Be Strong
Strong practices are designed, to deliver high value, win targeted work, at low cost of sale, with premium margins, while achieving your practice goals.
The design professions are struggling! We are losing influence at a time when our cities and the planet need us most. Individual practices are the key...but only if those firms can be strong.
Your firm may be unable to accomplish it's Practice Goals if the following have become stumbling blocks:
- Growing too fast (a nice problem to have, but still a problem)
- Unable to attract and retain good clients
- Leadership issues
- Ownership transition issues
- Unable to attract and retain great staff
- Project cost and schedule overruns
- Backlog deterioration
- Cash flow shortfalls
- Low profit margins
- Excessive professional and business risk
Every firm experiences some of these problems from time to time. However, if you are experiencing any one of these on a recurring basis, or several simultaneously, your firm needs to be stronger.
To get started take advantage of the free “Practice Strength Assessment”.
It's strange. Design professionals advise and assist their clients to establish goals, set out a plan of action, and effectively execute that plan. Yet doing the same thing in their own practice is often regarded as the dark side of the profession...treated with indifference.
This has to change if the design professions are going to meet today's practice challenges. There's a 'New Normal' that includes increasingly complex built environments, complicated project delivery approaches, higher sustainability requirements and more demanding clients.
General Practice - The Danger Zone
When a firm can't let go of the idea that they can be and should be good at everything the result is a General Practice. These firms operate without a unique position in the marketplace. As a result management decisions are largely reactive and shortsighted leading to an overall firm that is sub-optimal and expensive to manage.