Greg Branson—co-founder of the Design Business Council—offers design studios his expert advice on how to approach the significant challenge of defining their difference and value to clients.
Just like clients, every design business needs the same care and attention to its business management. While that’s a simple statement, it’s actually very hard to put into practice for most design studios—just as it is for every business. After all, that’s why clients come to a design studio to get their brand defined and designed.
So where does a design studio start the design their business?
The first task is to define your ‘onlyness’. Nilofer Merchant coined this phrase and describes it this way: “power is no longer determined by your status, but by “onlyness”—that spot in the world only you stand in, a function of your distinct history and experiences, visions and hopes.”
Think about it. If you look at the collective experience in your studio, add their collective histories, then their collective visions and hopes, you have a unique set of talents that no one else has.
If you look at the collective experience in your studio, add their collective histories, then their collective visions and hopes, you have a unique set of talents that no one else has.
So, the task is to define your onlyness. But how does a studio do this? It can be achieved by using a profile form that each team member completes. This shows their history (where they studied, worked and travelled). It then asks them to define the most meaningful experience they had in each stage of their history. Then they are asked to describe how this has shaped their vision and hopes for the future.
The final stage is to ask how they would have applied this thinking to some of the work they have previously done in the studio or how they would have approached clients. It’s also asks them to define the culture of the studio.
From all of this you set a direction for the studio: What type of work you want to do; Which clients best match that direction; etc. The end of this process has everyone buying into the growth of the business, making it much easier for everyone to manage clients and projects.
The take away: Having mastered this method you can use it as a consultancy service to help your clients identify their onlyness.