“My lease is ending soon, and I need to figure out what I’m going to do! I don’t know if I should renew or find a new space, and I don’t even know what to look for in a space if I were looking. How do I know what my business really needs? Is that even something a realtor is going to know?” MaryJo’s doubts and questions were very familiar. This is how most discussions with new clients start. People think to engage an architect when they hope to build a new building, but rarely do folks consider engaging a design professional before they start looking for a new lease space.
“I think
we can help you MaryJo.” I assured her. “We’ve
developed a series of questions and a process to try and figure out what you
really need. Some folks call it “space
planning,” but we see it as a more comprehensive analysis of your operations,
your branding, your locational needs, and even the emotional and spiritual
expressions of your business and yourself,” I explained.
“That
sounds like some serious hocus pocus,” she responded skeptically, “but I really
need help and if you think it will work, I’m happy to play along.”
“We
jokingly call our fact-finding process ‘Sandpaper to the Soul,’ but that can
sound a little harsh and suggests that it is unpleasant, which in fairness,
sometimes hard questions can be uncomfortable, but examining your life and your
business can really be healthy too. We
use the same process with our custom home clients, but we’re really picky about
who we work with. The process can uncover
a lot about people and some people I just don’t want to know that well.” I
explained.
“Well,
do you like me enough?” MaryJo snorted.
“Of
Course! We’d love to work with you, and
I bet we’ll be able to get you to right where you need to be.” I assured her.
I knew a
little bit about MaryJo’s business. It
is a multifaceted and complex animal with lots of parts and many needs. Her then current location was a beautiful and
creative space with both brick-and-mortar retail and on-line retailing
too. It included education and training
classes, equipment sales and maintenance, contract work, and it was the hub of
an active and enthusiastic community.
Her business was part club house, part warehouse, part art gallery, part
school, and part performance space. Her
life and her business were complex and both were increasingly successful. Success was quickly filling all the corners
of her current space. I explained: “To
really know what you need, we really need to know each of the parts and how
they should be work together. I’d like
to ask you a bunch of hard questions, weird ones that may seem silly, and then
I’d like to walk around and ask a bunch of questions to each of your staff if
that’s alright with you.”
“My
staff?” She asked with her head tilted
sideways and her eyebrows pushed down.
“What are you going to ask the staff about?”
“I’d
like to better understand how they work, what they feel are their job duties,
and see how they would arrange their spaces to be even more effective and
productive.” I explained. “You may be
surprised by some of their recommendations and ideas. I rarely find places where employees haven’t
thought about how they might do their jobs better, but not all of them are
comfortable expressing those ideas.”
“Well,
when it comes to ideas on how to make their lives easier, they’ve never held
back before!” She quipped.
“Probably.”
I said, “but we’re not looking to make their lives easier. We want to make their work more productive.”
“Well,
you are certainly welcome to talk with the staff.” She allowed skeptically.
Before
my sessions with her key staff, MaryJo and I talked at length about the
“spirit” or the “essence” of her business, what it really provided to her, how
the business was an extension and a growth of her own personality, what aspects
of it she was most proud, where she expected it to go in the next ten years, and
how the name, branding, and marketing efforts expressed each of these
ideas. One of my most favorite questions
is about the ideal situation. “In the
perfect world, what would your shop be like on a Tuesday morning at 11:00
am?” I ask a similar questions to our
custom home clients: “What is the perfect Sunday morning in your new house, and
what would a perfect Thursday morning be like before you went to work?” These types of questions are designed to help
people envision the optimal, the ideal, but in a concrete way. How would we act or live if we weren’t
burdened by our current environment?
Humans are infinitely adaptable.
It is in our nature. So what if
we could start with a blank slate? What
if the environment was made to adapt to our ideals first? What would that look like.
MaryJo
had been at her current location for ten years.
Naturally, the business and all of its operations had adapted to the
space that was available. Here we were,
considering starting over. Was the
current way that things were done the best way to do them?
I left
MaryJo emotionally scratching her head and thinking deeply about these
questions when I went to go talk to her employees. I started with the online fulfillment
manager. “Hi Pam! I’m Dave.
I’d like to ask you a few questions about how you work and your workspace. Would that be okay?”
“Well
sure. But you want me to show you
around?” Pam responded.
