Unlocking Leadership Potential in Engineering Firms with Brian Walch

Welcome to Engineering Influence podcast for the American Council of Engineering Companies, your voice of America's engineering and design services industry. Now, if you're the first time watcher and viewer, we welcome you. We hope that you like what we're doing and if you're a returning visitor or listener, thank you. We really appreciate you tuning in and we hope that you're getting a lot out of our programming. And if you do like what we're doing, please don't hesitate to like and subscribe on YouTube. It always helps to hit that like button and subscribe to our programming. And if you're a listener on the podcast, just make sure to like where you're getting this and so you never miss an episode. Now, today we're going to zero in on a challenge that every engineering firm wrestles with, and that's how to grow managers who don't just manage projects, but develop people and drive culture. Guiding us through that conversation is Brian Walsh, founder of Shift Focus consulting. Now, after 25 years helping scale a national consulting firm from a small team to hundreds of professionals, Brian launched Shift Focus to empower managers so they have the self awareness, the systems thinking and practical tools to unlock innovation at every level. Brian's work centers on his Shift Focus management methodology, a model that threads personal responsibility and organizational development so managers have fulfilling careers and experience sustainable success. The very mindset engineering leaders need as they judge technical demands, dispersed teams, AI, technology, everything. So whether you're grooming a first time project lead or refreshing a seasoned principal, we hope you get something out of this program that's going to help you do your job better. So stay tuned for a fantastic conversation with Brian and welcome to the program. So Brian, welcome to Engineering Influence and I really appreciate you joining us on the show today. Let's start off with your own journey and kind of what flipped the switch from consulting partner to leadership coach and how you made that transition. Now, I know you spent about 25 years in a consulting firm, so you must have had a lot of experience with a lot of different clients there. But what kind of pivotal moment made that flip in your mind switch over and say, you know, there's a gap I need to fill, that I need to move from consulting to coaching.

Yeah, thanks. I'm excited to be here with you today. And you know, it's funny, when you start a business like this, you got to do a little bit of introspection. You got to kind of think about like, what have I experienced, where have I been? And you know, for me it was there were some things that went on in our business where it was just like the right time. We kind of had some generational people moving out. And I knew it was this kind of opportunity for me to figure out what do I want to do with the rest of my life and what kind of impact do I want to have. And like you said, based on all the things I observed, working with clients and seeing the impact of managers on the projects I was leading, and then seeing our firm and the role of managers and, you know, some of the challenges we faced and some of the opportunities we had, I really felt like that was a place that was a need. And then just knowing, you know, I think we all intrinsically know managers have this big impact on how we feel about work. And if you think about that, how we feel about work, we take that home and that impacts our friends and our family and our communities. And I thought, man, if I can help improve how managers feel about work and the success they feel at work, I can change the world, you know, so that was my like, that was like my, hey, I want to make an impact, a dent in the world. This is where I feel like I can do it. Help the business, help our communities and go from there.

Yeah, I mean, being a manager, it's, you know, it's an interesting thing because you're mission focused on getting what you need to get done for your organization. But at the same time, you still have that leadership function. And it is that fact that managers really shape the way that their teams view work, view their kind of world in whatever capacity they're with, with an engineering firm. And it really does have that outsize impact. Right. I mean, you know, usually get into management because you do a good job of what you do and you move up through the ranks, but at the same time, you don't always get. It's not like, well, you can be a born leader, but you know, not everyone is a born leader. So, you know, how do you, I guess, you know, how is that drive to kind of help build that ability amongst people shaped the way that you kind of have shift focus and its methodology?

Yeah, well, I would say like the core of, of what I espouse teacher and even the frameworks and way they're built is, is. Is really about personal accountability and personal responsibility. Because, you know, and I think, I think consulting firms, this is very, very true. You know, whereas if you don't take some responsibility and some ownership for your career, you're going to get frustrated at some point. At some point there's not going to be the, hey, here's your next step, or there's not going to be the person there to say, hey, here's where you need to go and you're going to kind of feel stuck. And, and so, you know, having that, that, that drive to say, like, okay, I need to take some ownership, that, that's great. But then you need a, you need a framework. You need something to like, okay, what's the, what's the structure and what's the process for actually doing this? I, I now know I need to take ownership, but, but how do I actually do it? And so that's really where I started kind of the work I did at Shift Focus, even developing a framework for the individual and then kind of extended it from there.

