Establishing a niche (or several niches) in the marketplace requires as much concentrated effort and attention as does design development since, in fact, you are indeed designing the type of firm you want your company to ultimately become.

Ian McHarg is credited with saying something to the effect that “a Landscape Architect’s career is composed of the engagements that clients have seen fit to award them.”

The last three questions posed in this series are also the most difficult and the discovery of their answers is the most rewarding.

What is your mission? What business are you in? “Answering the question, ‘What is our business?’ is the first responsibility of top management,” Peter Drucker correctly observed.

The mission statement expresses key words which tell your clients, staff and peers specifically what your firm’s business is and has these key objectives:

• It must succinctly capture the firm’s distinctive abilities, key resources, current preferences, etc.
• It must spring from extensive input from key decision makers to ensure their commitment to its implementation
• It must respect the heritage of the organization’s past, but emphasizes its future
• It must be compact enough to be memorized, cited often, included in policy memos, etc.
• It must be powerful enough to focus your efforts now and in the future

Selecting a strategy (how to get there) is easy once you state clearly what you want there to be.

What is the ?EUR??,,????'??vision?EUR??,,????'?? of each of the key members of your team? What are the things that really motivate you, your partners and your staff to devote their time and talents to your company?EUR??,,????'??+money, love of profession, recognition? Identifying these motivators is crucial in developing and implementing successful strategies. The mission statement identifies the business that you are in?EUR??,,????'??+ the force that leads you to success is the shared vision of key members of your team.

The vision statement expresses the key words which tell your staff (and your staff only) specifically what rewards accrue to them for accomplishing your firm’s mission. Its key objectives are:

• It succinctly integrates the personnel visions of key staff: career accomplishments, financial rewards, etc.
• It is based on input from these key people to ensure their commitment to its pursuit
• It respects the heritage of each of the individual’s past, but emphasizes the promise of your teams collective future
• It is compact enough to be memorized and referred to often in performance reviews, personal conversations, etc.

• It is powerful enough to motivate now and in the future

Selecting a strategy (how to get there) is an energizing and motivating process once you define clearly and vividly why you want to get “there.”

What are the strategies that will magnify what you do best and capitalized on the opportunities in your markets? Good strategy development requires insightful and careful analysis of the firm, the market and the competitors. But even the best analysis is useless unless it?EUR??,,????'???s followed by creative development of good strategy ideas. The objective of a strategy process is to develop ideas that you would not have had otherwise.

Pinpointing the links

Begin answering the previous question by having each member of your team identify connections between what the firm does best and what clients want most. Be alert that a strength which does not match a market opportunity is a “hobby.” Be sure to avoid the two chief problems in strategy development: hesitation caused by fear of criticism and inertia caused by status quo thinking. Whatever the source of ideas, be sure that your team feels the sense of ownership over them that leads to their commitment and implementation.

Homework

Enthusiasm from the initial group consultations moves your associates to continue realizing strengths and finding opportunities after the meeting. Encourage associates to find a convenient format for recording these 3 ideas as they occur and consolidate them into a “white paper” for use at the second workshop

Second Workshop

Within two weeks of the first meeting, conduct another one half day meeting to:

• Review and confirm a list of your firm’s strengths, developed from the notes at the first meeting?EUR??,,????'??+building enthusiasm for the things you do well
• Review and confirm a list of market opportunities?EUR??,,????'??+building enthusiasm for new and current markets?EUR??,,????'??+momentum and commitment makes the strategy phase powerfully effective
• Spend most of the meeting brainstorming for new marketing ideas
• Finally, select and refine specific strategies into an ACTION list with tasks, assignments and deadlines

Documentation and Follow-up

A cassette recording of the entire process can be a useful tool in recapturing the spirit of the strategy development sessions as well as a means of involving others who may not have been a part of the initial process. Produce a brief report (ten pages maximum) that summarizes the process and facilitates monitoring the actions. (Don’t let anybody write an encyclopedia, no one will read it.) The tapes and report can be useful tools in keeping participants current on the firm’s positioning strategy, as well as helping acclimate new associates into the mainstream of your firm’s culture.

Benefits of the Approach

There are important benefits to using this type of group process in developing your market strategies.

• Your associates will be committed to completing the tasks on the ACTION list, because they were part of the process of developing those tasks?EUR??,,????'??+it was their idea!
• You will achieve a level of synergism among your associates and resource persons that will generate a surprising number of great ideas
• You will set a definite direction for your marketing efforts and establish priorities
  among your actions
• You can highlight potential trouble spots, while emphasizing the strengths that will overcome the trouble
• You will clarify the roles and responsibilities for yourself, your partners and your associates so that your firm’s marketing efforts are efficient and effective.

Answering the above questions can be paradoxically the most frustrating and the most rewarding of exercises. They require a great deal of corporate introspection, competitor scrutiny and honest and open communications. Yet, once satisfactory answers are determined to each of the above questions, much of the work is still left to be done. Next month’s conclusion to this series focuses on transplanting this information into specific strategies, as well as plans for their implementation and ultimately, their success.

It is always helpful to have someone outside your firm facilitate this process, but it is not absolutely necessary. The most important thing is to see the need to be doing the right things, and to use a conscious, group-oriented means to determine what those right things are. With this approach, all your hard work will overcome the frustration that many landscape architectural firms face and produce the professional success you deserve and desire.

About the Authors

Robert E. Heightchew, Jr., Ph.D., is president of Organizational Excellence, Inc., a Washington D.C.-based consulting firm specializing in marketing and strategy development for design firms. Dr. Heightchew also teaches marketing strategy in the University of Maryland’s graduate school.

Kerry B. Harding, Vice President of Marketing for Organizational Excellence, Inc., was formerly executive director of the Professional Services Management Association, a professional society focusing on management issues in the design professions. He received a bachelor’s degree from Ball State University and a master’s degree in marketing from Marymount University.