Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Agility is the new black

Welcome to the first of a series of thought provoking essays from the team at Sidell Gibson. In this series we hope to question, challenge and inspire those of us working in the creative industries. Whilst focusing on various subjects close to our heart, we will look to see how our past experiences, re-evaluated in the context of today's reality, can shape the future.

There have been many challenges faced by the industry during this recent economic downturn. The ability for companies to weather the storm and now to thrive once again requires agility and being able to adapt to different circumstances, the development of new strategies, ways of working and the forming of new allegiances. 

Our own adventure is no exception. Even after 40 years’ experience delivering a broad range of complex projects in the UK and abroad, the last downward trajectory in the economic cycle proved challenging to say the least.

For us, the way forward has been to forge a new relationship with a group of practices, enabling us to reap the benefits of shared resources, specialist expertise and facilities.   This new collaborative structure has been fundamental in enabling the practice to grow again, reinvigorating the office at all levels.  

The key to this continued success in the current economic climate is our new agility. Agility for us means creating flexible teams and resource structures that put the project and client at the centre of everything we do. At the same time it has been important not to lose sight of the principles and design approach that clients have associated with us over many years. Change may have occurred throughout the organisation, but it is this continuity of our culture, that we believe has been a significant factor behind their continued patronage. 

Of course the constant in all of this is the work – and this gets better and better – the teams involved in the projects are better, clients are better, technology is better, materials are better – we hope this is just the start of a new upward cycle – being intelligently agile will enable us to enjoy the ride.