That’s about as smart as shooting yourself in the foot! How we deal with limitations largely depends on the point of view! As with other stuff that comes our way unbidden, we each have our very own ways of coping. I guess I was just born an incurable optimist, because, to me, this whole new list of limitations feels more like dangling a carrot in front of a horse to get it to giddy up! It’s kind of a soft-sell dare. As soon as the first wave of: WHAT? wore off, I started looking at everything with new, seriously critical eyes! And, guess what? There was a lot that could stand some tweaking!
I took up that particular challenge — and I view it as a series of opportunities to grow my business, grow Interior Design parameters and grow as a professional. As I take a hard look at the Pandemic’s impacts and what appear to be setbacks to business operation, I’m noticing patterns. My clients, in general, are finding that what has presented as limitations, might easily translate into reasonable and timely pressures to refine, to reconsider, to tighten down and trim the sails of a lot of loose ends!
Remedial business is booming! Limitations on the one hand, may very easily open possibilities on the other hand, and invite us to move on projects that have been victimized by procrastination. Some wise person, whose name I don’t recall, once said something significant about desperation inspiring great accomplishments for mankind! (Necessity is the mother of invention?)
I do know this: clinging to limitations as a strangely comfortable stuck spot just doesn’t make much sense. Unfortunately, negativity is contagious just like misery loves company. Several Interior design projects have come to a place I have labeled: “limitation reconsideration.” That’s a mouthful that simply means revisions to suit new circumstances! There is a lot of excitement that happens when a project revision and continuity prove possible, the prior investment gets protected and the client does not have to abandon the Interior design project they have long been planning.
Interior design professionals are masters of revision! It would be very difficult to find a team that has not had the experience of revising plans (at almost any stage of development) to accommodate new limitations, while preserving – and delivering – their client’s chosen project Vision!
It’s tough to hear disappointment and discouragement in a client’s voice when it seems they must abandon an unfinished project or stop the forward motion of one about to launch. More often than not, there are alternatives and solutions. Retrofitting a client’s Interior design Vision can be tricky – that’s the truth – but not necessarily impossible.
Connect with your Interior design team, discuss common concerns and explore revisionary solutions. The limitations caused by the Pandemic have impacted all of us, and indeed, we are in it together. Because we don’t know the duration, I think it is very important for all of us in business to maintain forward motion to whatever workable degree is possible.
Almost without exception, our domestic and our business delivery patterns have had to change. Our workplaces have new “personalities,” and we have had to learn and implement some unfamiliar operational approaches!
We have had to be innovative, tolerant and patient. The main difference between now and past assumptive “normal,” is that today’s circumstance was not elective!
Now, work with our clients has the additional dimension of sharing the new common ground of revised living. That, of course, also gives us common understanding. In any venue, that’s a definite advantage!
Robert Boccabella, B.F.A. is principal and founder of Business Design Services and a certified interior designer in private practice for over 30 years. Boccabella provides Designing to Fit the Vision© in collaboration with writingservice@earthlink.net. To contact him call 707-263-7073; email him at rb@BusinessDesignServices.com or visit www.BusinessDesignServices.com or on Face Book at Business Design Services.
