Often the CEO’s or business owner’s decision to move their offices is driven by the desire to save money, “right size” the company’s footprint, improve their image, or be in a location that better suits their staff and their customers. These are all salient reasons to consider a move. But often I find that the process shifts back into neutral when it gets to actually looking at other buildings and identifying a space that will really advance their goals. What causes the drop off in determination to improve their workspace? In almost every case, it is a lack of planning. Space planning.
One of my long-term clients is a health care enterprise. They provide clinical services but are developing new, high tech service delivery models. Groundbreaking stuff. They were recently staring at clear opportunities to expand in geographical submarkets that have proven to be very lucrative for them. The CEO, the President and I had toured some buildings in two of these markets. They were clearly motivated but the decision to move forward with offers and negotiations never seemed to come. The issue became quite clear to me: they had several key operations staff members flinging in valuable input from the sidelines on what the facility needed to include but they had never all been in the same room with the C-suite executives to discuss it. I needed to pull things together.
I arranged for a telephone meeting with the President and CEO and strongly suggested that we needed to find a designer with extensive medical office design experience to be a part of the growth team. For my part, I promised to interview at least three and recommend one to meet with us and develop a template space plan. They agreed.
We recently conducted that meeting and I was thrilled to have everyone in attendance that had key operational responsibility at their clinics and therefore an important contribution to make. Not surprisingly, the conversation was animated but not just between the architect and the client. There was lots off banter (and a little friendly arguing) between the members of the client’s staff. You could almost hear the clang of sledge hammer against hot steel and things got worked out.. It was an incredibly constructive meeting.
The space plan that came out of that meeting was not the final product; indeed, everyone continued to contribute until all departments felt their needs were meet and better understood how to share resources and make their operations more efficient. The final result, a well thought out space plan that had the buy in of everyone and a unified motivation to choose the building and get the clinic open.
Doctor, plan thyself!