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BERNIE SIBEN, from page 9

and no coherent filing system for marketing information. On the other hand, this is one of my specialty areas – helping a firm create a system that allows for easy storage in the right place, easy location of information when needed, easy update of information when appropriate, and an easy way to guarantee that updates get into the system. “What more could I ask of a new situation? If you ever change jobs, find your niche as soon as you can, get into the groove, and embrace your new team and the work in front of you.” In the meantime, I am getting to interact with more and more people every day – they stop to say hello now that they know where my space is, or I run into them in the kitchen. And I had the IT person give me an office map with peoples’ names so I could find anyone I need. So far, it has been a great first two weeks. ❚ ❚ I don’t regret closing my firm. ❚ ❚ I don’t regret accepting this position. ❚ ❚ I have very positive feelings about moving forward. What more could I ask of a new situation? If you ever change jobs, find your niche as soon as you can, get into the groove, and embrace your new team and the work in front of you. BERNIE SIBEN, CPSM, is director of marketing and business development at Chaparral Professional Land Surveying, Inc., in Austin, Texas. He can be reached at 512.443.1724 or by email at bernie@ chapsurvey.com. Dale Carnegie once wrote, “Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation, for your character is what you are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.” He was right, of course, and his sage quote is applicable to our industry. One’s ability to express an idea or hear another’s perspective is our most powerful tool in the leadership arsenal – as long as it’s not motivated by personal gain or the demands of maintaining one’s reputation. This skill, which to me is the equivalent of E=MC 2 , can move mountains and positively affect the bottom line for any firm. To combat the epidemic of poor communication, I have been on a personal mission to find out all I can, from Paul Ekman’s non-verbal coursework, reading countless books on communicating, and investing an inordinate amount of time watching numerous communication-related blogs and TED Talks. Personally, I started to see a common theme – place your ego in the back seat and start talking to people. To be successful at this, you must accept their quirks and, above all, be authentic. All of us have a desire to be liked, cared for, and respected. And all of it starts with communication, and bringing our “whole self” to work each day. DONALD MILLER is director of project management at Cuhaci & Peterson. He can be reached at donald.miller@c-p.com.

LinkedIn pages that I was both sad and happy to announce the change. On July 30, I started my new position, giving the firm its first full-time, designated marketing person. I’m also filling a niche for consulting on strategic issues as someone with extensive experience with a variety of small and large AEC firms. After dealing with all the paperwork a new position entails, I spent some time with the person who saw to the firm’s IT needs. He told me that there had not been one designated place in the network for marketing folders and/or files, and showed me all the places where information might be found. I spent the rest of that first week either looking for any marketing-related folders I could find on multiple drives and making notes about locations, or providing “new guy” insights on a variety of the firm’s strategic issues. The second week started with more searching for marketing-related files, and more strategic discussions. Toward the middle of the week, I actually started moving and reading the files in the folders I had located. I discovered that one very senior person had no resume other than a LinkedIn profile, and that every other resume was in a different format. I found a bunch of project descriptions, with many duplicated or containing conflicting information. And there was little rhyme or reason to the way things were titled or grouped in the computer system. I was appalled and delighted. On the one hand, the company is more than 20 years old, and I wondered how it had achieved the growth it had with little actual marketing

DONALD MILLER, from page 11

day. For now, let’s take a deeper look at issue No. 1, communication. In many firms, regardless of the industry, communicating has always been a key component to accomplishing goals, up and down the organization. The common thread that we seem to forget is that it’s not about the business lines we sell or even the quality in which we deliver them. It’s about the people. In the AEC business, we find ourselves struggling to meet client expectations that are many times not clearly known. We have difficulty developing concepts with teams that self-limit their own creativity due to self-negotiating what they believe is wanted by the client, and delivering against unreasonable deadlines that stifle critical thought. We as an industry have somehow fallen into selling time instead of being that truly trusted advisor. “I started to see a common theme – place your ego in the back seat and start talking to people. To be successful at this, you must accept their quirks and, above all, be authentic.”

THE ZWEIG LETTER October 15, 2018, ISSUE 1268

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