In ’normal’ hard times, the traditional process is to reduce fixed costs; refine and reduce your service offering. But in crisis times like this, you must rethink the business model. Companies that survive and go on to prosper look beyond costs and services to the weaknesses that existed in the business operations.

We had the good fortune to have worked through the 1987 market crash, the dot.com boom and crash and the global financial crisis. I say good fortune because it taught us how to pivot.

This COVID19 crash is going to be far worse.

This has been a tumultuous few weeks and we are looking at another 4-5 months of it. We have spoken to more than 100 designers over the last few weeks and we are starting to get a picture of how the industry is faring.

Now is not the time to take your foot off the pedal. Besides, for most design business owners there’s no option but to plough through the plain. The key is to plan short term, mid term and long term goals and strategies.

So, this is our life now – working remotely and meeting virtually. So much seems to have changed but in reality most designers still have the same services to offer the same clients.

It is unprecedented times and it’s easy to feel overawed by the scale of this pandemic. But the same way you eat an elephant – bite-by-bite, is the same way that design studio owners can survive.

Everything a designer does has impact – our work has financial, social, environmental and value-based impacts on society. It’s up to individuals whether than impact is positive, or negative.

I have long been a believer in the need to have designers in the C suite. However some recent research has made me wonder if we need to work differently to reach that level.

It is part of a designer’s role to give clients a framework in which to give their feedback. A framework helps moves the feedback from the subjective ‘I don’t like orange’ to a more appropriate, and useful objective responses.

Gaining client approval can be the most frustrating part of any project for both the designer and client. We’ve found introducing a RASCI – identifying roles and responsibilities at planning stage – solves many of the issues.

Value pricing will only work with some clients. As an industry we have spent far to long selling our services by the hour. We need to accept that our legacy clients …

Jobs to be done is a process designers can use to understand why customers/clients choose to purchase a product/service. Understanding leads to knowledge.