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

Job gains cooled in December (WSJ)

Highlights:

• Employers added 50,000 jobs in December, below the 73,000 jobs economists expected.

• The unemployment rate fell to 4.4%.

Civil Infrastructure Construction Index (FMI)

Highlights:

• Backlog measures in aggregate continue to strengthen, rising to 57.3 from 52.8 in Q4, pointing to rising expectations for new starts.

• Productivity was essentially flat at 49.0, suggesting most crews are keeping momentum despite continued and ongoing labor challenges.

Construction’s December job declines of 11k workers portend slow start to 2026 (ENR)

Highlights:

• Overall, the industry added just 15,000 positions over the course of 2025, which, excluding the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, is the worst 12-month performance since 2011.

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Management Perspective

One mindset that I’ve seen over and over again in high-performance organizations is that the mission is the boss, not the managers.

In this type of company, employees are organized based on expertise in order to cover responsibilities that move the company toward its mission. Not for personal politics. Not for individual power. The mission is bigger than the individuals.

Some examples:

• Management ensures the organization is able to continue operating to pursue its mission by managing risk, financials, and resource pipelines.

• Supervisors/leads act as “load balancers,” keeping staff appropriately utilized to avoid boredom and burnout.

• Project managers focus on engagement milestones and delivery by keeping all disciplines moving in sync.

• Engineers/EITs develop technical solutions that meet client wants/needs and conform to building codes.

• BIM professionals translate engineering concepts and design into a digital model that can be used to build the actual facility.

You may read this and think that it reflects how your organization is set up.

Maybe it is. But probably not.

Think of it this way: does your organization have a culture where roles are a division of responsibilities amongst different professionals to succeed in executing the mission?

Or, does your organization have a culture where roles are purely hierarchical and are viewed as stepping stones to more power and prestige?

In both situations, the same types of roles exist. But the mentality surrounding them is very different.

Management Insights

Peter Thiel (entrepreneur) on competitive advantages:

“Every monopoly is unique, but they usually share some combination of the following characteristics: proprietary technology, network effects, economies of scale, and branding.”

—

Jack Stack (business executive) on the perils of narrow focus:

“When people focus on their narrow specialties, the different departments go to war. They don’t function as the parts of one company. They act more like competing factions.”

—

Will Guidara (restaurateur) on persistence:

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

Management Resource

21 lessons from 14 years at Google (Addy Osmani)

Although this is from the perspective of a software engineer, there are a lot of parallels with the AEC industry.

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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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