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Be different in a world of typical
Engineering Echelons
Collin P. Wheeler
March 07, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
Hey, it’s Collin. Welcome to Engineering Echelons, a newsletter full of ideas and insights to help engineers excel at management.
Here’s what I’ve got for you this week.
New and noteworthy news
Something to consider
Some insights to delve into
And more…
First time reading? You can subscribe here.
Alright, let’s get into it.
Noteworthy Headlines
US GDP 4Q2024 (Bureau of Economic Analysis)
Highlights:
Real gross domestic product increased at an annual rate of 2.3% in Q4 of 2024
February 2025 Office Market Report (CommercialEdge)
Highlights:
Average sales price for office buildings fell by 11% year-over-year, to an average of $174 per square foot at the end of 2024
Class A and A+ properties decreased by 22%
Class B properties decreased by 3%
The national vacancy rate stood at 19.7% in January, up 1.8% year-over-year
“Highly amenitized buildings in desirable locations have likely seen the floor, however, the volume of distressed assets being sold as more buildings’ fate are determined to still pose a threat to regional and national averages. . .”
Construction Spending Falls Slightly in January (ENR)
Highlights:
Total construction spending fell 0.2% in January
Year-over-year construction spending was up 3.3%
Monthly residential spending fell 0.5%; non-residential rose 0.1%
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Management Perspective
I’m borrowing this from Jeff Bezos, who in turn borrowed it from Richard Dawkins. In his last letter to shareholders, Bezos included a section entitled “Differentiation is Survival and the Universe Wants You to be Typical”. In that section, Bezos quotes from the book The Blind Watchmaker.
Staving off death is a thing that you have to work at. Left to itself—and that is what it is when it dies—the body tends to revert to a state of equilibrium with its environment. If you measure some quantity such as the temperature, the acidity, the water content of the electrical potential in a living body, you will typically find that it is markedly different from the corresponding measure in the surroundings. Our bodies, for instance, are usually hotter than our surroundings, and in cold climates they have to work hard to maintain the differential. When we die the work stops, the termperature differential starts to disappear, and we end up the same temperature as our surroundings. Not all animals work so hard to avoid coming into equilibrium with their surroundings temperature, but all animals do some comparable work. For instance, in a dry country, animals and plants work to maintain the fluid content of their cells, work against a natural tendency for water to flow from them into the dry outside world. If they fail they die. More generally, if living things didn’t work actively to prevent it, they would eventually merge into their surroundings, and cease to exist as automous beings. That is what happens whe they die.
The biological differentiation of an organism and its surroundings is a powerful metaphor for economies, businesses, and individuals.
Think about your environment. What pulls at you to be more normal? What pressures does your company face to commoditize?
It’s hard work to continuously fend off the pressures to succumb to normality. But it’s worth it. Differentiation is what wins your company work, what gets you promoted, what motivates others to join you. Dawkins was right: differentiation is survival.
Management Insights
Naval on being all in:
“If you’re not 100 percent into it, somebody else who is 100 percent into it will outperform you. And they won’t just outperform you by a little bit—they’ll outperform you by a lot because now we’re operating in the domain of ideas, compound interest really applies and leverage really applies.”
—
Sam Hinkie on the power of having the right people:
“People are really a power law; the best ones can change everything.”
—
Nassim Taleb on his definition of a loser:
“My characterization of a loser is someone who, after making a mistake, doesn’t introspect, doesn’t exploit it, feels embarrassed and defensive rather than enriched with a new piece of information, and tries to explain why he made the mistake rather than moving on.”
Management Resource
The Potential Code (Korn Ferry)
This resource delves into six elements that help leaders unleash potential.
Get in Touch
Did something strike a chord? Tell me about it.
Or…
Let me know if you’ve found something worth sharing.
Let me know what challenges you’re having as a manager.
Let me know what challenges you see other managers having.
Send me an email at [email protected]
Looking forward to hearing from you. See you next time.
Collin
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