Yeah, I mean, you know, that framework and starting with personal responsibility is big. But you know, what, is there a single, is there a single skill that kind of. You coach first to help new leaders avoid floundering, you know, and then getting too ahead of their skis or, you know, getting too mired in detail?

Yeah, that's a great question because that's what you, that's what you think. You know, when somebody moves from, like you described, individual contributor, strong technical person, engineer, and they move into a management role or taking on some management responsibilities, you know, there's a lot of things they face. But I'll say one of the things that typically comes up is a lot more practical, which is just figuring out how to, how to manage all the new inputs that are, that are coming to you. You got a bunch of meetings now you're going to, and you're getting inputs from that. You probably have a new, few new systems you're working with. You're kind of overseeing things at a different level. And if their personal systems aren't, don't evolve and change to manage that. They're like you said, they flounder. They just kind of get buried by that. And then you can't work on all the other things that you need to develop to become an effective leader and manager. So, yeah, what, what I typically start coaching people on, or I would say often start coaching people on, is like, let's talk, let's think about building your personal productivity system. What is it now and how do we iteratively evolve it? It's not like I can give you just this new blueprint and all of a sudden you'll be good. You've got to kind of iteratively work it and make tweaks, but it is going to require A big upgrade in your systems.

I was thinking about this earlier because I was watching a video on AI and how it's influencing people and the pluses and minuses. Right. At the same time it creates efficiency but people are relying on it too much and we're not thinking. And technology, great enticement. Right. Because there's so many solutions out there for managers to be able to grasp onto to try to set a framework up for managing all those inputs. Right. But from your perspective over your experience, you know, are there, you know, what's the danger of getting too reliant on technology? And two, what are some mainstay shoe leather approach, you know, organizational tools and skills that new managers should use that really are time tested and should always kind of be applied to new managers coming into the field.

Yeah, I mean I don't think the hype about AI is overblown. I think it's going to change everything. But I also think we've, we've dealt with a lot of change in the industry and in business and you know, it might speed up. So the never ending or the never expiring skill is just that self determination of figuring out what is the landscape ahead of me and where do I need to go. And just really briefly the way I help people with that is there's really four areas if you want to progress in your career there's kind of four areas you have to think about and I call these the riser. So it's just an acronym but it helps people rise, progress. So those, those four areas, the number one is relationships and influence. Like what are the, the relationships and influence you need at this stage of your career, this stage in your role to be successful? And then second one is skills and experience. What, what are the skills you need? What are you going to do with those skills? What sort of experiences do you need? And you know, and there, that's where AI comes in and all those things. But there's going to be a lot of other inputs. Third one is results like we can't, we, we gotta understand what, how is success measured for, for me. And then the fourth is systems. What are the systems? I need to know whether those are personal systems, like I said, like a personal productivity system, technical systems or operational systems. And you know, using those risers and thinking about, for me what's ahead of me that I need to, to be thinking about and, and doing that on a somewhat regular basis. I think that's going to be a key skill because if you're, if you know, we're we're moving at a rate that's fast enough that nobody can come in and give you the playbook anymore. Like. Like, it's like you got to be. You got to be constantly kind of adapting and. And deciding what do I want and what's the needs of the organization, my clients, and the industry, and how are we going to make those go forward.

That. That first piece of the acronym, I think is. Is important with the relationship building. And I. The first thing that I thought about when you said that was mentoring. Finding a mentor within the firm or within the industry as a new manager that you can learn from. You've had experience in a lot of different fields. Finance, hr, IT doing consulting, of course, with the engineering industry. How do you think the engineering industry does with mentor relationships compared to other industries that you've had exposure to?

