“Group think” doesn’t have to turn into herding cats; but it can! Many interior design projects are contracted with companies, agencies, associations, religious groups, partnerships or organizations where decisions are made by Executive Boards or Management teams. Sometimes “the group” is a domestic family, where fairness and participation promises have been pledged.
Whatever may be the titles or designations, when it comes to decision making, the procedural disciplines for group participation are quite different from single-client projects. The many challenges, choices and decisions are automatically more complex when the impact of many points of view and opinions are brought to bear for consideration.
Your professional design team is skilled at organizing and focusing your group resource effectively for a productive and efficient project process. They have the appropriate and relevant experience with group management that is needed to bring maximum creativity and minimum confusion to the table.
Some of you may recall a few years ago, a television panel show called “Crossfire!” It was a shouting match that tried to present itself as a sophisticated exchange of political viewpoints. Unfortunately, it was anything but. It ultimately crashed and burned itself out. It was exciting and fun at first, but basically loud, rude, negative, competitive and – most important –unproductive!
A management or leadership team using bully tactics is rarely productive, efficient or cost effective. Time is money; and, in a design project (large or small), it is your money! If your decision makers gather to bicker and compete unproductively, while your design team is onsite, on-the-clock and needs your answers, that money is being squandered.
In managing groups, most professionals use proven methods that they know are successful for bringing out the most positive ideas and perspectives, from which choices and decisions are made. There are many techniques and approaches depending on your team’s scope of venues, experience with group dynamics and their own guidance abilities.
Your design team may offer training with your decision making group in order to assist them in processing multiple priorities. Often such techniques are continued in use by management or leadership groups, and viewed as an added value, after the project is completed.
At the front end of your project plan, where the paper work happens, your professional designer will ask you to specifically designate an “authorized” party – the “who” that has the final word on all green lights and decisions. When it’s the “Board” or the “Committee,” the expectations on both sides must be clear, and both must agree on the methods and procedures.
Interior environments are settings in which very specific activities take place. The choices and decisions involved are decisions that the participants will live with, intimately, for many hours at a time, probably for a long time. If the client is a group, it stands to reason that those decisions should be made by a creative and excited group – driven by good, efficient and disciplined procedures that ensure success!
You are the client – individual or multiple – and it is in your power to choose a smooth, effective, creative and efficient path through your project complexities. Your design team knows how! Or, you can risk the very predictable chaos of your own private (and expensive) Crossfire!
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.
