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…

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Alright, let’s get into it.

Noteworthy Headlines

Future of Jobs Report (World Economic Forum)

Highlights:

• Two demographic shifts are increasingly seen to be transforming global economies and labor markets: aging and declining working age populations, predominantly in higher-income economies, and expanding working age populations, predominantly in lower-income economies. These trends drive an increase in demand for skills in talent management, teaching and mentoring, and motivation and self-awareness.

• Analytical thinking remains the most sought-after core skill among employers, with 7 out of 10 companies considering it as essential in 2025.

• Skill gaps are categorically considered the biggest barrier to business transformation.

Oil Majors Flirt with Electricity (WSJ)

Highlights:

• There’s a lot of demand for power these days, especially because of data centers. Big oil companies are moving in to provide supply.

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Consider This Thought

Different situations call for different tactics. They also call for different types of leaders.

In general, there are two states you can be in: peacetime and wartime. Ben Horowitz discusses this in his book The Hard Thing About Hard Things. Horowitz has been both types of leader and as a venture capitalist, he has a front row seat to many other leaders.

Peacetime is when the company has significant advantages over its competition, and its market is growing. In peacetime, the company can focus on expanding the market and reinforcing its strengths.

Wartime is when the company is facing an imminent existential threat. This threat can come from competition, macroeconomic paradigm shifts, regulatory changes, supply chain constraints, pandemic shutdowns, etc.

As you can imagine, different types of leadership are needed in those two situations.

Here are a few distinctions between the two that Horowitz shares:

• A peacetime leader knows that proper protocol leads to long-term winning; a wartime leader breaks protocol in order to win.

• A peacetime leader spends time defining culture; a wartime leader lets the war define the culture.

• A peacetime leader strives not to use profanity; a wartime leader sometimes uses profanity purposefully.

• A peacetime leader aims to expand the market; a wartime leader aims to win the market.

• A peacetime leader knows what to do with a big advantage; a wartime leader is paranoid.

It’s very difficult to be both a peacetime and wartime leader. Horowitz says he was a poor peacetime leader but a good wartime leader. The mindsets and associated behaviors are too different.

The AEC industry as a whole has seen good times in the last 5-10 years from a macroeconomic viewpoint. But as mentioned previously, other factors go into determining whether you are in a peacetime or wartime environment.

Think about your company, your business group, or your team. Do you think you’re in a peacetime? Or wartime?

Are you and your other leaders acting appropriately?

Delve Into These Insights

Richard Rumelt on disruption:

“The real challenge of disruption is not that you don’t see it coming. The real challenges are:

• that it costs more profit to respond than it seems to be worth

• that your organization lacks the necessary technical ability, financial strength, or organizational skills to respond

• that it is the destruction of the whole ecosystem in which you live

If you do not face any of these three sharp challenges, then you do not really have a disruption problem. You have a fairly standard strategy problem.”

—

Sir Alex Ferguson on his role at Manchester United:

“I slowly came to understand that my job was different. It was to set very high standards. It was to help everyone else believe they could do things that they didn’t think they were capable of. It was to chart a course that had not been pursued before. It was to make everyone understand that the impossible was possible. That’s the difference between leadership and management.”

—

Ray Dalio on the key to success:

“I believe that the key to success lies in knowing how to both strive for a lot and fail well. By failing well, I mean being able to experience painful failures that provide big learnings without failing badly enough to get knocked out of the game.”

Level Up With This Resource

The 25 Micro-Habits of High-Impact Managers (First Round Review)

This is a great list I re-read all the time. It’s a compilation of insights and advice from successful company founders and leaders in wide-ranging industries. I hope you get as much value out of it as I do.

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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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