Creating a Transition and Restart Plan for your Interior Design Firm

Let’s look at the process of creating a transition and restart plan.

I am going to share with you some of the training that I've been offering in my AIM with Intent methodology to my private group. I am an advocate of doing all the planning in advance as much as we can so when it comes time to execute your plan, you already know what to do. We will be thinking about worst-case scenario/ best-case scenarios, when it is time to implement your plan, you are free to do just that.  We will also be discussing transition plans and why you need one.  This is information we should all have about and for our business.

Continuity can be defined as an uninterrupted succession or continuation without major change. 

With that in mind, one of the things we must think about as part of continuity is what happens during a time that a business is disrupted. That disruption doesn't always have to be negative. It's the beginning phrase that makes us think that it's negative. It just means not acting as it normally would. It could be that we are creating these plans because we want to go on a 12-week vacation or it could be that we (or our employee) are going out to have a baby. It could be that we're in a disruption phase due to moving between buildings.

This “interruption” of our day-to-day process could be for something great. There are all types of transitions that happen in the life of a business. By creating plans for those interruptions in advance, we are going to put ourselves in a better position than trying to create plans on the fly when stress levels are high and options may possibly be a little more limited.

Let’s think broader and deeper and wider than just the global pandemic we recently have encountered.  There are going to be multiple transitions that happen in your company, so knowing how to think through your transition and restart plans will give you a framework to be able to use it in other areas of your life. A good thing to do during downtime in your business is to plan. This planning is also part of my AIM with Intent Methodology that simply stands for: aligning your team, igniting your process and managing your money and doing it all with intent. With that in mind, let’s be very strategic in what we're doing, which is planning.

We can leverage the global pandemic and its impact to start the process of being intentional with our planning.

As you are thinking through the pandemic and how your personal and business lives changed, we will use that knowledge and create three plans: Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C. I'm going to briefly tell you what they each are and how we go about creating our plans. 

Plan A is our short-term plan that is around weeks in length. Plan B is more of a mid-range plan that is about eight-weeks. Plan C is a more long-range plan at 12-weeks.

Some questions that may take place in an ever-changing environment, like the pandemic, could be “what happens if we have to continue in a transition period for 12 weeks”, “What does it look like if we do it for eight weeks”, and “what does it look like if we do it for four”? If you were doing this for maternity leave, you may do the same thing. You may think “I want to come back between six and eight weeks”. That might be your plan A.  Your plan B might be 12 weeks and your plan C might be 16 weeks. Like with anything when you go in to have a baby, we have the best-case scenario, but we don't know what's going to happen once we go through it. And so having multiple versions of a plan with multiple end dates or timelines just gives us the flexibility because we've already thought about it in more than one way. I have encouraged my clients to create these 4, 8, and 16-week plans and I am encouraging you to consider creating your own plans.

During your planning for a transitional phase, we are stating that this is not our business as usual, but something is in transition. That means that our resources, time, money, people, and other situations are being considered and looked at in a different way. We may be spending those resources differently.

There are three main areas that we will need to address.  People, processes, and profits.

Let’s create plans around those three areas.  Identify the people involved (internal, external and support). Next, look at your processes and determine what you are going to do about the difference in the money you will be bringing in during this transition phase. Let’s look at those questions with Plan A. If Plan A is your short-term plan, I want you to think about if everything were to go back to “normal” in four weeks, what is changing in your business? Maybe you've changed some of your processes with how you are working with technology. Maybe you're changing some of your processes with how you're marketing or how you're communicating, or how you are with your clients and now we must look at how to shift those processes during those four weeks of Plan A? How are people being affected? Are your people working from home? Are you working them more hours, less than hours? Do you need to furlough some? Do you need to lay off? What does that look like? We're even thinking about your money, what's coming in, what's coming out. Knowing how much cash is on hand, and how long is it going to last you is crucial information in your planning strategy.  These are all important pieces to identify as part of our four-week transition plans and helps you scale your interior design business with all important factors in mind.

Here are some other things to think about, regardless of which plan you're working on. 

You will need to identify areas of your business that are impacted in the transition and need to be addressed in your planning.  These areas may include: finances, communication with clients, communication with your team, marketing, legal ramifications and implications of doing business, support for your team and clients, and any technology shifts that may be required.

