We have dealt with imposed change, survival change and temporary change. I’d like to focus on creative change!
If a business does not reasonably and healthily grow – its future and longevity is pretty easy to predict. The pandemic’s temporary mandates must be viewed now as an anomaly within your business’s big picture; because, if we confuse it with typical business and specific predictable fluctuations, it can throw off your calculations, projections and forward strategies. It would be looking at everything through that pandemic lens…
It wasn’t a “normal” factor, and we have to get past its power.
In reconnecting with my Interior Design client portfolio, we are bracketing those many pandemic months OUT of our project rhythms and revisiting our previous project thresholds and visions. It might be difficult to move past damage done, but moving forward must be evaluated in solely a future context. In some cases that will involve everything from repairing our spirit and capacity for enthusiasm all the way to new and creative financing challenges.
I’m encouraging my clients, who had to suspend projects already in motion, to patiently re-open their planning process and consider the possibility of reasonable revisions. For those who were poised to begin and had to go on indefinite hold, we are looking at how the pandemic phenomenon (with all its mandates) may now influence and modify those plans — hopefully in positive ways.
The other good news involves those of you who were considering Interior design projects, but had not yet made the decision. That speculation can now take into consideration things practiced, changed, tried and mandated – directly because of the pandemic. You now can look at factors that have presented entirely new paradigms for your business management, employee workspace and location formats, property and space structuring. Such things have changed radically for many venues! Projects under consideration are cast in markedly new light. New light has been shed on how your business can develop and implement new operational paradigms, not previously considered.
Actually, from the Interior design perspective, that new light is casting excellent positive influence on design considerations concerning efficiency, volume, costs, space requirements, space versatility, contemporary business marketing plans and organizational charts! Looking at all of that with a newly critical eye can only produce good results.
The playing field has changed, competition has new parameters and market shares have shifted. Business “outreach” is rife with possibilities! Competition for creative, and distinctly personal promotion, demands relevancy to changed circumstances. When considering new ways to approach your specific post-pandemic market, take a good look at your “I D package” and check the components for the new relevance. Everything from narrative text to images – and everything in between — should be examined.
Your I D package and your business’ marketing plan are very, very close relatives to your functional Interior space. Because of wholly new approaches for delivering services and products, it is more important than ever to fulfill promotional promises. Your Interior business space must meet with contemporary change. In my previous article, “Re-evaluating Forced Change,” I suggested that you “…take time to carefully analyze and consider this unique opportunity to move forward differently, with new operational insights.”
It is so important that we really do slow down, think the situation through and get it right, as we get back our creative and competitive energy, and apply it to getting back to business – (not) as usual!
Holding onto our intrinsic value systems, our business integrity and our operational know-how is solidly there –each in our own way. Just trust it! I don’t know about you, but one new influence on me, directly from the pandemic situation, was an appreciation for learning better patience!
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.
