The Sales and Marketing Professionals
Inventing Your Future-The Key to a Successful Firm
We all know of highly successful firms that always seem to be in the right place at the right time. They appear to have an almost eerie sense of timing and market positioning. Their names fill the professional and trade publications with their successes and awards. Top talent flocks to them eager to become part of their compelling dynamics.
On the other hand, companies that get into trouble, experience major downsizings, fail to reach their potential or just go out of business, probably could have prevented most of these disasters. Most firms fall somewhere in between just plodding along, never seeming to reach their potential yet never making any major mistakes.
While it’s true that not every possible business eventuality is foreseeable, most situations can be anticipated or capitalized upon using good planning based on an honest understanding and appraisal of the business environment that you compete in.
What we used to accept as the latest technologies, marketing approaches, business strategies and organizational concepts may not work any more. Or even worse, may even put you at a competitive disadvantage.
In the A&E professions, change is happening at an accelerated rate. Technology is transforming the way firms do business and clients and competitors are putting new demands on firms to operate and perform in new and creative ways. Who would have thought, even a few short years ago, that design and construction team members would be using the Internet to walk a construction site, inspect a footing, or conduct a design review on-line and in real time?
Who would believe that some the major approaches and innovations in marketing design and construction services over the last 25 years would become obsolete?
Operating in a reactive mode or doing what worked only last year may not be enough. New solutions, new approaches and innovative ideas will be needed to help firms invent their own futures and break away from the shackles of past constraints if they are to be successful and prosper and change to meet the new demands and needs of the 21st century.
Inventing the future is all about managing change. Organization structures and approaches that were adequate five years ago may no longer meet the needs of a changing, global marketplace. Moreover, getting the organization to embrace change as a way of life and adapt their actions and activities to capitalize on it, requires exceptional leadership talent and perseverance.
Inventing your future is no easy task. It takes vision, leadership, motivation, commitment, inspiration, teamwork, creative thinking and just plain hard work.
It is important for design and construction firms understand the impact of these and other major forces on their markets, clients and their own organizations. It will no longer be enough to sit idly by and respond to change and simply take it in stride or go with the flow. Firms will need to start thinking more strategically creative and come to conclusions about how to position their firms to ride this crest of growth, prosperity, and opportunity.
Clare G. Ross CMC is a Certified Management Consultant serving the AA/E/C professions 928-776-4760 www.clarerossorganization.com.