If you can think about all of that on a four-week plan, then you can pick that up and use it to kind of be the basis of your eight-week plan, which is your plan B that says it may last longer. Keep in mind when you're creating the eight-week plan and the 12-week plan (they are your plan B and your plan C) that there may very well be some decision making that needs to happen in the first four-week plan that may need to shift or adjust for it to go further. For example, the way you may have to handle cash and thereby employees could look one way on a four-week plan, but if you get to stretch it out to eight weeks, it may look very different. If you have to stretch it out to 12, it could look totally different than what it did at four. You will need to understand how all of this works together for your company.

Another thing to need to think about is “how do I continue to get money coming in during these four, eight and 12 weeks” if you need that to happen so you can keep paying the money that's going out. How might that change in your marketing message? What might your clients need differently? How could you repackage your products and services? Identify how you can repurpose and repackage what you're building so that you can offer it differently, potentially priced differently, and continue to bring in money. I have multiples of my clients that we have worked on just that. And they're making sales, continuing to design and continuing to bring in money during this time. They are offering something that they didn't offer before. This is not a time to just go in and start discounting, but I am sharing with you to consider how to repackage and repurpose some of what you do so that you can make money differently. Market differently and possibly change the messaging. People want to know what has changed and if what you're offering is what they need at that time.

Think outside of the box when asking those questions and even outside of your comfort zone in how you conduct business.

There are beautiful opportunities to embrace new tools especially in technology to help you. Zoom (the “new” Skype) can be used even with our iPhones and iPads.  This will allow you to see a client’s space.  There are apps that can help you with measuring and taking pictures of your client’s spaces so that you can have a detailed and measured idea of what is needed. Our world has become more online-focused due to the pandemic and safety measures enacted and we found that online we were able to stay connected. We may never have another pandemic in our lifetimes, but there may be other things that scatter us, personally or professionally, and allows us to continue working in an online community and in an online way. If you are not familiar with all of these new technology tools, it's a great time to investigate and think outside of the box.

As you continue with your transition planning, questions may arise around education, cross training of staff, and duplication of effort as examples.  Write down the plan you have created so that you are not left in a lurch.  This will also give your company a position of strength to have a clear picture of your business, your finances, your team, and the path you can take to move forward. I know that personally, the more advanced planning I do, the safer I feel.

Now for a hard truth that I have had to learn this myself and I'm still being reminded of. We cannot control everything. Just because we plan doesn't mean everything is going to go according to the plan. Keeping our plans fluid and understanding that things are changing (and you may not have control over all things) will be a huge benefit to you and your business. Knowing these things will allow you the freedom to manage. That is what these plans are doing and are saying, "How do I hope to manage during a time of transition." The act of thinking about it, writing it down and putting it on paper makes you feel as if you have some control or some ability to manage. It also frees you up that if new things happen, because you've already thought through certain scenarios and situations, your mind now goes into solving and instead of retreat, and that's what we want. We want our minds to be taking all this in.

You all do this every single day in your businesses; you are problem solvers. We need to use and harness that same energy, that same creativity that you have that solves all of these problems for your clients and solve them for your own business. That same transition that you create for your client from the house that they have to the house that they want, and what it looks like in the middle is the same skill you possess to create your transition plans. You do this all the time! You have the ability; it's just harnessing your brainpower to help you think that way. The more advanced planning you do the easier it will be.

Now that you have your transition plan, let’s think about a restart plan. 

After the pandemic, we had to identify how we wanted to restart our lives and our businesses.  Here is an idea of just a restart plan on a day-to-day level. One thing I do at the end of every day is review my to-do list and I make a note of anywhere I need to start for the next day. This allows me to come in and restart the new day with the plan in place because I did it the day before. If we were to look at that one on a broader scale, that's all that we're doing. We're saying, "When this picks back up, this is where I will start back. This is what I will do, I will start here, I'll do this, and I'll do this." And when the day comes that you can restart, you have a plan. Remember, like every other plan, it needs to be fluid. You may have a restart plan that you plan for at the end of four weeks and it may look slightly different if you don't start for 12 weeks. But if you at least give yourself an outline of where to start thinking and planning, you will feel so much relief and less stress when the time comes to execute the plan.

Not everything in your plans may work out the way that you thought, but remember that the best-laid plans don't always work out. It's about the process of thinking it through. That is the exercise that I care more about than every detail being right in your plan. It's just a plan. It's just an idea. It's just a strategy, tactically, to meet your goals. Having a plan feels so much better than to not even know what you're doing during the day.  I encourage you to get to work and look at your business. This could be a great time to refine and decide where you want to go forward. Invite that thought process in and use it. I think you might enjoy it.

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