Wanted - Survey Management Books

[sarcasm]Thares no sich thang. we just do it like gramps taught us. we mek a little cash when we fin some big patch growin in the woods, an then we buy new stuff. :~))

That professor at UALR says that he was buyin fishing flies fer 1.00 each, an sellin em fer 0.75 each, an now they have such a big market share, they are hirien more meth heads, cause they can make 'em faster, and work 28 hr shifts. [/sarcasm]

Now you gotta believe this.

Nate

ALL the books in the world would not help some people I work with!! :-$ OOPS!! I work with YOU !!!! 😛

Funny....funny... I finally found all those drawings on your computer I was looking for. I cut and paste them onto my thumb drive, cool?

Without being to flippant, I will suggest that there are gazillion 'How to Survey' books out there.

Management cometh from within though. You either have or you do not. No book will teach you how.

People Skills 101 would be the first course to take.... usually it comes from your genetic makeup, not some book. Some call it 'street smart', some call it 'what were you thinking', yadda yadda

best of luck to ya

I know what you mean, and I have most of those qualities. Surely though there are some good reads from people with 10 times the experiance I have (6 years). I am confortable doing just about everything with potential clients. I am not too stubborn to admit that touching up on the subject wouldn't be a good thing though. Kind of like, least squares adjustment, most surveyors know how to use this method, but studying the mathmatical and statistical fundamentals of this method would help.

Getting some ideas from people/views that have 25+ years in the business, can't hurt, hopefully!

"Beyond the Traverse Point" by Beardslee and Madson

"Ethic's for the Professional Surveyor" by Mouland

and

"The Curt Brown Chronicles" by Pallamary

Might be of benefit to you...

On the business side, there is "Creating Rainmakers", "How to grow when Markets don't", and "Marketing Your Small Business" that reside on my shelves... along with a few English grammar books!

Dtp

There are a lot of super books out there about managing a service business. They aren't surveying specific, but they get their point across.

1. Subscribe to CE News, at least half of every issue is on business management. And it's owned and published by Zweig White, probably the top management consulting firm for AEC firms in the nation. As an aside, I was originally going to use CE News as a model to revamp Professional Surveyor into a business magazine, but I just couldn't convince management that as long as you could show the advertisers that the magazine was getting into the hands of the right people, they didn't need to have their lips permanently attached to the advertiser's backsides

2. Books:

Professional Services Marketing by Mike Schultz and John Doerr
Managing The Professional Service Firm by David H. Maister
Strategy From the Outside In - Profiting From Customer Value By George Day and Christine Moorman
The Trusted Advisor by David H. Maister, Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford
Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith

3. Websites

Knowledge@Wharton
Harvard Business Review Online
Rain Today
Managing the Professional Service Firm

Nothing against the Beardslee book (I have it and have used ideas from it) but to me it seemed geared toward a "two or three crew, three man office" surveying only firm and, at least around here, that business model is heading the way of the dinosaur. That might be different in a less urban location.

IMHO, a book on management by a surveyor is like a book on finding you lot corners by an architect. Look for management and marketing material, by management and marketing professionals, aimed at business other than surveying and engineering, but who's business models are similar, other professional services.

Then how come all colleges offer a degree in "Business Management" ? If it's all intuitive, there's no need for that degree, is there? :whistle:

Check out Land Surveyor's Workshops. They have a few business management books listed there.

While I'm sure there is a book out there, the idea of business management in today is much more dynamic than anyone book.

What you're looking for, if I may be so bold, is a way to manage your business better. This encompasses things such as fixed/variable costs, inventory (most of surveying inventory is overhead really) receivables, and MOST importantly, human resources.

You don't need a degree (although it helps) in business management to track costs and associate fixed versus variable. Most need help on the human resource management side of it though. This is the part where the synergy is really made and makes your business.

Now, we can talk day in and day out about pay schedules, working hours, etc., but, even in Texas, the COL for one area is WAY different than for another. What you find with younger employees is the need for autonomy. This is difficult for many "old hands" to get and even harder to implement. However, as a reformed micro-manager, autonomy, with checks, is the best way to keep employees happy and to have a better return. It gives the employee the sense that they are more than just a number, but a part of the "team".

Google "best practices in business for services" and you will find more information than you can implement in one shot, but I'm sure you will find something there that will make your business better.

Kris Morgan B.B.A. U.T. Tyler

Phil, excellent point. The distinction of service industry versus every other is quite difficult to make and is typically lost in most books, including text books for those studying business. I had to force my professors to keep applying the data to service rather than manufacturing.

> What you find with younger employees is the need for autonomy. This is difficult for many "old hands" to get and even harder to implement. However, as a reformed micro-manager, autonomy, with checks, is the best way to keep employees happy and to have a better return.

I have a friend (civil engineer with an MBA) who's successful consulting business is based solely on advising engineering firms on how to adapt their management style to the changing workforce. Trying to make a 23 year old who has been conditioned his/her whole life to think one way change the way they look at work is a losing proposition.

That's probably a better way to say it than what I did James. 🙂

Here's an excellent one for anyone in business...
The E Myth

A short, easy read, but a real eye opener. Especially the part about the technician, the manager and the entrepreneur and how those separate people in all of us can work to doom you to just another job, rather than a career. He also talks a lot about modeling your business after a franchise, where codification runs the business instead of running from one emergency to the next.

I have purchased at least a dozen copies of this book for friends who have started a variety of businesses and all of them had good things to say. You can read it in a weekend. Please post your thoughts if you do.

> That's probably a better way to say it than what I did James. 🙂

I'm sitting here finishing up a proposal for a year long consulting project with a large engineering firm to modernize and reorganize their scanning services company wide, so my mind is in "business-speak" mode. 😉

Yes, I tend to type everything like that. It's odd to see my surveyor's reports prior to my returning to college. I wonder how I ever got a point across.

A Pocket Guide to Business for Engineers and Surveyors by H. Edmund Bergeron. I recommend it.

By the time I'd got my hands on this book I'd already learned a lot of it's lessons the hard way. Good judgement comes from experience, and a lot of experience comes from bad judgement.

Managing The Professional Service Firm by David Maister is much heavier reading and more generalist, but worthwhile. I also like his book True Professionalism.

Dan Beardslee's articles from Professional Surveyor and American Surveyor are archived on their sites. Much of the material in them is reproduced from his book. When I bought his book it was delevered on CD in pdf format. Maybe someone could contact Dan directly? Wendell, Angel, marketing opportunity for Beerleg?

Dan recommends Harry Beckwith's Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing, which is a light read.

It is intuitive for some of us. The rest of us need all the help we can get! 🙂