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FROM THE FOUNDER
Limited office interaction, unclear business plans, and overly structured communication can prevent employees from understanding the firm’s big picture. Why your people can’t see the big picture
I hear a lot of AEC firm owners and top-level managers complaining that their people cannot “see the big picture” when it comes to what the firm is trying to accomplish.
While I certainly understand that frustration, it’s usually not that difficult to see WHY that is the case. More is within control of management than they think. Here are some of their practices that are contributing to the “lack of big picture thinking” problem: 1. Everyone is not in the office. Yes, I understand all of the benefits of remote work. No commute time, easier to have a life, yada yada yada. Those things are all true. However, there are also some big negatives that may outweigh those benefits for telecommuting employees. One of them is they are cut off from management and their peers. They also don’t see and meet the clients coming and going. They don’t get drafted to come into a meeting they weren’t scheduled to be in. They don’t hear the chatter and see how other people work. They don’t feel the energy and the hum of the workplace. If they work from home all day is there any wonder they don’t see the bigger picture of what they and the firm are trying to do?
2. The office layout itself works against this. Just getting everyone together isn’t enough. If the managers are all in private offices with their doors shut and the worker bees are all in cubicles, the two may never meet. That’s not good! And once again – yes – I understand that pretty much everyone would prefer a private office over being in an open workspace. But what is best for building culture and understanding and connections between people? Isolating workers from management? I think not. 3. The business plan isn’t known, and if it is, it isn’t substantive. So many companies do their business plans and then don’t share them with everyone in the firm. Or, they share only little pieces of their plan. So how can you expect people to see the big picture? On top of it, the majority of plans I see for AEC firms are so filled with jargon, buzzwords, and unsubstantive “values” statements, how could any intelligent person not think they were BS? Clean up and
Mark Zweig
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THE ZWEIG LETTER AUGUST 19, 2024, ISSUE 1550
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