There are real barriers then there are perceived barriers. Broadband availability to your home is a real barrier but not being able to access the internet from home is a perceived barrier. Just because your computer can’t get a decent connection to the internet doesn’t mean your cell phone can’t.
You might view technology as an obstacle to growing your business. You might think you need to hire techie staff to work strictly on project web sites and server administration. You might believe this one person can keep up with the demands of your office.
To borrow from communism theory, the collective is much more powerful than the individual. What if you shifted your perspective? What if I said you could save one hundred thousand dollars a year (probably much more) easily if you didn’t hire a techie but raised the technical capabilities of everyone in your firm? One hour a week of training over six weeks can expand your ability to work more efficiently and deliver a superior product to your clients.
A shift in perspective is all that is required. Sometimes we have a tendency to get in our own way. Keeping all of your staff from access to a new way of thinking greatly reduces the opportunity for innovation. One hour a week can empower everyone in your organization to reframe the problem and see the solution more clearly. It can demystify technology and teach them how to solve internal obstacles such as putting content online, creating plan graphics and web sites, collaborating on a proposal, and providing useful advice to your clients. Expand your knowledge to increase your effectiveness and efficiency.
What makes you different? What makes your organization different? Is it the location? Prestige? Leadership? Personality? There is an ever increasing demand on differentiation. For a business, the combination of the expertise of the people who work there, the quality of the service and deliverable, and how the deliverable is packaged are 3 differentiating factors you can quickly change. Our job as planners is to help change and manage the same factors for a city. Similar differentiating factors of a place might be the people that live there, the quality of their life, and the texture of the urban fabric.
