As we start another year, it is the best time to focus on strategy. Whether you already have a strategy for all areas of your business or are looking to establish one, the start of the year is one of the best times to revisit or develop it. This article aims to help you focus on your strategy for the year.
There are many areas of the business that require a strategy plan; these can range from a simple set of dot points to in-depth coverage of objectives, goals, responsibilities, review dates, and targets.
As a design firm, you should establish a strategy for each of the following areas: design, business development & marketing, people (hiring, training, etc.), technology strategy, and operations & finance.
Design Strategy
What are the design goals and objectives of the current year? Do you wish to increase innovation? Improve design quality? Reduce rework? Establish a new area of expertise?
When thinking about the design strategy, you need to consider current market trends, what has worked and what hasn’t in the past, and the skills needed. How you develop your design strategy depends highly on what typologies/sectors (residential, mixed-use, public space) and markets your business is working in. Often, your design strategy can shape the design firm, but your clients can also shape it or be shaped by it.
Going through these questions and scenarios often provides answers to what you want and do not want to do, which can craft your design strategy.
Business Development & Marketing
Your business development and marketing strategies often vary depending on your stage of business maturity. However, for all firms, business development can sometimes fall by the wayside as designers often get stuck in working in the business (designing) rather than on the business (developing). Setting a set of key milestones(monthly, quarterly) for the coming year in terms of regular client meetings, client contacts (emails, phone calls), seeking new clients, and possible upcoming projects or client supplier listings in your markets.
Your marketing strategy also needs to be developed or reviewed for the year. What is our service offering? Why would/do people engage us? What are our current projects? What are our completed projects? What awards should we enter? What conferences or events will we attend? What project media packs do we need to start or finish? How often do we publish content, and on which media or platforms? and so on. You should plan what you think the year will look like and what investments may be required for photography, copywriting, etc.
People
There is a need for a people strategy that includes current and future team members. How is the team developing? What skills do they have or don’t have? Who are our current and future leaders/managers? What training should we plan for the year? What are the individual, team, and firm training goals? What people do we need for the upcoming projects? Is anyone going on extended leave (maternal/parental)?
Working through all these questions will give you a good idea of the goals, objectives, and team needs for the coming year. Often, you also need to plan some what-if scenarios in terms of projects coming online or people possibly leaving, so that if it does occur, you have a strategy in place.
Technology
Design firms can no longer escape the technological trends or moves within the design industry and broader markets. Your approach to Artificial Intelligence, BIM, GIS, CAD, Data Sharing, Visualisation, Site Reviews, etc., will shape your technological strategy and your level of investment needed. The software and hardware needed to achieve your technology strategy will require an assessment of current and future hardware requirements (workstations, servers/cloud).
Sometimes your technology strategy may only include greater training or investment in exploring opportunities. It could be that you need to develop some workflows, strategies, or polices (IP, etc).
Operations & Finance
The success of a design firm often depends on its finance and operations. These areas are frequently overlooked until the end of a quarter or financial year, when results become apparent, and an urgent focus shifts to finances and billing. This timing (and lack of strategy/planning) can cause stress for owners, managers, and the team as they strive to meet new operational protocols or financial targets based on past operational performance that has just come to light.
Therefore, having a finance strategy in place for overheads, liabilities, cash flow, billing, etc., can be as simple as a budget (revenue, expenditure, costs, profit/loss, etc) with three to four scenarios (below expectations, meets expectations, exceeds expectations). However, you can further develop your finance strategy to be more in-depth in relation to project management, billing and liabilities (fixed or variable) to allow further in-depth analysis of your clients, suppliers, and other indicators such as (true) cost rates, billing, utilisation rate, profit margin, etc.
Therefore, you need to determine your risk tolerance to determine how you approach operations and finance. Knowing whether you have high or low risk tolerance will provide a clearer understanding of how to approach issues. Some firms have low or no-tolerance policies for certain business processes, such as negative project profitability, while others have high tolerance for other processes around operational compliance (e.g., timesheet completion).
When it comes to governance, insurance, and compliance, your strategy is often dictated by government regulations and client (current/future) requirements (which, in turn, may determine your business development strategy). Operations also influence your technology strategy, including finance software, billing/time-keeping software, data storage (location), and data security.
What does success look like?
Overall you strategies should outline what success looks like for your design firm. Depending on the size of your firm, firm culture, investors/stockholders, etc., your strategy will be determined. You need to involve various people at different stages when developing a strategy for the year. Sometimes your strategies may be working, so you may agree that a simple review and minor changes or realignment are needed, or you may realise you need to revisit the strategies due to market, client, or people changes.
The main objective of developing or reviewing your strategy should be: What do we like doing? How can we make enough money to please our stakeholders? What do we want to do more of? Whatever the case, you need to develop a strategy to determine what you wish to focus on for the coming year or years. Too often, people get stuck working on projects and not looking at the broader business, which can lead to short- and long-term issues. The longer they go unresolved, the harder it is to create and implement solutions.
The main advice is to consult with stakeholders when developing strategies and to keep them succinct, written in plain language accessible to all your team members. This allows everyone to quickly read and understand the strategies, rather than requiring extensive presentations or discussions.
I hope you enjoyed this article. I worked for many years developing strategies for a large design firm and have also assisted other firms in developing strategies for their businesses. If you would like to learn more about how I can help you, please feel free to contact me via email, damian@damianholmes.com, or LinkedIn.