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

• A management perspective to consider

• Leadership insights to delve into

• And more…

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Alright, let’s get into it.

Noteworthy Headlines

Construction unemployment rate at 5% in December (ENR)

Highlights:

• The national figure marks a 0.2% decline since December 2024, but a 0.9% increase from the previous month.

Productivity stagnation in the construction industry (Goldman Sachs)

Highlights:

• Between 1970 and 2024, aggregate labor productivity in the US more than doubled; the construction industry, however, declined 30%.

• Drivers of the construction industry’s productivity declines: lack of innovation, increased regulatory constraints, and mismeasurement of real construction output.

US added 130,000 jobs in January, starting year off on strong footing (WSJ)

Highlights:

• January jobs were above the seasonally adjusted 48,000 jobs added in December.

• The unemployment rate fell to 4.3%.

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Management Perspective

Binary bias is a cognitive tendency where people oversimplify complex information by categorizing it into two opposing groups. This is also sometimes called black and white thinking.

Some examples of this include:

• Good vs. bad

• Right vs. wrong

• Success vs. failure

• Yes vs. no

• Us vs. them

There are benefits to simplifying information. Cognitive limits exist, and many things are vying for your attention every day.

However, there are major downsides to oversimplification, especially for managers.

Here are a few ways binary bias shows up in management.

Performance evaluations

There is a spectrum of performance across different competencies and contexts that gets lost when marks are dumbed down to “meets expectations” and “doesn’t meet expectations.”

Decision-making

Strategic decisions aren’t simple yes or no decisions. Trade-offs have to be considered. Timing can have a huge impact. And there are different levels of commitment that an organization can pursue.

Conflict resolution

Managers arbitrate disputes and help resolve conflicts. As such, they need to have an open mind when receiving information and recognize that employees have different priorities that may compete with each other for resources.

Feedback

Framing feedback as positive or negative isn’t very helpful. Instead, there are often areas of both strengths and improvements that should be discussed. Effective feedback embraces nuance.

Some final thoughts…

A common concern with combating binary bias is that the organization will swing too far the other way: instead of oversimplifying, they will overcomplicate it. That is something to guard against—the goal isn’t to impair decisiveness. The goal is to ensure the judgments are based on a realistic understanding of complexity rather than an oversimplified mental shortcut.

Teams benefit from managers who see them—and their work—in full color rather than just black and white.

Management Insights

Michael Jordan (former professional athlete) on listening:

“I’m not so dominant that I can’t listen to creative ideas from other people. Successful people listen. Those who don’t listen, don’t survive long.”

—

Ben Horowitz (venture capitalist) on delivering projects:

“An early lesson I learned in my career was that whenever a large organization attempts to do anything, it always comes down to a single person who can delay the entire project.”

—

Warren Buffett (investor) on making mistakes:

“Wrong decisions are part of life. Being able to make them work anyway is one of the abilities of those who are successful.”

Management Resource

A millennial midlife crisis? (Korn Ferry)

Millennials are the largest generation in the workforce. And over half of them say they wouldn’t mind getting laid off.

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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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