TZL 1606 (web)

October 20, 2025, Issue 1606 WWW.ZWEIGGROUP.COM

TRENDLINES

Marketing budgets

$0 $500,000 $1,000,000 $1,500,000

Firms that scale successfully evolve their leadership approach, formalize operations, and stay grounded in culture. Leadership must evolve with scale

According to Zweig Group’s 2025 Marketing & Business Development Report of AEC Firms , median firm- wide marketing budgets have risen to $400,000, with large firms reporting annual spend exceeding $3 million. Participate in a survey and save on a Zweig Group research publication.

“B usinesses grow through stages, and each stage demands a new kind of leadership.” This quote from John C. Maxwell captures a critical truth: the leadership style that drives early success often becomes insufficient as a business matures. In the early days, founders typically lead through personal drive, hands-on involvement, and fast decision-making. But as firms grow, leadership must evolve – embracing strategic delegation, scalable systems, and the development of others. This is especially true for architecture and engineering firms, where growth is often shaped by both market forces and internal complexity. To sustain growth through each stage, leaders must recognize new challenges and develop the skills necessary to navigate them. These are the key leadership concepts essential for driving growth at four different stages: 1. Startup phase (1–10 FTEs). This phase begins with one or more individuals who see an opportunity to build a business around their expertise. Early success hinges on their ability to deliver quality work, build client relationships, and respond quickly to opportunities. As demand grows, the firm must replicate its capabilities across teams to scale effectively. Leadership at this stage must: Have a commitment to training others Delegate minor production tasks Ensure their vision of quality and service remain consistent 2. Small firm (11–50 FTEs). With multiple production teams and growing client demands, leadership must now focus on managing both people and processes. It’s also during this stage that foundational support functions – such as marketing, IT, and HR – begin to take shape. Growth becomes constrained not by market opportunity, but by leadership’s ability to delegate. One of the most common roadblocks at this stage is the founder’s reluctance to release control. Without trust in the next tier of managers, firms often plateau. To break through, leaders must: Shift from an individual to a corporate structure mindset

Steve McAdams, P.E.

FIRM INDEX Bonnett Design Group ......................... 10

ISG .......................................................................... 4

MKN......................................................................8

Pape-Dawson ............................................. 10

MORE ARTICLES n CHAD SURPRENANT: One firm, one bottom line Page 3 n MARK ZWEIG: Staying calm under fire Page 5 n JON HANLON: A lifetime of mistakes – and what I learned Page 7 n GREG SEPEDA: Tell a story Page 9

See STEVE MCADAMS, page 2

THE VOICE OF REASON FOR THE AEC INDUSTRY

STEVE MCADAMS, from page 1

Focus on standards and repeatable systems Delegate operational responsibilities Invest in mentoring and developing team (business) leaders

