the USACE South Atlantic Division. In this role, D’Antonio will identify opportunities to expand services and offer clients expert results through discipline, intensity, collaboration, shared ownership, and solutions.
more. Those readers who knew me 30 years ago know I used to be a hard-liner on certain rules. I am much less so now because I have learned that isn’t the best way to create a healthy and positive work environment. 4. Less division/more focus on the whole. This is something that makes some principals of AEC firms very uncomfortable. They think that we have to do P&Ls on every office or department in the firm and share all of this information – or that we have to pay our bonuses based solely on individual performance – all in the name of “accountability.” While I won’t argue that doing so will make people more accountable, it will also create unhealthy competition and elicit behaviors that can be counter to what should be one of your top priorities as a business owner, i.e., creating a growing and profitable company in its totality. The best way to do that is not always breaking the business into parts that compete with each other for resources and don’t cooperate and/or help each other. We all know that there are cycles to individual disciplines and geographies that mean there will be times one service line or market is hot and others may not be. Yet, they are all necessary to providing a complete service to our clients and to accomplishing our longer term goals. So reinforce that idea versus making yours a culture of “eat what you kill and don’t share any of it.” It will make your business a better workplace and you will get better long-term results. None of these things are easy, mostly because they will force you and your managers to unlearn some of what you could consider cornerstones of “good management practice.” But we live in a rapidly changing world and have to recognize that and act accordingly, or we will find we are plagued with high staff turnover and lower productivity than we used to have. Mark Zweig is Zweig Group’s chairman and founder. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com.
MARK ZWEIG, from page 11
criticizing how someone is doing, they would be better served to instead focus on how they can help the person. What are the impediments to them doing their best job? What demotivates or discourages them at work? How can management help them more? Where do they see themselves in five or 10 years? What roadblocks do they perceive that could keep them from accomplishing that? It’s these kinds of questions and follow-ups that create a more positive and motivational experience for the individuals who work at the company, and that makes them happier workers. It really only became clear to me as a teacher that this has become more of my orientation in the last few years and one I plan on sticking with. My emphasis is not on grading, as it is for many teachers, but rather on teaching and helping. So I don’t give tests that involve recall of information, and instead only have people write papers and do projects and presentations – and I spend more time than ever in one-on-ones with my students. 3. More flexibility versus hard and fast rules. If there has ever been a time to be more flexible instead of having unbendable rules, it is now. The best example of this is whether or not you will allow people to work from home. If the pandemic taught us anything at all, it was that not everyone has to be in the office all day, every day. I’m not saying there aren’t many positives associated with that if we can get our people to do it, but it is not the only way everyone works best. And demanding everyone be there may cost you some good people who have reoriented their entire lives around not having to go in every day. This is just one example. There are many other rules one could be flexible on, such as how people can decorate their own workspaces, when they have to arrive by, whether or not they are allowed to bring their dogs to the office, and
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THE ZWEIG LETTER OCTOBER 17, 2022, ISSUE 1461
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