How to Design Your Most Effective A.I. and Advanced Tech Strategy

There’s been a lot of talk about A.I. and advanced technology and the importance of not being “disrupted” as A/E professionals and firms. This is valid but often overwhelming and incomplete.

The questions on the minds of most engineering firm leaders relate more to strategy than tactics. This is because, at its core, technology is a tool – one that we just need to know how best to use.

How best can we understand the opportunities and implications of the massive changes happening in real time? How best can we leverage what’s emerging for our own competitive advantage – and do so in a way that works for us, both now and over the long-term? That’s our session!

By attending, you’ll learn:

1. The latest in A.I. and advanced technology in AEC.
2. How A.I. and advanced technology connects with strategic planning and organizational design.
3. How business models continue to evolve.
4. The seven critical elements and 7-step process necessary for developing your most effective and executable A.I. and advanced technology strategy.
5. The power skills and habits you need to identify and advance solutions for your biggest business-related opportunities and challenges that you’ll want technology to help tackle.

Additional Learning Objectives can be integrated to meet specific needs.

Advanced Strategies for New Era Talent Attraction and Retention

There’s been a steady and profound evolution in terms of what attracts, inspires, and retains great talent – and employee engagement as we know it is not enough. There is, however, a very clear new formula hiding in plain sight that, when understood and employed, is helping more and more leaders and firms succeed, while others remain talent starved and growth limited. In this data and insight packed session, you will learn:

1. Why winning matters and how ‘performance leadership’ differs from performance management.
2. How specifically employee engagement connects to growth, profitability, and a thriving culture.
3. The problem with employee engagement as we have come to know it and why it was flawed from the start.
4. How (and why!) top-level leaders continue to evolve.
5. New models and frameworks to help us and our teams bridge the gaps, including the “new work covenant” and the “team success ecosystem”.

Additional Learning Objectives can be integrated to meet specific needs.

Leading Growth and Preventing Workplace Burnout

Burnout was an increasing problem well before the pandemic, particularly for leaders and high achievers. Since then, however, professional burnout has skyrocketed, and it’s affecting more of our firms and our ability to attract and retain great talent and serve clients.

Burnout is now a leadership problem to solve, and one with added urgency given the continuing ‘great resignation’ and the amped-up ‘war for talent’. If left unresolved or to chance, burnout (and its related side effects) will limit our ability to grow and prosper.

Growth’s relationship to burnout is more complicated than causal. If purposefully designed with the new era in mind, our growth can become an antidote for burnout and a catalyst for next level success in the post-pandemic workplace, marketplace, and recruiting space.

In this session you’ll learn:

1. How the pandemic has forever changed both burnout and employee engagement
2. How to recognize the signs and prevent and reverse the Burnout-Disengagement Cycle
3. Our greatest individual, team, and organizational development gaps and their effect on burnout and growth
4. Why purpose, impact, and time management matter more than ever
5. How better designed growth can solve our burnout problem and lead to greater long-term and sustainable success

Additional Learning Objectives can be integrated to meet specific needs.

Designing for “Opt-in”, the Evolution of Current and Next Gen Employee Engagement

There’s been a steady and profound evolution in terms of what attracts, inspires, and retains great talent – and employee engagement as we know it is not enough. There is, however, a very clear new formula hiding in plain sight that, when understood and employed, is helping more and more leaders and firms succeed, while others remain talent starved.

In this data and insight packed session, you’ll learn:

1. What highly talent competitive firms do differently.
2. The biggest challenges and destabilizing forces we face today.
3. How (and why!) top-level leaders continue to evolve.
4. Why performance and team success matters more than ever.
5. How to design your own highly desired and sought after “team success ecosystem”.

Additional Learning Objectives can be integrated to meet specific needs.

The Latest Data and Insights Related to Attracting and Retaining Top A/E Talent in this New Era

Most all AEC firms want to grow but the ongoing “war for talent”, work stress, and burnout is putting that growth at risk.

At the same time, some AEC firms are growing, prospering, and attracting and retaining all the talent they need.