3. Mid-size firm (51–200 FTEs). At this level, managers must be trained in core business functions – budgeting, forecasting, staff development, and backlog management. Principals become responsible not only for delivering work but for generating it. This transition can be challenging for technically oriented professionals. Many firms address this by offering ownership to key individuals who are willing to embrace the business side of the practice. While this may dilute equity in the short-term, it can fuel long-term growth. Sustaining momentum also requires aggressive hiring. A firm may need to onboard 30 or more new employees annually just to support organic growth and replace typical turnover. Without a structured recruitment and onboarding program, growth may stall. At this stage, acquisitions become a viable path to supplement organic expansion. To thrive as a mid-size firm, leaders must be willing to: Teach and delegate business operations Develop future principals with both technical and business skills Formalize recruitment and retention strategies Reinvest in the firm through ownership stake or M&A 4. Large firm (200+ FTEs). Larger firms require robust, scalable systems to manage complexity. A dedicated executive team (C-suite) typically oversees business continuity, financial planning, and human capital strategies. Growth now requires a strategic balance between organic expansion and acquisitions. Structured internal training programs ensure alignment with the firm’s standards and culture, while leadership development becomes formalized to secure future continuity. Mature firms often have dedicated teams for M&A – focused not only on financial performance, but on cultural fit, talent retention, and integration. Leadership takes on a visionary role, constantly exploring new markets, service lines, and geographies. To lead a large firm effectively, leaders must: Build scalable systems and leadership pipelines Align culture across diverse teams and locations Combine organic growth with strategic acquisitions Maintain a long-term vision while managing short-term execution FINAL THOUGHT. Each growth stage presents new challenges – but also new opportunities. Firms that scale successfully do so by evolving their leadership approach, formalizing their operations, and staying grounded in culture. Agility, systems, and clarity are the levers that drive sustainable growth at every phase of the journey. Position your firm for the next stage of growth. Whether you’re looking to expand through acquisition or maximize value in a sale, Zweig Group’s M&A consulting team brings decades of AEC-specific expertise to every transaction. From identifying the right opportunities to structuring, negotiating, and closing deals, we help firms at every stage of growth navigate the complexities of M&A with confidence. Learn more here . Steve McAdams, PE, is a mergers and acquisitions advisor at Zweig Group. Contact him at smcadams@zweiggroup.com.

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THE ZWEIG LETTER OCTOBER 20, 2025, ISSUE 1606

OPINION

One firm, one bottom line

A one-profit-center approach encourages teamwork across offices and disciplines, minimizing silos and supporting sustainable, firm-wide growth.

A rchitecture and engineering firms typically operate within three key dimensions: geography (where the work is performed), services (what work is performed), and business units (to whom the work is sold).

In a field where segmenting profits by these dimensions often creates unintended silos, ISG has taken a different approach – one that has scaled with our growth, reinforced our culture, and advanced

architecture group outperforms their structural engineering team, or compare business units like education versus residential. While this data can be insightful, using it to guide compensation or decision- making can introduce risks. OUR STORY AS A ONE PROFIT CENTER FIRM. ISG has operated as a single profit center firm for more than 52 years. From a basement office to 16 locations and more than 580 employee-owners, that structure remained consistent even through rapid growth and acquisitions. When we opened our second office, we considered segmenting profits. But we decided against it. As we expanded, we realized we lacked the systems to fairly allocate company-wide overhead to each office,

Chad Surprenant

firm-wide success. PROFIT CENTERS.

A profit center is a business segment tracked for its costs, revenues, and profit. Many firms adopt multiple profit centers to determine how earnings should be distributed. Small firms rarely segment this way due to scale, but as companies grow, the temptation to analyze performance by segment becomes stronger, especially with a finance and accounting team that can slice data across any of the three dimensions.

Multi-office firms often track each location’s performance. Others assess whether their

See CHAD SURPRENANT, page 4

THE ZWEIG LETTER OCTOBER 20, 2025, ISSUE 1606

ELEVATE THE INDUSTRY®

No model is flawless. But firms with multiple profit centers must stay alert to unintended consequences. You may need to rethink profit-sharing to avoid internal competition. You may need more intentional communication to combat information hoarding. Otherwise, teams may optimize locally at the expense of the whole. ISG has chosen the single profit center route because it aligns with our values. No one is disincentivized from sharing resources or ideas. Our only competitive focus is on ISG wins – firm-wide wins. When a new office opens, others rally around it, knowing their support won’t impact their own performance or recognition. We believe that good behavior begets good results. Focus on doing what’s right, and the right metrics tend to follow. Our diversity across geography, services, and markets helps steady the business when external forces shift. We don’t have to chase short-term wins when we’re already playing the long game. SCALABLE PRACTICES TO REDUCE SILOS. The single-profit-center model may not be for every firm, but the following practices can help reduce siloed behavior, regardless of structure: ■ Align incentives with firm-wide goals. Compensate teams based on overall performance, not by office or business unit. This encourages collaboration and discourages internal competition. performance to inform decisions, but avoid using it as a basis for profit-sharing. Transparency is valuable when it drives learning, not rivalry. ■ Promote cross-location and cross-discipline collaboration. Create systems that support workload sharing, joint pursuits, and knowledge transfer across offices and services. ■ Invest in onboarding and integration. When opening new offices or adding services, provide support from across the firm. A rising tide lifts all boats when no one is penalized for lending a hand. ■ Use performance data wisely. Track segmented ■ Encourage long-term thinking. Promote strategic decision-making by reinforcing that sustained success matters more than short-term gains. ■ Be intentional about communication. Guard against hoarding of information by building a culture of openness, especially where segmented structures already exist. Silos break down when people have shared stakes in shared success. Chad Surprenant is the chief strategy officer at ISG. Connect with him on LinkedIn .

