Cheaper, Better, Faster: The Case for Entreprenurial Marketing

The increasing pressure to design and construct buildings cheaper, better and faster can seem like the surest path to a landscape of mediocre, throwaway buildings.  Architects prefer to look at projects as a factor of the dependent variables quality time and budget, explaining to a client, that meeting a low budget might compromise quality and perhaps argue for building a better, but smaller design.  Those relationships are weakened by market forces such as fewer resources or shorter client timetables to effectively launch a project and build, maintain or increase their market share. Clients demand that they want it all and want it now.  And there's a business theory for that.  Called Entrepreneurial Marketing,  Len Lodish, a Professor at the Wharton School of Business argues that smaller businesses need fast results with minimal investment.  Even the largest institutions in our industry operate much like small businesses, which is why I find this idea so compelling.  

To help get inside our client's head, let's focus on making the business case for ideas:

It's hard to focus on the long term when you have an immediate need that will likely exhaust your capital budget.  That's why so many large institutions look like they have tumors of one story buildings growing out of them and are a wayfinding nightmare. Schedule and budget concerns may be non-negotiable, but your client didn't hire you to smile and nod your head.  They hired you to think about the problem in ways that they can't.  As long as you have truly listened and respected their concerns, presenting a less literal solution than the one they asked for will gain their respect and produce a better project. 

There is also an implicit assumption on the part of the client by playing its safe, they know what they will be getting, and that the project will proceed more quickly and cost less.  Looking for proven solutions, they may be a little hesitant to explore innovative design practices, cutting edge research or sustainable tactics.  Or, they may  require integrated project design or minimum LEED certification without really understanding what is involved.  

Innovation does not have to come at a premium, and sometimes, the payback on implementing a cutting edge technology , unconventional method or research makes its own compelling argument. Architects are not necessarily known for their financial wizardry, but by presenting a strategy in terms of its return on investment, the conventional understanding of cost, schedule, and budget are transformed.  design time frames can become more elastic, with more time spent in pre-design and schematic design in order to brainstorm and then vet options as a team.  When we view a building project over its lifetime, the way that the problem is framed and eventually solved becomes more dynamic as well, leading to what the client wanted to achieve most- value.

Is Your Ocean Red or Blue?

Have you ever thought about how architecture is practiced?  Why so many architects are just not very collegial with one another and our professional organizations serve more as a source for legal documents, status, and continuing education instead of as a true collaborative resource?  Maybe you just naturally assume that you have to compete, after all work pays the bills.  Our profession has accepted the premise of a business strategy called Red Ocean (think blood in the water),  that assumes at its core that we can only win if everyone else loses.  Our work becomes a product or commodity and offering more of it for less is the only way to stay ahead of the game (sound familiar to how we undercut our fees and lose money on jobs to keep or get a client?) 

A more recent strategy to emerge turns that premise on its head.  Called the Blue Ocean strategy, it asks us to rethink the idea of beating the competition and instead examine that for which we are actually competing.  In other words, is the prize really worth it?  Are we decimating ourselves just to win?

By looking at who we really are and what we really want to do; we can, according to Blue Ocean thinking, define a new market that we can serve with the full force of our individual talent and passion.  It seems almost too good to be true.  I am transported back to my days as an idealistic student full of dreams and ambition, not the soul-crushing professional environment that awaits said student ideologues.  

Of course, there is a catch: you have to actually be innovative (and not too risk-adverse either). In a Blue Ocean paradigm, the focus is on the value of what we have to offer and finding a market that is actually seeking that value.  No building industry, creating niche markets requiring hyper-specialization is not the point, it's about innovation.  Innovation that also takes into account utility, price and cost in an attempt to make competition irrelevant.  That's something that we have a hard time with, because we want to keep designing buildings, and so do all the other architects. Also,blue ocean is an ideal that may not prove lasting. Mohammad Jamil of the Change Management Community is his article "Red and Blue Ocean Strategy" argues that the two strategies are in fact interdependent and cyclical, with blue oceans driving innovation, which in turn drives the red ocean competition that will eventually spawn more innovation.  I think that what matters most is that we realize that we are not constrained by the "way things are" and instead start asking a lot more critical questions:

1. What are you really trying to achieve and why?
2. To whom will it matter?
3. Can you abandon old habits and dependencies?

Stop swimming with the sharks and chart a course to peaceful waters.  When survival isn't the primary issue, it's amazing what you can achieve.

The Design and Construction Game: Whose side are you on?

The built environment has many factions- team Design, team Owner and team Construction.  Recent trends in sustainable design and evidence based design require buy-in from all sides and a cooperative effort to carry concepts through into completion and operation. The rise in popularity of design-build and integrated project delivery attempts to balance responsibility and risk more evenly.  

Can we really transition successfully from an "us vs. them" mentality?  Or are we hardwired to struggle between achieving design goals, achieving profitability goals and achieving operational goals?  We are living through a paradigm shift that is both neutralizing our individual silos and adding responsibility to our effort.  But with this come a greater opportunity to stop competing and start collaborating.  Can we all be on the same team and realize that these goals are mutually dependent, not mutually exclusive? 

Hopefully the real winners are team End Users.