We recently quantified what we have learned from our clients and how our clients have changed us. These discussions led us to identify what we need to do as a firm to ensure we are always growing and serving our clients better. We are calling these “Our Commitments”:

Accountability: Develop clearly defined expectations, roles, and responsibilities, founded within clear communication and explicit schedules.

Problem Identification: Identify and define root issues to ensure we are targeting the correct problem (and thus developing appropriate solutions).

Decision Making: Provide expert information to our clients for decision making.

Consistency: Develop measurable success criteria to guide and evaluate the solutions that we deliver.

Innovation: Emphasize the importance of innovation to the development process, delivered instruments of service, and built products.

Momentum: As the sum of all of the above, our critical commitment to our client is to partner with them to maintain momentum. Our highest level of success with our clients is when a project moves at a smooth pace, where all partners are enabled to work at their highest level of expertise.

Within our firm, the discussion and effort to develop these provided internal rewards. It was a valuable discussion to identify the good we have done and how to make it better… and how to make lemonade out of the lemons we have sometimes been handed (or inadvertently grown). We share these with you to perhaps use in your own growth and improvement discussions.

About the Author: Peter Briggs is a landscape architect who has an ongoing preoccupation with the business of design. For more bio information, please see: www.highestexpertise.com/who-is-peter/