CHAD SURPRENANT, from page 3

and more importantly, we questioned the point. From the beginning, our mindset was simple: answer the phone, take the meeting, and say yes to the work, regardless of where it came from. That approach built service and client diversity, which became a core strength. What’s hot one year often isn’t the next. Flexibility and teamwork helped us thrive. The purpose of each new office was to create opportunity for the entire firm. Project delivery often spanned multiple locations and assigning profits geographically would have discouraged the very collaboration we were trying to build. Today, with offices across multiple states and several acquired firms, our systems can absolutely break down performance by geography, service, or market. And in limited ways, we do. Leaders need visibility. But how you use that information matters. “ISG has chosen the single profit center route because it aligns with our values. No one is disincentivized from sharing resources or ideas. Our only competitive focus is on ISG wins – firm- wide wins. When a new office opens, others rally around it.” THE RISKS OF MULTIPLE PROFIT CENTERS. Once compensation or bonuses are tied to segmented metrics, people start working the system. If you reward high utilization, people will charge as much time to projects as possible. If you reward project profitability, they’ll charge as little time as possible. Multiple profit centers also create behavioral divides. If profits are tracked and shared by location, there’s little incentive to share leads, workload, or expertise across offices. We’ve recruited many professionals who were ready to escape that kind of siloed environment. TRAITS OF A MULTI-PROFIT-CENTER FIRM:

■ Competitive. Drives strong performance in isolated units.

■ Efficient. Prioritizes local goals and lean processes.

■ Short-term focused. Optimizes immediate returns over firm-wide value. TRAITS OF A ONE-PROFIT-CENTER FIRM:

■ Strategic. Supports long-term decision-making.

■ Collaborative. Encourages communication and trust across teams. ■ Integrated. Shares people, knowledge, and opportunity without hesitation.

THE ZWEIG LETTER OCTOBER 20, 2025, ISSUE 1606

FROM THE FOUNDER

Staying calm under fire

Calm leadership under pressure – whether in business, aviation, or racing – proves experience and composure drive effective decision-making.

M y wife has always been stressed out by flying. On flights together, she sits next to me and squeezes my arm so tightly at times I think she is going to bruise me! Thank God for Less Drowsy Dramamine or we would be forced to drive everywhere we wanted to go on vacation or work trips (not that we don’t drive anywhere we can within reason – it’s more fun and we control when we come and go plus have a vehicle when we get there!).

Mark Zweig

Yesterday, she found a little video that she wanted me to watch. It was all about an expert’s evaluation of a Southwest Airlines pilot’s performance in a specific situation. He had an airplane full of people and took off from the Burbank, California, airport. Somewhere around 400-500 feet above the ground, they had a catastrophic engine failure and were down to one of two engines on the airplane. The airplane they were flying could still climb in that condition but at a much slower rate. The pilot immediately reported it to the control tower at Burbank to a quite noticeably agitated air traffic controller who was talking so quickly he was hard to understand. The controller asked if the pilot wanted to return to the airport. But instead, the pilot remained calm and began going through one of many checklists with his copilot as they were trained to do in such situations.

