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ON THE MOVE NORTHERN ENGINEERING NAMES BRAD CURTIS AS VICE PRESIDENT Northern Engineering Services, Inc., provider of civil engineering and land surveying services in Northern Colorado, has named Brad Curtis as vice president. Curtis has more than 27 years of engineering experience in both the public and private sector. He has led Northern Engineering’s Municipal Services department from his director position since joining the firm in 2019. Much of Curtis’s time is spent serving as town engineer for half a dozen Weld County communities along the Highway 85 corridor. “We are grateful to Northern Engineering and particularly to Brad Curtis for his service to the Eaton community,” said Interim Town Manager, Wesley LaVanchy.
“Brad takes pride in the delivery of his work to the team here in Eaton and we are the beneficiary of that ownership!” Curtis is a former public works director and also spent time in land development, general civil engineering, and facilities design. His experience provides an enhanced ability to understand complex issues from mulitple perspectives. This is particularly helpful for public sector clients seeking to address todays’ immediate challenges, while not losing sight of long-term implications, such as operations and maintenance. Even as a private consultant, Curtis always has local taxpayers in mind. “The work of our Municipal Services team, and particularly the on-call/as- needed role of Town Engineer has a tremendous impact on the communities
we serve. It certainly is a team effort, but it would not be possible without Brad Curtis,” said firm president and CEO, Nick Haws. “These efforts sometimes fall under the radar, so recognizing Brad as our newest Vice President reinforces the importance of him and his team.” Curtis is a licensed Professional Engineer and a LEED Accredited Professional with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of New Mexico. He also is a Certified Public Manager through the University of Colorado- Denver. Curtis is currently part of the fifth cohort of Water Literate Leaders of Northern Colorado. He resides in Greeley with his wife, Colette, and enjoys turning Poudre River water into beer as a long- time homebrewer.
money on marketing and positioning efforts that show you and your people as the experts in your chosen areas of specialization. We used to call it “process marketing” 25 or more years ago, but today it is called “content marketing.” Create and distribute original content that demonstrates a unique understanding and insight about the potential client’s situation – be that a common problem or opportunity to do something better. One buzzterm commonly used is “thought leadership.” My problem with that is most people just share information and content created by OTHER people (such as quotes from a book or buzzwordy terms coined by others) instead of research and opinion from themselves. That is “thought followership” and “thought redistribution” – not the same thing as thought leadership at all. If you and your top people share enough original content over time – through blog posts, social media, podcasts, videos, talks, PR, email, direct mail, and more – your clients will call you. And when that happens, your people are much more likely to respond properly. They know how to solve problems much better than make sales calls. You will get more work, better fees, and have better client relationships over time when the clients call you versus you calling them. Is it time to reallocate your marketing time and expenditures? Most firms in this business spend more on marketing labor from people who should be doing billable work than anything else they do marketing-wise. Think about it. So is it time for you to change your thinking about some of this stuff? I never advocate anything in these pages I would not do in my own businesses. I don’t know of any other firms serving the AEC industry that provide management information and expertise that have been around as long as we have, and have been named to the Inc. 500/5000 list three times. Maybe we are onto something here! Mark Zweig is Zweig Group’s chairman and founder. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com.
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energy to working in your business versus on it. It will help you in many ways. 2. Team building versus hammering on people. It is conventional wisdom that managers are supposed to hold their people accountable. According to the various “coaches” and management “change agents” out there, holding other people accountable is supposed to be the leader’s job. Yet, my experience is that regularly hammering on people or shaming them to perform rarely works. The people who are going to be high performers don’t need to be held accountable. They are self-accountable. And those who aren’t going to be high performers won’t become high performers no matter how much you measure and bug them to do so. What works much better is to have a worthwhile mission for your organization, find really smart, motivated people, and then get them what they need, whether that’s help with doing something or additional resources of some kind, and get out of their way. As a result, it may be worth considering reallocating your time from trying to hold people accountable to recruiting and team building. Recruiting doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Sure it is a tough environment to find people, but that is precisely why you need to spend real time, energy, and attention on it. The odds that this approach will actually work are far better than holding people’s feet to the fire. It’s no fun doing that, and it’s even less fun to have your feet burned by someone doing it to you. 3. Investing in brand building versus trying to get people to make sales calls. This is one I have tried to get across for many years, but one that many AEC firm owners and leaders still don’t understand. I speak from lots of personal experience here when I say you need to stop trying to get your people to make sales calls on clients you want to work with, and instead spend your time and
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THE ZWEIG LETTER NOVEMBER 14, 2022, ISSUE 1465
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