How Firms Succeed

This groundbreaking guide to successful management in architecture, engineering, and design, the culmination of a decade of work, combines practical solutions with business theory and an eye-opening treatise on the anatomy of leadership.

A hands-on guide to running any design-related business from a two-person graphics team to middle-management to CEOs of multi-national firms offering advice on specific problems and situations and providing insight into the art of inspirational management and strategic thinking.

Architecture and design are undergoing a radical transformation.Global practice, sustainability, innovative delivery processes, and sophisticated technology are challenging everyone involved in the A/E/C industry to be both more creative and more efficient.In How Firms Succeed 5.0, Jim Cramer and Scott Simpson show how design professionals can deliver extraordinary new value for their clients. Their model of the "Design Enterprise Cycle" offers a compelling vision of what lies ahead, with step-by-step advice on how to achieve extraordinary success in a time of rapid change.

A Washington Post Bestseller Not all collaboration is smart. Make sure you do it right. Professional service firms face a serious challenge. Their clients increasingly need them to solve complex problems—everything from regulatory compliance to cybersecurity, the kinds of problems that only teams of multidisciplinary experts can tackle. Yet most firms have carved up their highly specialized, professional experts into narrowly defined practice areas, and collaborating across these silos is often messy, risky, and expensive. Unless you know why you’re collaborating and how to do it effectively, it may not be smart at all. That’s especially true for partners who have built their reputations and client rosters independently, not by working with peers. In Smart Collaboration, Heidi K. Gardner shows that firms earn higher margins, inspire greater client loyalty, attract and retain the best talent, and gain a competitive edge when specialists collaborate across functional boundaries. Gardner, a former McKinsey consultant and Harvard Business School professor now lecturing at Harvard Law School, has spent over a decade conducting in-depth studies of numerous global professional service firms. Her research with clients and the empirical results of her studies demonstrate clearly and convincingly that collaboration pays, for both professionals and their firms. But Gardner also offers powerful prescriptions for how leaders can foster collaboration, move to higher-margin work, increase client satisfaction, improve lateral hiring, decrease enterprise risk, engage workers to contribute their utmost, break down silos, and boost their bottom line. With case studies and real-world insights, Smart Collaboration delivers an authoritative case for the value of collaboration to today’s professionals, their firms, and their clients and shows you exactly how to achieve it.

An American edition of the U.K.'s landmark book that applies Kay's groundbreaking theories to the U.S. experience, illustrating them with examples of success and failure in the American market. 30 line drawings.

Discover how the world's most successful social business leaders are making social media work for their enterprises! Reflecting the pioneering experience of executives at pioneering companies ranging from Adobe to Xerox, this guide offers a unique, unprecedented insider's view of what it takes to succeed with social business. Dozens of battle-tested corporate practitioners have shared their intimate first-hand experiences in developing, launching and managing social media initiatives to improve customer care, marketing, product development, and other key business functions. Each chapter, written by a different social media thought leader, reveals their most intense struggles, biggest wins, and hardest-won lessons in social business. These case studies illuminate the differences between "social media for social's sake" and practical use cases that drive real business value. How Companies Succeed in Social Business delivers specific strategies, detailed tactics, true best practices, and actionable answers to these and other crucial questions about both strategy and tactics: How have other companies been successful, and where have they failed? How do I champion social business initiatives to executives? How do I measure ROI and build a business case? How do I attract and deepen both internal and external participation? How do I integrate social media with my existing technologies and processes? How do I organize internally for maximum effectiveness and efficiency? How will social media impact my people and our culture? How can I optimize our content management processes and systems? What's lurking around the corner? How can I prepare for the future of social business? This is an indispensable resource for all leaders and practitioners in support and marketing, especially those involved with IT, PR, corporate communications, sales, or product development. Applicable to many industries, it will be especially valuable to B2B companies, and those whose offerings have a significant technological component.