“I’d
love that!” I smiled. “I’d like to see your space, but I also want
to see how you use your space.”
“So
like, how I do my job?” She answered.
“Kind
of.” I explained. “Like where do you do your job? Just walk me through how you receive an
order, how it gets filled, and then how it gets shipped out. Then we’ll talk about how you receive product
and how you keep inventory.”
“Oh! Okay!”
She said with more interest than skepticism.
Pam and
I walked through several tasks and as she went along, she would explain how
each step was critical and how the processes that she and MaryJo had developed
were put in place to make things flow better and to be more accurate in the
fulfillment. “We have to be
methodical.” She explained, “Because
people get pretty irritated if they get the wrong stuff.” We walked her entire space, discussed how
many steps it took to do a certain task, and as we went, Pam began to offer
suggestions. “A lot of times I have to
pull inventory off the retail floor to fill my orders, and that can make
tracking inventory more difficult. It
would really make sense if I was close to the retail floor. Then I wouldn’t have to walk as far, and I
could communicate with the floor manager so she wasn’t selling something that I
needed. Also, it would make much more sense if all the deliveries and shipping
went out the same door. That would make
it more efficient for inventory and the delivery guy wouldn’t have to wheel
stuff through the whole store, and packages wouldn’t pile up in the front. I wonder if I could train the UPS guy to go
to the back door all the time.”
As Pam
finally ran out of great suggestions, I moved to each of the other department
managers. We talked about the retail
space, about security and shoplifting, about the classrooms and education
outreach, about the showroom and about the demonstration areas. We talked about the flows of product through
the business and about customers throughout the store. We spent an entire day talking about how
things worked, and how things could work differently and maybe even
better. I met with MaryJo the next
morning.
“You
have some really great people and they have great ideas about how to grow the
business, how to make their jobs more efficient, and how to be more
profitable.” I explained.
“Really!?”
She exclaimed. “My staff have ideas
about the business?”
“Sure!”
I countered, “and most of them sound really helpful. I’ve made a few diagrams showing some of
their recommendations and I made a sketch of what we think the optimal layout
might look like. It’s not a design as
much as a way to think about flow and proximities.” I explained.
Together
we went through the diagrams and discussed the options and recommendations of
her staff, then we considered the overall picture, how things could work best
for her visions of growth. We talked
about the interface of efficiencies with the aspirational concepts that she had
for her business and its role in the community and in her life. Together we tweaked the diagrams, adjusted
some spatial relationships, and solidified the essential concepts. My next task was to create a room area
projection that would support the newly expressed ideal layout. Developing the needed areas matrix wasn’t
especially hard. I looked at the sizes
of their current spaces, compared those with internal efficiencies which could
be accomplished based on the employee recommendations, then made some
projections on the growth rates that MaryJo had set for targets. In the end we determined that she needed 1,500
square feet more room than she had now.
The hunt was on for a new space!
I am an
architect after all, and so I offered that we might also explore what it would
cost to construct a ground up building as compared to renovate a different
space. This was quickly ruled out for
cost and time. There would be no way to
have a new building constructed before her lease expired. MaryJo, with the help of a realtor, scoured
through lots of different space listings.
The ones that she thought might work, she asked me to visit with
her. We looked at more than 5 spaces together,
but none could really support the “ideal layout” as well as we hoped. “It’s a lot of money to invest in a space.” I
suggested. “Best to be patient rather than
to rush into something that doesn’t work well for what you need.” She kept looking.
“Dave!
You’re not going to believe this!”
MaryJo spoke excitedly into the phone.
“The space next door opened up!
It’s 1,500 square feet! I think
that we can make the ideal layout work here!
And I won’t shut down or move to make it work!” She was clearly excited. “Will you come over and look at with me?”
“I think
this will work Maryjo.” I suggested. “If
we take this section of wall out, build out the front to make a showroom and a
demonstration area, we could get your classrooms too. How are Pam’s efforts to train the UPS man
working out? I think this could really
work well.” I offered.
In the
end, MaryJo was able to negotiate a new lease at a lower rate with the
renovation of the adjacent suite included.
The landlord started on the renovations a few weeks later. It was a business fairy tale ending! A tale of saving money, reducing downtime,
expanding productions, improving productivity, and increasing employee
morale. All that and not a whinny prince
or slimy frog anywhere to be seen!
The End
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