Cutting through to the end of the long account that went into every detail of what happened – after about 20 minutes in the air going through all of their checklists, the pilot decided he would land his plane at LAX versus Burbank because it has longer runways and fewer tall buildings around it. With emergency vehicles at the airport alerted and on standby ready to go, all went according to plan and the pilot landed the airplane with no problem. The moral of the story was to stay calm and remember your training. The timing of her sharing this video was interesting because later in the afternoon we went to meet her Texas cousins – a brother and sister who were in town with their spouses on vacation in our area to ride their adventure touring bikes on some of the fantastic roads we have and visit some of the award-winning

See MARK ZWEIG, page 6

THE ZWEIG LETTER OCTOBER 20, 2025, ISSUE 1606

ELEVATE THE INDUSTRY®

TRANSACTIONS PROVIDUS CAPITAL PARTNERS ANNOUNCES GROWTH PARTNERSHIP WITH WOLD ARCHITECTS & ENGINEERS Providus Capital Partners, a growth-oriented equity partner for the architecture and engineering industry, announced that it has partnered with Wold Architects & Engineers, a leading architecture and engineering firm. The financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Founded in 1968 and headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Wold offers a range of architecture, advisory, engineering, planning, and interior design services to a diverse group of institutional clients in the education, government and healthcare markets. Today, Wold has over 350 highly skilled team members across offices in Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and Tennessee. This partnership enables the Wold team to accelerate the execution of their

growth strategy, while creating additional opportunities for team members and clients. “Providus is the ideal partner for Wold as we embark on our next phase of growth,” said Vaughn Dierks, CEO of Wold, who will continue to lead the company. “Their proven success in collaborating with management teams and building highly successful, people-first businesses made this an easy decision for us. We look forward to working together to expand our service capabilities, enter new markets, and create opportunities for our team to better serve our clients and make a difference in the communities we serve.” “We are excited to partner with the talented team at Wold” said Norm Scherr, Partner at Providus. “Wold is a trusted long-term partner with deeply embedded client relationships and clear whitespace for expansion. The firm’s

planning-first model and exposure to stable, publicly funded sectors coupled with geographic and sector tailwinds create a compelling growth story. We look forward to building upon the team’s impressive growth trajectory with additional investments in organic and acquisition initiatives.” Wold is actively seeking to acquire architecture and engineering firms in the Central and Western U.S. with at least $2 million of EBITDA. Wold Architects & Engineers is an architecture, advisory, engineering, planning, and interior design firm whose mission is to make a difference in the communities we serve. Practicing since 1968, Wold has offices in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Brentwood, Tennessee; Denver, Colorado; and Palatine, Illinois. Providus Capital Partners is a flexible capital provider exclusively focused on the A/E industry.

to the Future.” Each of these events involved two or three days at a race track of some sort combined with a round table discussion of the firm leaders in attendance. This first one was at Skip Barber Formula Car school at Moroso Raceway Park in Palm Beach, Florida. One of our instructors was an old Porsche factory team driver, the late Vic Elford. We didn’t have the internet back then so unfortunately I didn’t fully appreciate who Vic – a little guy in tennis shorts who chain smoked Marlboros – really was. He won the Rally Monte Carlo and 24 Hours of Daytona for Porsche in 1968. He won 12 Hours of Sebring in 1969. But he really became famous in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1972. Seeing a burning Ferrari Daytona in front of him, Elford stopped mid-race to save the driver. When opening the door, Elford found an empty cockpit, as the driver had already escaped. Cameras caught the act and Elford was named Chevalier of the National Order of Merit by French President Georges Pompidou. In any case, I distinctly remember the advice Elford gave me after several laps around the track in the Formula Dodge car I was driving. He told me, “Mark, the car is moving very rapidly but you need to be moving very slowly inside of it. That’s how you will do the right thing.” Maybe there is something to the notion that experience helps you acquire a certain wisdom and ability to remain calm under pressure? I’m sure I didn’t fully appreciate that when I was younger! Mark Zweig is Zweig Group’s chairman and founder. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com.

