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ON THE MOVE RPS KLOTZ ASSOCIATES ANNOUNCES NEW APPOINTMENTS Texas-based civil engineering firm RPS Klotz Associates (Hot Firm #43 for 2016) named William Abbott, PE, as president, and announced new senior leadership roles for Brent Christian, PE, and David Balmos, PE. Abbott will leverage more than 35 years of experience in the engineering industry, including more than 20 at RPS Klotz Associates, where he most recently served for six years as senior vice president overseeing operations. Christian, previously vice president and regions practice manager for the firm’s Austin and San Antonio offices, will apply more than 30 years of industry experience in his new role as senior vice president of operations for the firm’s locations statewide. Balmos will use more than 20 years of experience in transportation and expertise in directing the firm’s transportation marketing to expand his role firm-wide as senior vice president of marketing. “It’s an exciting time in our business as we celebrate unprecedented growth and the opportunities it presents for our next generation of leaders,” firm founder and senior principal Wayne Klotz said. “I am pleased to announce these appointments and look forward to working with each of these proven professionals in their new roles as we continue building on our firm’s success.”

Take your advice from Mark Zweig to-go.

PLEX SYSTEMS NAMES RICHARD MURRAY GROUP VICE PRESIDENT OF ENGINEERING Plex Systems , the leader in cloud ERP for manufacturing, announced industry veteran Richard Murray as its new group vice president of engineering. Murray will be responsible for research, development, and engineering as a member of the company’s executive leadership team. Murray brings to the position a proven track record of product engineering accomplishments and a passion for innovation spanning enterprise software, cloud, Software-as-a-Service, and cyber security. Murray was most recently senior vice president of engineering at Bromium, where he led development for the company’s global enterprise cyber security solutions. His leadership was pivotal in building the team, processes, and architecture to deliver both quality and innovation, resulting in a 1,000- fold increase in product deployments during his tenure. Murray previously served as senior vice president of engineering, operations, and support at CollabNet, pioneering the delivery of cloud-based solutions for software application development. Murray held executive positions at Reuters and at TIBCO Finance Technology, where he built the firm’s first U.K. product engineering group. He also held leadership and hardware engineering positions at Digital Equipment Corporation, British Aerospace, and GEC-Marconi.

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1200 North College Ave. Fayetteville, AR 72703 Mark Zweig | Publisher mzweig@zweiggroup.com Richard Massey | Managing Editor rmassey@zweiggroup.com Christina Zweig | Contributing Editor christinaz@zweiggroup.com Sara Parkman | Editor and Designer sparkman@zweiggroup.com Liisa Andreassen | Correspondent landreassen@zweiggroup.com

MARK ZWEIG, from page 1

the engineer owners was vehemently against that because, as he said, “It would be irre- sponsible to risk the bonus pool.” They wanted to grow but were ultimately unwilling to do a single thing differently or take any risk to make it happen. Ridiculous! And I could give you 100 similar stories. 3)Introverted. You have all heard the joke about how you can tell when an engineer is ex- troverted? The punchline is, “He looks at your feet when he speaks rather than looking at his own feet.” That’s sad but true. And the problem with introverts is they don’t get out and meet people. Because of that they may be less likely to have the relationships it takes to solve problems both inside and outside of the organization. 4)Passive aggressive behavior. We have seen so much of this over the years and still do. Passive aggressive behavior kills productivity and morale for everyone involved. A good example is an engineer who doesn’t like someone else they are working with on a proj- ect so they get to a point where they need information from that person and instead of asking them for it, they do nothing. Only when the project deadline is jeopardized is the problem discovered. But instead of it being the problem of the engineer who stopped work waiting for information, they turn it into the person’s problem who didn’t voluntarily give them that information. This is ridiculous, of course, but common with engineers. 5)Not honest about feelings. Between being introverted and non-confrontational, one of the biggest issues with engineers is they often aren’t honest about their feelings. This leads to more misunderstandings and problems throughout the organization, with peo- ple inside and out. Problem situations don’t ever get resolved without management’s involvement which sucks time and saps mental energy. All this stuff is real. Certainly – and thankfully – there are engineers who don’t share these characteristics. Thank God for that! They are the successful ones. And we need more of them! MARK ZWEIG is Zweig Group’s chairman and founder. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com.

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THE ZWEIG LETTER February 27, 2017, ISSUE 1189

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