Stuck in the Weeds

Dear Stuck in the Weeds,

Hi, Weeds, I get it. But you know, when I see someone I haven’t seen in the longest time, and he or she invariably says something to the effect of, “Oh, I’m sooooo sorry I haven’t reached out to you, I’ve just been sooooo busy,” I say to myself, “Self, do you normally run into people who say they’re bored or have nothing to do?”. Nada! Nope! Never ever. So, the point that the Doctor is making to you, Weeds, is that yeah, you’re busy. But you gotta pick yourself up off the floor, give yourself some water, and make a plan.

Look, Weeds, I know that’s a bit of a hard pill to swallow, but the Doctor is not one to waste words. The Doctor used to work in AEC firms just like you. There’s no question that strategic planning can feel like the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back when you’re hopping on one leg with three hands tied behind your back from one proposal or interview or awards submission or name-that-deadline to another! But if you keep punting strategic planning over and over (kind of like the Steelers did against the Bills recently, just saying!), it’s like not going to the doctor (the real kind, not me) until you’re too sick to get out of bed. And nobody wants that.

In the meantime, aside from being sick (cough, cough), you’ll spend another year or two or five or ten winning the wrong work, burning out your team, and wondering why you’re still sprinting but standing still. You and your firm deserve better. So, let’s have a little fireside chat and make 2026 the year you stopped being so frenetic because you started being strategic.

Here’s your prescription, Weeds. Block the time now because we all know that “when things slow down” is chasing butterflies somewhere over the rainbow. Deadlines, schmedlines! Here’s a little trick: treat this project like your biggest proposal ever and pick two days where you can go into your cone of silence. Anywhere you want. Your basement, a conference room, a spaceship, the choice is all yours.

Now get out your sharpened pencils (whoops, the Doctor just revealed her age – i.e., old) and honestly review what you’ve been doing versus where you want to go. If it wasn’t broken, you wouldn’t be fixing it, right?! Look at how you’ve been using your resources and whether your marketing and BD efforts have flopped or flourished as a result. If they’ve flourished, pat yourself on the back and evaluate what made them so great. Rinse and repeat. If they’ve been a big flopperoo, then figure out why you went sideways. And you can also give yourself a pat on the back because hey, there’s always next year.

Ok, back to the plan! After you have assessed your performance (good, bad or other!), you have to assess your goals. If you don’t know your goals, Weeds, then it’s pretty darn hard to figure out if you’re doing great or just meh. Likewise, you can’t determine whether your comms efforts are synced with them! Ok, I rest my case. Unlike Peter Pan, you also have to figure out what you want to be, who you want to be, and where you want to be when you grow up. Then, once you’ve got that settled, you’ve got to make sure that your market positioning, your talent, your marketing team, your services are all pointing in the same direction. Otherwise, you’re kinda just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. And that’s not a strategy, that’s a fricking mess.

But you can easily turn that beat around! How, you might ask the good Doctor? Well, you can start to craft an action plan with strategic recommendations. You know, put actual steps to meet actual goals with achievable deadlines. Don’t forget to add in some guardrails for accountability. If nobody owns it, then nobody owns it (it’s like the Doctor’s pet peeve when someone sends an email addressed to three people at the same time. I guarantee you, that email is going to die a slow lonely death in someone’s inbox—or three people’s inboxes).

If it helps, put one person in charge. That could be you, another partner, or an outside moderator to elicit answers and stop you from making excuses.

It all comes down to this, Weeds: your firm is too important to spend another year trying to claw your way out of the quicksand when you could be soaring above the skyline.

So, stop reading when you could be planning and get to work building your influence!

The Doctor