MARK ZWEIG, from page 5

museums here in the area – as well as see my wife and her sister and the rest of us. Her female cousin’s husband, “Bob,” was a military pilot and flew for Southwest Airlines for 25 years. He is now the COO of another small airline company. Somehow we started talking about flying and then this video, and that morphed into a discussion about leadership. Bob said people – when grouped closely together in a stressful situation – can quickly develop a “herd mentality,” just like the horses they had when their kids were younger. The next thing that happens is someone from the herd will quickly emerge as the “alpha” in the group to get everyone riled up. He said it’s the captain’s job to defuse and establish calm and order, and that is what you are trained to do. We then discussed how that applies to business. The leader’s job is to establish calm and order and implement the plan to deal with whatever is happening in or to the business. People who are not calm don’t make good decisions. They don’t inspire calm in other people. They cannot then lead everyone out of the mess. This morning I woke up thinking about this. The ability to stay calm under pressure is one thing that does get easier as you get older. Experience tells you that if you do the right things you will probably survive. When you haven’t had that experience of being battle-tested repeatedly it’s a lot harder to have that perspective. Back in 1997, Zweig White (the company that is today called “Zweig Group”) put on the first of a number of conferences that we did for CEOs and top managers of AEC firms called, “Racing

THE ZWEIG LETTER OCTOBER 20, 2025, ISSUE 1606

OPINION

AEC careers are built on continual learning, where mistakes, questions, and collaboration shape lasting skills and professional growth. A lifetime of mistakes – and what I learned

E ngineering is a career built on continual learning. No one makes it far without asking questions, making mistakes, and collaborating with others. Every seasoned engineer has a list of hard-earned lessons – moments where a small misstep led to a major insight. Over time, these experiences shape not only our technical skills but also our mindset. Engineering is a career built on continual learning, and no one makes it far without asking questions, making mistakes, and collaborating with others.

Jon Hanlon, PE, AMPP

Inspired by Kevin Norgaard’s piece for The Zweig Letter on communication barriers, I’d like to share some of my own lessons learned. These missteps weren’t career-ending – they were career-defining: 1. Don’t let fear of perception hold you back. I first started off my career designing surgical tools. As a young mechanical engineer I had the fortune to design and develop new innovative equipment that advanced the technology for small bone surgery. I then switched gears and began working in the marine industry, where we designed and produced remote underwater equipment including robotic manipulators and unmanned remote underwater vehicles. One of our assignments was to develop a remote vehicle that was coupled to the Russian Mir deepwater submersible. This equipment was featured in the movie The Titanic and our ROV made 17 dives on the Titanic for the movie. Our company also developed the dive helmets that were used

in the movie The Abyss . I then began working for a company that designed and produced specialized video cameras that were used to record and study plan roots below the ground surface. Each of these jobs was heavily focused on research and development, and required me to develop the confidence to proceed into areas that were unfamiliar to me. When I became a consulting engineer in the water/wastewater space, I had zero prior experience. However, my amazing previous jobs prepared me for one of the most important skills of a good engineer: Being able to “figure it out”, even if I had never done it before. Although, I quickly realized I had a lot to learn, I had the confidence that I could figure it out.

See JON HANLON, page 8

THE ZWEIG LETTER OCTOBER 20, 2025, ISSUE 1606

ELEVATE THE INDUSTRY®

– especially if the news is bad. As the saying goes, “Bad news early is better than bad news late.” 4. Keep great records. Good documentation isn’t optional – it’s essential. Create agendas for meetings. Follow up with clear minutes. Document major design decisions and share them with your team. Track how you address quality control comments and confirm changes with reviewers. Strong organization protects your work and demonstrates professionalism. FINAL THOUGHTS. If you’re just starting out – or even if you’re years in – remember these four principles: 1. Ask questions. No one expects you to know everything. 2. Ignore imposter syndrome. You can figure it out with help from your colleagues! 3. Overcommunicate. Send updates. Flag problems early. Overcommunicate until it becomes second nature. 4. Keep great records. Solid documentation supports good engineering. And most importantly, enjoy the ride. Engineering is challenging, but it’s also incredibly rewarding – especially when you embrace mistakes as stepping stones, not setbacks. Jon Hanlon, PE, AMPP is a principal engineer at MKN. Connect with him on LinkedIn .

