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O P I N I O N
Endangered ideas When your marketing people are not empowered to make big decisions, their great concepts often get parked in committees, where they die.
M arketing is where the creativity is, right? Not always. Too many marketing departments in AEC firms are understaffed and underfunded. As a result, they are overloaded and only able to focus on the most urgent needs. This is the enemy of creativity. Too many firms with limited resources are stuck in an endless cycle of responding to RFQs and RFPs. These departments are often staffed with creative people who bring unique skills to the firm, and who could offer more, given the chance.
Chad Clinehens BRAND BUILDING
1)Have strong marketing leadership. Firms of all sizes need someone that focuses on providing real leadership to marketing. Unless you are a small business (less than 50 people), you need full-time dedicated marketing leadership. This is usually more than the marketing coordinator who worked their way up to managing a few people. This is someone “Great ideas are generated, only to fail because the resources needed for execution are either inadequate or misguided.”
Seth Godin captures the struggle between ideas and execution: “Ninety-nine percent of the time, in my experience, the hard part about creativity isn’t coming up with something no one has ever thought of before. The hard part is actually executing the thing you’ve thought of. The devil doesn’t need an advocate. The brave need supporters, not critics.” This quote captures a number of problems that I see in AEC firms every day. Great ideas are generated, only to fail because the resources needed for execution are either inadequate or misguided. Here are three important tenets to help your firm foster creativity while still getting things done:
See CHAD CLINEHENS, page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER June 12, 2017, ISSUE 1204
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