As the world continues to battle COVID-19, many architecture and engineering (A/E) firms continue to operate with a significant number of their staff working remotely. Many firms have also discovered that their productivity has not suffered despite this shift. I guess this should not be surprising since our industry is filled with smart people who are typically focused on serving their clients. But how long can this productivity last?
We have yet to fully get a hold of this virus, so the prospect of a dispersed workforce will continue to loom over our heads, at least for the near future. Even when we are able return to “normal”, many employees will likely want to continue to work remotely, whether it be full time or on a hybrid basis. If you don’t offer that choice, other employers likely will in the future.
If you want to retain your top talent, “work from home”, in one form or another, will likely be a part of your future business model. So, it is critical to understand the challenges this will create for your strategy and your business if you want to remain successful.
New Challenges
Newly remote employees have likely been able to remain highly productive and help keep your business successful because, well, they didn’t know any better. Many of the resources that make A/E firms successful, from a strategy standpoint, are intangible or implicit. Strategically valuable resources that drive A/E firm success are often difficult to recognize and articulate, so they are often driven implicitly through the culture of the firm and its employees.
Often these resources and culture develop over time and emerge through shared beliefs and experiences. While these experiences can be planned and designed, they are often not – they just happen. They develop over time and become part of your company’s makeup – let’s call it your “strategic DNA”.
This strategic DNA is what makes you unique and drives your success. Newly remote employees were likely part your pre-COVID culture and implicitly understood this DNA, so they knew how to remain successful in the short term. However, those memories won’t last forever, and you will eventually need to hire new employees that won’t work in the environment that hatched this DNA. To remain successful in a remote future, you will need to be more deliberate in the recognition and management of your company’s strategic DNA.
Know Thyself
In order to effectively manage your company’s strategic DNA, you need to understand what it is made up of. This is difficult because your company’s strategic DNA can largely consist of the intangible and implicit. The resources that drive your success likely include things like your reputation, knowledge, expertise, experience, capabilities, approach, and culture. Can you identify and articulate why these may be differentiators for you?
As I discussed in a previous blog post, a firm can identify its strategically valuable resources by looking first to successful clients and asking “why?” Your most profitable projects are probably those where you are delivering the most unique value. They are the key understanding your strategic DNA. A firm must also understand its culture, another nebulous concept to recognize and describe. I provide five questions to help A/E firms define their culture in a previous blog post that can help with this.
Make the Implicit Explicit
Once you understand the implicit drivers of your success, you need to make those drivers explicit if you expect them to remain in a remote world. These drivers were likely reinforced and maintained naturally through daily interactions and a “feeling in the air” in your offices while everyone was together. You now need to define explicitly what these drivers are and ensure that you are managing in a way to keep them intact and to maintain your strategic advantage.
Once you explicitly define what your drivers of your success are, you need to articulate them to staff and communicate them on a regular basis. You will also need to define beliefs and behaviors that support these drivers to make expectations clear.
Processes that were once implicit will need to be explicitly defined in the future. You may need to put new processes in place to ensure that the natural interactions that previously occurred to support your strategic DNA continue while apart. For example, if the primary driver of your delivery process is experience, you may need to develop a formal mentoring process and knowledge management system. You made need to codify the implicit knowledge and experience of your senior staff. You may need to change your performance management system to reinforce and reward behaviors that used to be implicitly appreciated.
There is no one right direction or answer here. What and how you make the implicit explicit depends on the unique resources and strategy of your company.
Monitor and Adjust
Since managing in a new future will require changes to your business model, your operations, and your strategy, you will need to monitor these changes to learn from them and adjust when necessary. Two of the most important items to monitor to manage your strategic DNA are employee experience and client experience. If you are not currently monitoring and managing these, you need to be.
You employees are the primary key to your success, so employee experience is something you should monitor even in steady times. This becomes even more important in times of change. In a new remote world, you should be sure to monitor employee engagement, the effects of the changes you implement, and alignment with the values and beliefs of your culture. These are critical to maintaining your strategic DNA.
Once you understand your unique strengths and capabilities and what drives your success, you should monitor your clients’ experiences to ensure you continue to deliver in that manner. An effective client experience survey should capture whether you are delivering on your unique strengths, capabilities, and culture. You can do this by defining behaviors that support this strategic DNA and asking your clients if your company is displaying these behaviors as you serve them.
Your employee and client experience data will provide you with the data you need to know whether your strategic DNA is holding together. If you see holes starting to form, you will need to adjust to maintain your competitive advantage.
Your company’s strategic DNA, the secret sauce that differentiates you and allows you to be successful, likely emerged over time in an environment that may not exist in the future. This DNA managed itself over time through the daily, natural interactions that occurred in this environment. If you want to maintain this DNA and the success it brought you in the future, you will need to be more deliberate in how you design and manage the structure and systems that support it.
If you would like to discuss how this may apply to your business specifically, I would love to hear from you. You can get in touch with me here.