JON HANLON, from page 7

Instead of hiding my gaps, I asked questions. Lots of them. That humility and openness became a foundation – not only for my own development, but for fostering a collaborative culture at MKN. Consulting isn’t a solo sport. It demands on-the-job learning from other professionals. Be curious. Be open. Ask questions – even the ones you think are “dumb.” 2. Ignore imposter syndrome. Even seasoned professionals feel like they don’t belong sometimes. It’s common to earn your license and still think, “I’m not an expert.” Not only can imposter syndrome affect your internal feelings about your work or self-worth, but it can also actually affect the way you approach projects, relationships, or any other areas in which you are feeling insecure. But here’s the truth: clients hire us to solve problems. They don’t expect us to know everything. They expect us to figure it out – and that’s what we do best. Adopting the mindset “I don’t know how to do that, but I can figure it out” has the power to change everything! 3. Overcommunicate. Silence is risky. One of the most damaging habits a young engineer can develop is lack of communication, or delayed communication. Whether it’s with your supervisor, your client, or your drafting team – keep people in the loop. It is generally better to overcommunicate. Delaying a reply because you do not have an answer yet often causes the other party to make assumptions about why you are not responding. It is better to communicate often and early

THE ZWEIG LETTER OCTOBER 20, 2025, ISSUE 1606

OPINION

Tell a story

Y ou’ve mapped out the process. You’ve built the checklist. You’ve outlined the logic. You’ve even color-coded the dashboard. And yet – your team still doesn’t follow the process. To drive real accountability, leaders must pair logic with storytelling that engages emotions, creates ownership, and motivates lasting process adoption.

Why? According to Lisa Cron in her book Story or Die , it’s because people don’t make decisions based solely on logic. We make decisions emotionally and then justify them with facts. If you want someone to take action – whether that’s updating a project plan, completing a QC checklist, or closing out a phase – you have to give them a reason they feel, a reason they own. That’s where story comes in. And no, I don’t mean fairytales. I mean real, relevant moments that resonate with your team and frame your process as the path to something they already care about. See if this sounds familiar:

reminded his team to update their project plans. Every week, the same excuses came back: “It’s too time-consuming.” “I know what needs to be done.” “We don’t need software to tell us.” So, Jake doubled down on logic. He built a slide that outlined the benefits of maintaining a project plan: It provides transparency. It supports timely invoicing. It aligns the team with the scope and schedule. He explained how to use the software, showed screenshots, and asked everyone to update their project plans weekly. Except nobody changed a thing.

Greg Sepeda

An office manager I coached recently – we’ll call him Jake – had a recurring issue. His engineers weren’t maintaining their project plans. Tasks were tracked informally, deadlines shifted without documentation, and estimates-to-complete were consistently inaccurate. Every week, Jake

See GREG SEPEDA, page 10

THE ZWEIG LETTER OCTOBER 20, 2025, ISSUE 1606

ELEVATE THE INDUSTRY®

TRANSACTIONS PAPE-DAWSON ACQUIRES FLORIDA- BASED BONNETT DESIGN GROUP Pape- Dawson has acquired Bonnett Design Group, a respected Maitland-based firm specializing in landscape architecture and planning. This acquisition marks Pape-Dawson’s fourth in Florida, further strengthening its capabilities and enhancing the comprehensive services available to clients across Florida. An established leading provider of civil engineering, surveying, and related professional services, Pape-Dawson

