Everyone loves it when everything turns out right. Almost no one loves it when ”the detail guy” (or gal) is on the bandwagon, cracking the detail whip. Accurate communication and close attention to myriad details is the glue that keeps your design plan on track, faithful to your choices and decisions, and on a clean path to completion.
Remember that old party game where a short message is written on a piece of paper? The first person whispers the message to the next then the next and so on. The last one says it out loud and all compare it to the original written note; it never matches. Why, because it all depended on the accurate transfer, repeatedly, verbally, from one to the other. The more verbal transfers there are, the less accuracy results; no surprise.
That old party game is one perfect example of how not to manage details. Considering the wisdom of avoiding verbal directives, instructions or authorizations is a good place to begin to take a look at the scourge of intense detail management.
The path of your commercial or residential interior design project involves the complex transfer of information to and from multiple resources, individuals and authorities. All of those transfers represent, contain and activate the integrity of the client’s design vision as entrusted to their design professional.
It is simply not enough, for instance, to decide that red is red is red. Maybe the red you decided on is HTF#2946B. Your part is over; you made your choice. That particular red choice must now travel unchanged (its relationship to other choices and applications protected) from that decision-making meeting all the way through a dozen processes to all its final applications — accurately.
It won’t happen by repeating it verbally, over and over and over from designer to rep to manufacturer to supplier to distributor to shipper to project site, etc. Like in the party game, trying to carry details casually or with the smug assurance: “Don’t worry! I’ve got it!” is an invitation for trouble, especially when multiplied by the immense collection of details that make up even small design projects.
But protecting accuracy is not the only part of the scourge. Another part lies in the simple fact that sometimes the one who doggedly trouble-shoots the details, insists on more specific wording, hammers away for precision and demands accuracy is often perceived as overbearing — or just plain annoying.
Guilty as charged. In guiding a client’s design vision from concept to completion, your professional team has lots of experience taking it on the chin. When it comes to insuring against mistakes that usually waste time and money, being perceived as the pesky mosquito that keeps on buzzing is unimportant. (Frustration with necessary, intricate detail management often speaks to simple impatience or inexperience with unfamiliar territory — both understandable.)
Where your project integrity and your budgeting management are concerned, thank your lucky stars that most professionals just take scourge labels in stride; no bruised ego. Our responsibility is squarely placed in getting the job done with a maximum of accuracy, a minimum of error and no wasted expense.
Robert Boccabella, B.F.A. is principal and founder of Business Design Services and a certified interior designer (CID) in private practice for 30 years. Boccabella provides Designing to Fit the Vision in collaboration with writingservice@earthlink.net. To contact Boccabella call (707) 263-7073; email him at rb@businessdesignservices.com or visit www.businessdesignservices.com.