You know, my experience with mentorship has been, I guess, a little bit, or my impression has been a little bit mixed. You know, it really depends because I think we approach it a little generically. It kind of becomes a hit or miss depending on the chemistry, the people. And so that is something that I think has a lot of opportunity and a lot of potential still. But in order to harness that or to capitalize on it, we got to get a little bit more explicit about those relationships. And so that's. That relationships and influence piece is really like spending some time thinking about what are the relationships I need, where are those mentors, and what is that mentor for? You know, a mentor to help me in the industry is different than a mentor to help me figure out how the organization works in the HR department.

Yeah, it's something that we're wrestling with. We're trying to have different mentor programs to help emerging leaders kind of have an area where they can, you know, be linked up with someone who's a little bit more experienced at firms to kind of understand the progression, understand, you know, kind of the business side, but then also developing their own skills within their own teams. We're seeing a lot of adoption with the program, but it's something that we're. We're kind of. It's a nurturer kind of relationship where we're trying to get it going. But you're right, it is a question of mentor for a specific purpose. Right. You have to identify exactly why you need the mentor before you go and search one out. What are you hoping to achieve and actually understand that so that it's not just a wasted relationship.

Yeah, yeah. And give them a little bit of support or like, here's some of the conversations you can have about expectations about, you know, the length of the relationship and all those things that I think those help to improve your chances of success. And I mean, it's awesome. I think the work ACC does is great, and it's awesome to hear you have some mentorship program going on. I think you also said a key thing which is like, it takes nurturing. Like, it's not. It isn't a technical system that you can just put in place and then it just keeps running. It does need kind of constant attention or nurturing, I think is a good.

Yeah, one of the questions. It goes a little bit more to the. The decentralized nature of engineering. Increasingly decentralized, especially post Covid. I think a lot of firms realized during the pandemic that they didn't need to be physically within the office to do the work, that they could decentralize more. And you have teams that are more widespread. Our institute is even doing research on the firm of the future and what that might look like. And, you know, things have gone from, you know, decentralized offices to this idea on the extreme of the engineer in the cloud, where the firm actually exists in a virtual space and you can bring people in from across the world. But, you know, and we. We face this ourselves, we're remote a portion of the time, and that creates some distance, and you get some feedback loops and you get some issues where communication might get frayed. What are some of the tweaks that you recommend managers do? What are some of. Some of the things that the. The managers can do to kind of break out those loops and break down silos and keep communication strong with dispersed teams?

Yeah, I think you're exactly right. And it isn't just the pandemic. I mean, for technical consulting firms, they've got expertise across the country and they need to assemble the right team for the project. So I think distributed teams are here to stay, for sure. You know, I think the focusing on the manager is absolutely the right place to think about. First of all, be explicit about you need some skills, and you need to think about this distributed team and how you're. How you're supporting it. So that's just. That's just, number one, when they get into that role, to be very intentional about it and deliberate, get mentoring, level up their skill set. Uh, number two is again, a little bit more practical, but very important, which is the manager needs to make sure they're looking at how is the team working from, like, a system perspective. Where are the you know, where are the friction points in terms of like communication or the ticketing, you know, how they're, how they're managing tasks between each other. Those kind of like practical things can cause a lot of, a lot of friction, a lot of angst that isn't, you know, manifested in other ways. But the manager one that's got that, that view and so that, that's kind of the system audit and then the third one and kind of workflow audit and then the third one would be back to relationships. You know, even though it's a distributed team, even though you're not necessarily in person all the time. And I do think some in person interaction helps, but they need to audit the relationships and just do like a kind of a relationship map and say where are the, where are the strong relationships? Where the weak relationships? Where do some people need some help? And, and that'll help shape what, you know, what they talk about in team meetings, what they talk about in one on one. Because you're still, you're still working with people. And even though it's, even though we're virtual, there's still a relationship that has to be respected and developed.

What do you recommend for managers that you know, setting up those expectations, setting up kind of mapping those relationships and, and seeing where there may be issues to strengthen communications lines and the like, you know, setting the process in place is important, but people, you know, as it goes, when business gets heavy, you start focusing on the work and not so much on that process. You know, what tools and techniques do you recommend managers to keep, to be cognizant and responsive, to keep those check ins going, you know, and creating it not so much as another thing to do, but really baked in to their management process.

