5
FROM THE FOUNDER
Getting your people to work more
T he AEC business is pretty simple really. We can say we sell expertise or creativity when we have fixed fee pricing, but for all practical purposes, we sell the time of the people who work for us. So the more hours we have to sell, the more revenue we should make. If you want people to work harder, hire the ambitious, lead by example, and reward real performance.
Then there is the other little secret – one that not everyone understands – that being that all hours worked beyond 40 billable are the most profitable hours. That’s because the overhead was recovered in the first 40. Anything beyond that has no overhead associated with it. In the case of salaried people, the revenue from each of those “over-40” billable hours is pure profit. Even if overtime is paid to the employee, those hours beyond 40 billable are still more profitable hours for the firm than the first 40 were. Yet, in today’s culture, there is an increasing emphasis on work-life balance. I constantly see LinkedIn posts by so many self-proclaimed “successful” people advising their readers to not sacrifice their personal time for the job. Here is an example of one I read the other day: In the pursuit of “success,” it’s easy to forget what really matters.
But here’s the reality: – Work isn’t your family – You’re not your job title – And job security isn’t a promise You weren’t born to grind. You were born to live.
Mark Zweig
Performance reviews don’t determine your worth, and your value isn’t measured by deadlines or KPIs. My response to this is: “Unless you want to get ahead.” So with this being the “popular wisdom” today, how do we get our people to work more hours? There is no simple answer. These are the things that come to mind:
See MARK ZWEIG, page 6
THE ZWEIG LETTER NOVEMBER 3, 2025, ISSUE 1608
ELEVATE THE INDUSTRY®
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