I recently responded to a MySMPS thread about an A/E firm's brand new principals who seemed to believe that marketing and business development were not sufficiently important activities to warrant taking up their time.
My first thought was, "Fools! Now that you're principals, that's your number one job!"
Of course, when a principal takes on a specific role, like Chief Operations Officer, Chief Financial Officer, or other, that is his/her main role. But without a special assignment, or secondary to such special assignment, marketing and business development rank right up among the principal's main activities.
Then I realized, if they didn't understand that, it is the fault of the industry itself, for two reasons:
First, we are an industry that is obsessed with the "billable hour." We tend to teach our technical staff that any activity for which the hours spent are not billable to a client is not very important and can wait until every billable activity has been completed.
Second, A/E education teaches that "project manager" is the ultimate title to which practitioners should aspire. But university engineering and architecture departments rarely tell students that when they reach project manager, they do much less project designing, in fact almost none, in favor of managing project teams, budgets, and clients. So the industry has a tendency to allow senior technical staff to continue to believe that the project manager is simply the most senior designer on the team. And many firms let their project managers continue to design instead of forcing them to "put down the pencil" and MANAGE.
When those project managers finally become firm principals, they continue to think their focus should be on projects, design, and billable hours. So they achieve the level of principal with no understanding that their main job is now to bring in new projects and new clients, with only occasional oversight of "signature" or significant projects. And we give them little or no training or practice in the processes and attitudes that make a successful A/E marketer or business developer. What they learn, if they learn, is pretty much hit or miss. And the arrogance that often accompanies professional initials makes it difficult for them to learn from experienced marketing and/or business development professionals who have no such initials.
I suggested that if the marketer writing the notice truly found herself in that quandary, she had two choices:
- Determine what knowledge was lacking in that group of principals and try to provide it. The first related activity, of course, would be to convince the principals that marketing and business development were worth their time and could bring both them and the firm huge benefits.
- Identify, pursue, and accept her next position.
When you don't know how electricity works, lightning is magic. When you don't know how business development works, a new client or project is magic. And for too many years, technical professionals have been allowed to think that new work shows up on their desks by magic.
So we have to start the education process for A/E marketing and business development sooner, at least at the point where a person achieves professional registration or certification, giving them more and more education at more strategic levels as their careers progress.
This will ensure that, as current principals age out and retire, new principals can transition from minding the merchandise to minding the store.