Yeah, yeah, you hit the nail on the head with consulting firms. It's like Bill, you know, billable work takes the, takes priority and when things get really busy. The analogy I use and one of my frameworks, I call it iterative improvement engine. But that analogy of an engine I think is, is a valid one for consulting firms because the manager should think like what are some lightweight processes that I will, I will put preserve no matter what, you know, like the Monday morning check in like that. Like I said, I've got a framework for quarterly processes that has like a baseline of. These are the things you will do every, every quarter that's pretty minimal and that's like you know, building your engine but having it in idle and, and you know, it kind of keeps running. Everybody knows the engines there when there's some space when there's some availability, when you've got a little bit lower demands, you can put some fuel in that and it ramps up and you're able to address some of the issues. And that's, you know, kind of keeping those issues visible and knowing like we will work on those when we have time. Does it does help the team to feel like we have a chance to improve things. We just can't right now.

And really that's a good setup for the idea of, of how managers can make their junior employees feel empowered to bring issues up before they become bigger issues before change orders made to a client. Right. You know, well, how can a process like that help create a culture where lower level employees feel confident that they can bring something up and feel that they can safely do so without worrying about any kind of perceived or real, you know, repercussion?

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's kind of two things. Like one that helps people feel engaged because they feel like, oh, there's, there is a process, there's things going up. The other thing it does and the, the manager needs to be very cognizant of this. And why it's important to have some kind of baseline things is for the kind of culture you're talking about, where really what you're talking about is trust. Like, does, does the junior employee feel like the trust is there that they can sort of stick their neck out and say something that might not be popular? That has to, that has to be modeled by, by the manager. That, that vulnerability and that, you know, that openness has to, has to be modeled. You know, you want a culture. Culture is like what, what we do, it's our behaviors. And you, you got to say like these are the behaviors and, and hold yourself accountable to them. And so I absolutely think like having some of that baseline stuff where the manager has an opportunity to demonstrate and model the culture that they want to build is critical.

But you are right. That is something that has to really flow from the top. Right. Because that's kind of the. Everybody kind of at their own stage sees what happens kind of above them. Right. So if a, if a lower, if a junior employee brings it up to their manager and the manager brings it up to their, you know, department head or what have you, you know, how that, how that's the scene from the top flows down. Right. So really, if this is beyond managers, this is at the C suite, right. It's, it is creating that culture there that allows everybody else to flourish.

Yeah.

Moving over to kind of the idea of tools and techniques, looking a couple years out and emerging competencies for managers. You have of course AI literacy and you have the technology side of things. You have the fact that firms are asked to do a lot more work in different areas. So you have cross disciplinary work with engineers. What do you think is going to separate the good from the great when it comes to managers in terms of competencies in the next couple of years?

That's a great question. Tough question. Like I said, I do think ownership, responsibility, self determination is going to be, be critical. You know, I think the, I guess I'm kind of struggling with the name to call it, but it's, I guess you just call it management but it's the ability to understand where people into the picture and you know what I call it? When you talk about an organization growing and you know, especially consultant organization, it's not like they can just remake the org chart every, every time there's some growth. And what I call it is modular management. You have to put people into positions where there's a need for a little bit and then things have to reorient as you take your next stage of growth. I think the same thing's going to happen with people or teams. And so one of these competencies is going to be flexibility and adaptability. I think resilience and optimism are going to be critical skills and that self determination, those will drive the technical skills. And at this point I, I mean I'm not a futurist and it's hard to, it's hard to see like where this is going. I think it's really exciting but, but it's, you know, every time I think like oh, I kind of understand that the potential somebody else comes up with something, I'm like oh my gosh, that, that, that would be amazing. You know.

So it seems like everything they make to make our lives easier actually creates more complexities or, or opens the door to additional complexities. Right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, I think managers have to have a little bit of confidence that they can, they can address things as they come. Because right now we're hearing so much and it, it, you know, I call it FOMO or whatever, it does create this anxiety of like, oh, should I be doing something different? Should I be, am I going to miss the boat? And it's, it's, you know, we got to be aware of what's going on, but we also got to be confident we can address it when it becomes in front and center for us.

