Hey, it’s Collin. Welcome to Engineering Echelons, a newsletter full of ideas and insights to help engineers excel at management.

Hope you’re having a great start to 2025. Here’s what I’ve got for you this week.

• New and noteworthy news

• Something to consider

• Some insights to delve into

• And more…

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Alright, let’s get into it.

Noteworthy Headlines

U.S. Manufacturers are Stocking up on Imports Ahead of Tariffs (WSJ)

Thoughts:

• Expect lumpy prices and lead times on equipment and materials in the near future

• Corporate balance sheets will be impacted by increased inventory

2024 Fee & Billing Report (Zweig Group)

Highlights:

• Billing rates have increased across the board in the past three years.

• Strong backlogs and strained capacity have resulted in higher staff utilization.

• Average collections have shortened to 54 days, down from 58 days pre-COVID.

2024 Global Sourcebook (ENR)

Times are good for big global construction. For large firms in the past year:

• 75% increased revenue

• 93% were profitable

• New project contract values rose 15%

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Consider This Thought

I’ve been thinking about competition a lot lately. It’s everywhere and the better you compete, the better you and your organization succeed.

When it comes to competition, there is both a “who” and “what”. The “who” is what most people are familiar with. The “what” is less obvious. Let me explain.

When Herb Kelleher was building Southwest Airlines, he started with routes only within Texas. Primarily, his planes flew between Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.

The “who” Southwest was competing with were Braniff Airways, Trans-Texas Airways, and Continental Airlines. Southwest smoked their “who” competitors. For example, Braniff’s price for a flight between Dallas and San Antonio was $62; Southwest’s was $15.

But the “what” competition Southwest faced was ground transportation between the cities, not other airlines. Kelleher understood this. When one of Southwest’s shareholders asked Kelleher if they could raise prices a bit and still be way under other airlines, Kelleher said, “You don’t understand. We’re not competing against other airlines. We’re competing with ground transportation.” Back then, many people would fly between Dallas and San Antonio for $15. At $25, they would likely drive.

Similarly, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says that a lot of people think Netflix is only competing with Disney+, Hulu, HBO, Amazon Prime, Peacock, etc. But those are the “who” competitors. The “what” competitors are all other forms of entertainment. He identifies video games, sports, and even sleep as “what” competitors, and that drives strategy at Netflix.

Think about your business. You probably know the “who” you are competing with. But do you know the “what”?

Delve Into These Insights

Frank Slootman on focus:

“I rarely encounter a team that employed too narrow an aperture. It goes against our human grain. People like to boil oceans. Just knowing that can be your advantage. When you narrow your focus, you are increasing the resourcing on the remaining priority.”

—

Ryan Holiday on doing the work:

“The only relationship between work and chatter is that one kills the other.”

—

David Epstein on the value of connecting different realms of knowledge:

“Work that builds bridges between disparate pieces of knowledge is less likely to be funded, less likely to appear in famous journals, more likely to be ignored upon publication, and then more likely in the long run to be a smash hit in the library of human knowledge.”

Level Up With This Resource

Top 12 Must-Read Books for Expert Negotiators (The Black Swan Group)

Want to be better at negotiating? Who doesn’t? Negotiation is everywhere. Life is negotiation. And management certainly is.

Peruse this list of top negotiation books from one of the preeminent negotiation consulting firms to up your negotiating game. I’m still making my way through the list myself.

I think The Black Swan Group was modest in not adding the founder’s book to that list, but it should be on there. It’s Never Split the Difference, by Chris Voss and I would go so far as to say start with that book.

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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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