This presentation will dig into the 2023 Present and Future of Work in Engineering and Architecture Report and data collected since to help you learn:

1. The workplace and marketplace trends most impacting the A/E industry.
2. The status of the “great resignation”, and why employees are choosing to leave and what attracts them in 2023.
3. The gaps that exist between roles, genders, and generations.
4. The four destabilizing forces within us that must be better understood and addressed to attract and retain great talent.
5. What best-in-class organizations are doing differently to come out on top.

Additional Learning Objectives can be integrated to meet specific needs.

Effective Strategic Planning and Execution for the New Era

Effective strategic planning is vital to our long-term success. And with all the major changes continuing to swirl and mount in the workplace, marketplace, and recruiting space, effective strategic planning is a vital tool – if not a gift – that can help ensure our success. Yet, despite the importance, the vast majority of strategic plans fail or fail to be fully or successfully implemented. Why is this the case and how can we avoid this fate?

This session is designed to help position you and your team to think, plan, and act differently to help yourself and your firms realize a better future both faster and more effectively. You’ll learn:

1. The benefits of strategic planning
2. The typical scope and timing for plan development
3. The biggest issues and opportunities facing AEC firms today
4. Critical mindsets and next level thinking for the new era
5. The many points of failure, including the top 10 reasons strategic plans languish and fail
6. What’s needed to achieve great results
7. How to design for healthy balance, tension, and pressure
8. Why having clear roles and goals matter
9. The must-have “progression” needed for strategic and tactical success
10. Essential models and frameworks necessary to move forward faster and more effectively

Additional Learning Objectives can be integrated to meet specific needs.

How to Attract and Retain Top Talent and Clients with Advanced Impact Design:

Does your organization truly stand out from the crowd when it comes to attracting and retaining top talent?  In order to do so, leaders need to invest in cultivating a culture of employee engagement that champions the advancement of the organization’s goals while making a positive social impact.  And this is especially true if you want to be an employer of choice in a tight labor market.  Having a business strategy rooted in impact is what will.

Beating the competition for the talent you need means more than great projects, perks, pay, and stability.  True engagement, the kind that the best contributors seek, centers on systems and supervisors that help employees make a strategic and effective social impact, enhancing both their own and their employer’s brands.  An organization’s social impact strategy also addresses a cross-generational desire for more meaningful work and connections both inside and outside of the office.

Despite convincing data that well-designed social impact programs have a high return on investment, barriers still exist for many leaders and organizations. Understanding work-life seasons and ongoing demographic and societal shifts are key to eliminating these internal barriers and making your organization highly attractive to the candidates you need to hire, the talent you need to retain, and the clients you want to serve.  We’ll look at both the data and ways to overcome those barriers this session.

You’ll learn:

• Why most firms struggle with employee engagement and sustainable growth
• How effective social impact fits within both traditional and new era AEC and professional services industry growth models
• How to make performance-based employee engagement and social impact initiatives work in tandem
• The four archetypes your organization can model: “shareholder maximizers”, “corporate contributors”, “impact integrators”, and “social innovators”.
• Principles and practices for asset-based community development.
• The 5-step IMPACT process that leaders and organizations can use to differentiate themselves: Inventory, Mission, Plan, Authenticity, Capacity, and Trigger.

Additional Learning Objectives are integrated to meet specific needs and opportunities.

When people are exposed to human need or poverty and all that surrounds it, many are moved to want to help. Meeting urgent needs is essential, but a distinct strategy is necessary for the successful long-term development of both people and their communities. This presentation will share the experience gained in serving locally here in the U.S. and abroad.

Impactful community engagement and development projects will be shared.  Projects include those designed to build both awareness and support, as well as, projects designed to build the capacity of others – both the servers and the served.

The presentation will highlight the challenges and opportunities of serving today in general, as well as, the challenges and opportunities of serving in specific contexts where needs exist. The presentation will also reveal the important role an asset-based community development strategy plays in project outcomes, the distinctions between relief, rehabilitation and development efforts, and convey how professional skills can be leveraged in the process.