has strategically expanded its presence in Florida. Bonnett Design Group brings specialized expertise in landscape architecture and planning, allowing the firm’s Florida teams to offer an enhanced, one-stop approach to infrastructure and land development projects. “The addition of BDG strengthens our commitment to providing our Florida clients with comprehensive, multidisciplinary services,” said Trey Dawson, president of Pape-Dawson. “Together, we will elevate the value we

bring to our clients and deliver design solutions that merge Bonnett Design Group’s visionary community planning with engineering precision.” “Joining Pape-Dawson marks an exciting new chapter for us,” said Todd Bonnett, principal of BDG. “Our shared values, combined strengths, and expanded resources will empower us to deliver even more impactful, sustainable designs throughout the state.”

■ Agency creates ownership. If you want your team to follow your processes – not because they’re told to, but because they want to – try this: ■ Understand the current misbelief and define what you want your people to believe. Rather than saying, “Creating and maintaining a project plan takes too much time and gives little value,” try, “Spending time upfront on a project plan saves time, reduces stress, and helps me hit my KPIs.” ■ Tell a story from your personal experience. If your goal is to influence behavior, start with the people, not the task. ■ Understand what people want and what’s at stake. They want to finish projects on time and hit profitability targets. Their credibility, stress level, and bonus potential are at stake. ■ Provide what Lisa Cron calls an “Aha” moment. Give them a realistic moment where their misbelief fails them. Finally, don’t preach. Prompt. People are more likely to take action when they feel the decision is theirs, rather than something forced upon them. If you tell your team, “You have to follow this process,” they may comply temporarily, but it feels imposed. But if you tell a story where someone just like them faced a challenge, chose to use the process, and succeeded, they begin to see the value. You haven’t told them what to do. You’ve shown them what’s possible. Now they can choose to follow the process because they see the benefit. That’s human agency. And once they choose it, they’re more likely to take responsibility for it. That’s ownership. Storytelling is not fluff; it’s a strategic tool. As a manager, your ability to influence your team doesn’t come just from authority. It comes from your ability to make them care. When you lead with a story, you move past resistance and tap into motivation. That’s how you shift behavior. That’s how you build accountability. And that’s how you get projects across the finish line – with your team fully on board. Greg Sepeda is a former engineering manager and is currently rewired as a management consultant. Connect with him on LinkedIn .

GREG SEPEDA, from page 9

So, we tried a different approach. The next week, instead of slides, Jake told a story: “It was 5:30 p.m. last Thursday. I was staring at my inbox, realizing I couldn’t finish the invoice. Why? Half the team logged time to the wrong phase, and the project plan didn’t reflect the updated scope. I hadn’t touched the plan in a month because – honestly – it always felt like a time suck. Now, I was scrambling to fix the numbers, emailing three people for clarification, and delaying the invoice another day. Again. And all while my sons were waiting in the kitchen for me to take them to the park and throw the football with the other dads. “I always believed that maintaining the project plan just added more work. As long as I kept things in my head or on a scratch pad, I’d be fine. “But this time was different. A change order hadn’t been logged, a task slipped through the cracks, and the project now looked like it was overrunning, when it actually wasn’t. The client noticed. My boss noticed. And my stress? Through the roof. “That night, frustrated, I spent 45 minutes updating the project plan. I realigned phases, adjusted the budget, added the missing task, and set alerts for scope items. It wasn’t glamorous, but something shifted. I saw the data tell a story. And for the first time, I felt ahead of it. “A month later, I walked into the project review meeting feeling confident. My ETCs were accurate. My schedule reflected reality. And invoicing? Done early, for once. The time I invested in the project plan paid off – not in more work, but in fewer surprises, cleaner execution, and a stronger reputation.” The result? Use of the project plans spiked. Why does this work? Lisa Cron makes the case that story is how the brain makes meaning. It’s how we simulate risk, make predictions, and evaluate what matters.

Emotion and conflict engage attention.

■

Relatability builds buy-in.

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THE ZWEIG LETTER OCTOBER 20, 2025, ISSUE 1606

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