‘The Big Lie’ of Small Practices

business support consultant

‘Grow your small architectural / design practice’

the business support consultants say!

Most small practices are striving to succeed and grow. Both internally around performance and attracting the right clients, but also their projects. Some overtly want to grow in size by attracting the right staff, status and project diversity. Others may hire a business support consultant to guide them through a growth period.

Industry salary surveys quantify how poorly small practice principals are paid whilst trying to achieve growth.

The Short Game

There’s a reason for this. Most principals are playing the Short Game – ‘The Big Lie’. They’re chasing short-term vanity metrics and immediate results from project services. This is the ‘low hanging fruit’ because it’s what they trained for, so it’s easier and excuses their avoidance of business fundamentals.

Working only IN-Business, in projects – is myopic. It increases the business’s vulnerability to inconsistent performance and becoming an unsustainable practice. Ultimately, the practice becomes less resilient to any downturn in projects.

Therefore, without a meaningful balance of working IN and ON your business – the Big Lie continues.

So, change your Game Plan

If you want to have the freedom to enjoy what your passionate about, you need to step up to your next level. Stop striving and start thriving, by changing your game plan to the Long Game.

The Long Game is Sustainable Prosperity

Sustainable Prosperity is being able to maintain and defend your state of prosperity. Thriving and growing, consistent with your Vision and Values, so it’s uniquely yours. It’s the outcome of your success which may include recognition, innovation, continually improving and becoming time-rich to pursue opportunities (both personal and commercial). You’ll also be profitable with financial reserves to be resilient and build personal financial security.

It has one clear objective, to maximise the time and freedom to enjoy your project passion. This is achieved with ‘Freedom through Structure’. Freedom is the right/ability to think and act as one wants. However, freedom without structure leads to anarchy, a state of disorder and chaos due to absence of controlling systems. ‘Freedom through Structure’ means the controlling systems needed to run your small practice are in place with a high level of autonomy and transparency, that allows delegation.

Now there is time to do what your passionate about.

A business support consultant’s warning…

It requires you to commit to investing time and your intellect, to step-up. But they are small steps that build into making a big difference.

You deliver every project following a defined process with rigour, as set out in your fee agreement. Stepping-up to YOUR NEXT LEVEL – The Programme is how you can apply the same rigour to developing your small practice for the Long Game.

So how sustainable is your practice right now?.

It’s sometimes difficult to assess your practice’s Business Sustainability, so we have created a short quiz for you. This les you benchmark where you believe your strengths and weaknesses are currently. Using 30 statements you rate your position ‘weak’ to ‘strong’ across your 7 ON-Business Fundamentals.

Click here – there are no ‘wrong’ answers because you can be as hard/soft on yourself as you like. It’s for your internal use only. When you finish the quiz, click ‘Submit’ and your score will be displayed and Click ‘Download’ for a .pdf report.

A business support consultant can help to change your Game Plan

Practically Partners provides business advice to grow your small architectural/design practice. As experienced business support consultants, we help you create the freedom to enjoy your project passion and step-up to YOUR NEXT LEVEL. Minimising the stress of transforming your striving practice into a thriving professional business, by simplifying and improving your 7 ON-Business Fundamentals, to become more successful and resilient.

This allows small practices to step-up to the Long Game, investing in small steps today, to build a better future.

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