Yeah, exactly. Give people the leeway to kind of, you know, there's a. There's a sandbox kind of approach here where it's kind of like you can kind of try things. I mean, the engineering is the engineering, right? There are things that you. That are. You do them because this is how things are done. But when it comes out of the actual project work, and when you're looking at either business development or you're looking at firm operations, in my personal opinion, I like the idea of a sandbox approach where people can kind of try things or not have to worry about trying things, or bring the idea up and just see if it works, and if it doesn't work, go well, if it does, it could create a new opportunity for the firm. It allows people at the junior level to kind of thrive and grow and kind of helps the department that you're in or the business line that you're in, you know, grow in the firm. You know, what are your. What's your take on that kind of approach? As, you know, do you think in this modern world, the way that things are developing that. That that's a little bit better of an approach given how many tools we have at our disposable these days?

Yeah, 100%. In fact, I developed a framework I call the Starshot framework because it's like Moonshot. You take one big bet, and Starshot is like, there's a million stars out there. Just take a lot of little bets. And that experimental approach, I think, is going to be a critical kind of mindset and approach, because we like to. In the IT world, we like to build these systems that kind of constrain everything. And I think it's just way more diverse now, and it's going to continue to be that way for a while, if not forever. And so that experimental approach, exactly like you say, like, do an experiment. Let somebody junior who's got some passion run that experiment, make it visible, capture the lessons learned, figure out what you want to carry forward and what can be discarded, and. And then do it again. And yeah, it's. I think it could be a powerful, like I said, it's powerful kind of mindset of like, we're going to run experiments versus do. Do tasks. And two, it could really be, you know, create a learning environment, which is what's needed right now.

Yeah, let's. I wanted to get into that a little bit more. I mean, how do you think firms really are best applied applying that moonshot star shot kind of idea? Is it more of the, you know, at the C Suite. They come out, they say, hey, for a strategic direction, here's our moonshot. This is what we want to work towards now. You know, go ahead and kind of figure out your, your kind of lower intensity, Hail Mary kind of pitches and, and see what hits, you know, what's the mix? What do you, what do you recommend firms, how do they, how do they best apply that process to their businesses?

Yeah, one of the, one of the things I saw and see is as organizations grow to a certain size, they, they get more process. They have to, they have to get more standardized, but they lose some of that innovative spirit that really drove them, you know, like, drove them into that, those early stages of growth. And so I, I guess to answer your question directly, it kind of depends on the objectives. You know, the kind of, the organization needs to have some top down. Here's our vision and some of our key strategies. But I think innovation in consulting organizations, you have to cultivate it at all levels. And so I would, I guess I would advocate for a little bit of both that innovation at the top, top down, there's definitely cases for it, but that, that bottom up innovation really can unveil and yield some, some, some great things.

Yeah, I imagine that's, no one's immune from that. I mean, it's great to grow, it's great to get big. And then all of a sudden you realize, how did we get here? And you kind of start putting on the processes that you need to operate at that larger level. But at the same time, you, you run the risk of losing the spark that actually got you to that point. And that's a cultural thing. I mean, you know, are there tools and techniques that you, that you coach managers to kind of keep that innovative spirit burning with them as they're kind of doing the work and kind of growing their teams? I mean, are there, are there rituals or kind of things that you can do to just keep that focus?

Well, that, that Starshot framework was actually developed specifically for managers because what, what happens happened to me and a lot of managers I'm sure can relate to this is you get in that position, you know, everything's coming at you and you just, you just feel like you're kind of treading water. And so somebody comes to you with an idea like, hey, we should try this. And the first thing you say is like, I don't have, I don't have time for that. No, we, we can't do it. And, and it's, it's born out of like, hey, we're trying to kind of focus on what the priorities are. But it has this fact of squashing innovation, reducing engagement, making people feel like, hey, I'm just here to do a job. And so I wanted to give them something to say yes so they could say yes without being nervous that their billability was going to go in the tank or everybody was going to get distracted by initiative. And so that was the number one idea, was give them a tool that they could say yes to, that the employee could go and kind of map this out as an experiment and then they could decide which experiments do we want to do. So, yeah, that was born right out of that whole problem.

