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

Tariffs to increase costs and slow down industry (Wood Mackenzie)

Highlights:

• “In a business with 5- to 10-year planning cycles, not knowing what a project will cost next year or the year after is disruptive and causes massive uncertainty for US power industry participants.”

Populous Acquires Fentress Architects (ENR)

Highlights:

• The firm renowned for sports and entertainment architecture will grow its reach into other market sectors, including aviation, civil, and cultural.

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Management Perspective

Yarak is a term that comes from falconry. The bird of prey is in yarak when it’s in peak hunting condition: physically sharp, mentally focused, and (most importantly) extremely eager to hunt. This eagerness is born from the right amount of hunger. The falcon is hungry enough to be aggressive, but not desperate or weak from the lack of food.

The concept of yarak can be applied to people—and by extension—organizations. The organization that is starved of resources struggles to survive. And the groups that get too big and rest on their laurels atrophy.

So how do we get to yarak?

Let’s go back to the falcon. When it’s full, there is no motivation to hunt. But as the bird digests its meal, the feeling of fullness will pass, yielding to contentedness. After a while, this feeling moves into hunger. It’s at this point that the bird is entering yarak again. It becomes motivated to hunt. If it is unsuccessful, the window of yarak passes and the bird becomes too weak to acquire food, which is a dangerous state to be in.

The analogy applies to businesses in the same way. Let’s look at an engineering design firm.

When a big project is won, that’s like a successful hunt. Work begins as the team endeavors to deliver the project. If the project has the team fully utilized, they are full.

But after they deliver the project, they will be hungry again.

A big difference is that due to the lag between winning projects and getting them under contract and to a point where the team can start to deliver on them, the next projects need to be sought out while the team is still full.

The falcon—if successful—can end its hunger in a short amount of time. Engineering and other professional services firms need to search for the next project before they need it.

So yarak for businesses relies on the human ability to consider and forecast future needs and pull the motivation to win more work into the present.

Remember: yarak is a momentary modality. It’s not lasting. People and teams will weave in and out of yarak based on cycles of business and life. The point isn’t to try to perpetuate yarak—that leads to burnout.

Instead, find the balance of productive efforts, taking time off, encouraging moments of social connection, celebrating milestones, and winning work. It’s this mixture that allows primed performance to engage when it’s time.

If you want to dive into this concept further, I’ve written more about it here.

Management Insights

Sebastian Junger on hardship:

“Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary.”

—

David Ogilvy on big ideas:

“I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea. I am supposed to be one of the more fertile inventors of big ideas, but in my long career as a copywriter I have not had more than 20, if that. Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science, and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process. You can help this process by going for a long walk, or taking a hot bath, or drinking half a pint of claret. Suddenly, if the telephone from your unconscious is open, a big idea wells up within you.”

—

Paul Graham on reading:

“There’s a second component of reading that many people don’t realize exists: searching for the good books. There are a huge number of books and only a small percentage of them are really good, so reading means searching. Someone who tries to read but doesn’t understand about the need to search will end up reading bad books, and will wonder why people who read a lot like to do something so boring.”

Management Resource

Roger Federer’s Dartmouth Commencement Speech (NYT)

In June 2024. Roger Federer gave a speech to the graduating class of Dartmouth University that went viral. In it, he talked about grit, discipline, inputs, and outcomes. There were three main lessons he distilled from behind the podium.

• Lesson #1: Effortless is a myth

• Lesson #2: It’s only a point

• Lesson #3: Life is bigger than the court

If you haven’t heard it, I encourage you to do so. It’s a great reminder about the importance of discipline and perspective. And it’s a fantastic example of how to be authentic and give an impactful speech.

Here’s a link to the video and here’s a link to the transcript.

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Looking forward to hearing from you. See you next time.

Collin

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