Engineering Management Institute

UPCOMING WEBINAR

Climb Every Mountain: Great Song, Bad Strategy

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This is a guest post by Christian Haring of Harbor Compliance

If you’re like me, when it comes to things like growing your business and expanding your capabilities, your go-to position is, “Yes, we can!” It’s part of the sales personality: we think positive. Yet too much of that can-do, climb-every-mountain spirit can sap your teams, and eventually you’ll see the evidence in numbers like sales, utilization rates, and overhead burden.

One of the best ways to improve your numbers is to focus your firm’s finite time and resources on what you do best. Knowing what to outsource, and when, is a key part of that equation for firms of all sizes.

Many firms we speak to are unaware that they can outsource business licensing and entity management. In fact, firms that outsource these functions to us routinely enjoy returns of 30X and up. How? Let me walk you through the factors and how they relate to AEC firms.

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For Engineering Firms, It Takes More Than Talent to Win

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For Engineering Firms, It Takes More Than Talent to Win is a guest post by Christian HaringTalent

You’ve got plenty of talent and depth on your bench, and your sales team is doing a great job putting together compelling proposals. Yet too often, your team is cut in the final round, or turned away before you’ve even had a chance to show what you’re capable of. If you’ve been in this business for any length of time, you know every play can’t be a touchdown. Yet if you find yourself going up against the same competitors over and over again, or pursuing projects that aren’t an ideal fit, there’s one way to refresh that pipeline and win more business that few engineering firms appreciate or exploit. In fact, it’s probably the last aspect of your business that you would associate with winning anything, let alone new business: regulatory compliance.

Whether you see it as a growth driver or not, licensing and entity management are basically the playing field you provide for your business development teams. And at key moments throughout your firm’s corporate lifecycle, licensing influences your playbook as well, affecting agility, profitability, and performance long after the contracts are signed. By creating a favorable regulatory playing field, equipping your team, and embracing the power of compliance to enhance your brand, you can position your firm to win more of the projects you really want.

Own the Field

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5 Reasons Why an Entrepreneurial Mindset Is Essential for Business

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This is a guest post by Johanna Cider

entrepreneurial mindset

Note from Founder: Hello this is Anthony Fasano, P.E., founder of the Engineering Management Institute (EMI).  At EMI we are focused on helping engineers become more effective managers and leaders.  In this post, guest author Johanna Cider talks about the importance an entrepreneurial mindset can have when growing a business.  Well, I believe that this mindset can also help you in growing a successful engineering career and becoming a partner/owner in your engineering company.  Enjoy the article, and please consider implementing some of the recommended strategies, whether you’re a student or an owner…

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If you’re starting out in the business world, you might feel a little overwhelmed with all of the information out there. You’ve probably been doing plenty of research, and you might’ve come across the idea of an entrepreneurial mindset, which is, above all, a mindset that will help you to succeed in the world of business. The essentials of an entrepreneurial mindset are, among other characteristics, the lack of fear when it comes to innovation and taking risks, and the ability to take failures into stride. If you consider yourself an entrepreneur, it’s important to know why entrepreneurial mindset is important for business.

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Process Optimization for Engineers: How to Simplify Processes Instead of Multitasking

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This is a guest blog post by Carol Evenson

process optimizationInnovative engineers are deploying business process management (BPM) streamlining to increase organizational productivity. The technology is trending among corporate leaders, because it helps enterprises streamline and connect their operational processes. BPM implementation begins with evaluating corporate requirements. Based on these requirements, managers can develop a deployment strategy. Firms must select the right team members for successful implementation. As BPM technology grows more mobile and functional, more executives turn to the tool to improve enterprise performance.

 

The Rise of Business Process Management

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Your Ability to Facilitate New Business Development will Greatly Impact Your Engineering Career Development

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engineering career developmentWhen I talk to CEOs of engineering companies, I always ask them what they are looking for when they hire engineers, especially in this economy where they hire fewer than they used to. They all answer this question the same way: they reply that they are looking for engineers who do more than just engineering. They are looking for engineers who can also manage projects, manage people, and ultimately bring in more business for the firm.

I noticed this in my engineering career first hand when I worked for an engineering design firm. Those engineers that could bring in new clients and new projects essentially put themselves on the fast-track to the next promotion, because they were directly impacting the company’s bottom line, and there is nothing that executives love more than a positive impact to the bottom line.

The challenge here is that there are very few engineering schools (if any) that have undergraduate or graduate engineering courses on business development. To be good at developing new business for your engineering company, you will need to have above-average people skills, including your ability to network and build strong relationships. The following are seven strategies that you can employ in your engineering career to help you find and develop project leads for your company:

  1. Improve your people skills. People always say that you must have good people skills or interpersonal skills to be a great engineer, but the question is, how do you get them? My recommendation to you would be to read a book called How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (affiliate link), or listen to it. I listen to this audiobook whenever I have a long car ride, and it has dramatically changed my ability to interact with people, especially people who are angry or upset. [Read more…]