One of the things I like to think about is just the, the idea that you never know where the next idea is going to come from. And it is just incentivizing that culture of creativity. Are there any indicators, I mean, what should managers look out for on culture? The idea that you might want to set a kind of a guiding your North Star for culture. You might make changes and tweaks to try to encourage a certain cultural shift. What should managers look out for to see if that is actually working, gaining traction, or if it's. Or adjustments need to be made?

Yeah, you know, Russ Laraway wrote a really good book called when they win, you win. And he defined successful management as delivering an aligned result and enabling the success of your employees. And then I just add on to it that you also have a fulfilled career. So those three things. And so when you think about culture, we kind of alluded to it, but the fulfilled career is like, you got to be a good example. You know, if you're the burned out manager, everybody looks at you and goes, I don't want to be that. And then they don't want to grow and you know, downward spiral from there. The other things though are, I just love the simplicity of it because it's like, well, are your employees progressing? Are they, you know, getting promotions or promotion ready or they, are they moving up in their career? Are they being successful? And you can measure that a few different ways, but it's very objective. And, and then two, deliver an aligned result is, you know, what are the business metrics and criteria for success and are we moving forward on those? And, and you know, if, if those are happening, I, I think chances are you're going to have a pretty healthy culture under, underneath that. And so those, those would be the, like the, when you ask, like, what are the things you can look at? Don't over complicate it. Get to the simple things. And, and see what those are. And then that might lead you to, you know, some other, some other things you want to tweak or, or change. But you got to have some stable things you're looking at to see are these changes going to have the impact I want. And it's, it's that it's I feel good about my career, successful employees. Am I delivering a result that's in line with what the business needs?

Yeah. And it comes back to that first part is what you said at the outset, that drive, that personal drive to keep on improving, that these are things that you need to take stock on of in a personal level. Right. You have to continually kind of check in and see and take up, take a view on the aggregate of saying, okay, on those marks. Yeah. Are people progressing? Are they building skill sets? Are we delivering on what we need to for the firm? And do those check ins individually so that you can actually keep yourself accountable. Right. It's one thing to say it, but you have to keep on doing it.

Yep, yep, exactly.

You have a number of resources with, with the shift focus methodology. We talked about a couple of them here. You know, where, where can people find them, where can they engage with your content and access, you know, your resources to help them and their, their businesses?

Yeah, thanks for asking. The, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn and so I'd invite anybody to connect with me on LinkedIn and it's just Brian Walch and then my website, shiftfocus.com and there, if somebody wants to talk, talk more about them as a manager or their management strategy, I offer a free management strategy call and you can book that on the website. And then the third thing is I have a weekly newsletter that I send out with strategies on being a better manager and, and growing your management career.

It's a lifelong process. You're never done. Right. It's, that's right. Yeah. Well, Brian, I appreciate that. You know, the conversation so far. Is there anything we didn't hit on that you want to make sure that our audience knows?

No, we, we covered a lot. There's obviously a lot more. And you know, my, my message to organizations and leaders that are overseeing managers is invest in your managers. They, they will produce a return. I think it's, you know, now more than ever we see a lot of headlines that are like the great flattening and reducing Managers. But if you're an organization that's growing, your managers are really the ones that are going to help you navigate and power and drive that growth and build something that's sustainable and you know, that'd be my, that'd be my message. I think investing in managers is kind of a guaranteed return and usually exponential return. So yeah, I was going to say

there's a reason why the kind of the infantry breakdown in ranks hasn't changed in a couple hundred years. Right. Your NCOs or your managers are the ones who run the show, right? They're the ones who do the day to day and they know what's going on. They, they report up. But without an NCO core, you're lost, it doesn't work. So that's, that's, that's absolutely true. So I do encourage everybody out there to check out Brian's website and to get these resources because there are a lot of tools and techniques that you can take advantage of to be an effective manager and you don't have to over complicate it. Right. It's the basics work. So definitely check Brian out and his site and on LinkedIn. And Brian, I really appreciate you taking the time to be on the show today.

Yeah, it's my pleasure. Really excited to talk to you and appreciate all the work ACC does to support the engineering profession.

Well, that's fantastic and look forward to having you on again in the future. But for right now, this has been Engineering Influence podcast from your council of engineering companies and we'll see you next time.