This episode runs 29 min.
As A/E/C marketers, we spend time developing a vision for our firm, but often neglect creating one for ourselves. David interviews A/E/C marketing consultant Bill Strong, FSMPS to discover the why and how of personal visioning.
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Questions Answered in This Episode 149: Bill Strong, FSMPS, on Personal Visioning.
Intro – quick story of how Bill landed in A/E/C marketing and career milestones
Why this topic?
Who should do personal visioning?
How frequently?
How do you prepare for this visioning?
Recommended process?
What format?
What is immediate follow-up?
Do you actually share this with others?
How to stay on track?
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Announcer: Welcome to PSM, the Professional Services Marketing podcast. It’s insight applied.
David Lecours: Hi, I’m David Lecours, and I’m joined by special guest Bill Strong to talk about personal visioning. Welcome to the show, Bill.
Bill Strong: Thank you.
David Lecours: Before we learn more about Bill, I just want to remind our listeners that our underwriting sponsor is SMPS, who reminds us that business is transformed through marketing leadership. We’re very fortunate to have a fellow of SMPS named Bill Strong on our show today.
Announcer: This is PSM. It’s insight applied.
David Lecours: Okay, so, Bill, what I would love for you to share with our listeners is a quick story of how you landed in AEC marketing, and maybe some career milestones that bring you up to speed in terms of where you are today.
Bill Strong: Sure, yeah. Actually, I landed in the AEC world because when I was five years old, trust me, five years old, I told my parents I wanted to be an architect. They were surprised. But I kept that dream all the way through grade school, high school, and went to college and got my Bachelors of Architecture for five years. To me, landing in the AEC world was a dream from when I was a kid, I have to admit. But I have to admit also what happened to me. You want a milestone.
David Lecours: Yes.
Bill Strong: Literally about six years after working … I got out of college, I had three or four firms clamoring to hire me.
David Lecours: I’m sure.
Bill Strong: Which was exciting. Exciting, but five, six years after I worked for two or three different firms, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I wasn’t that good of an architect.
David Lecours: Oh, no. Even as a child prodigy?
Bill Strong: Yes. Yes. It was shocking. I really had to deal with that early on. I really wasn’t a creative design type, and I wasn’t technically geared towards the technical world, either. I had to really figure out what to do. This is the late 70s when SMPS was only on the east coast, basically. There was no … There weren’t too many role models other than being an architect in an architectural firm. That’s honestly where I was hit with a ton of bricks that I had to start … I didn’t call it visioning then. I didn’t think about it as personal visioning, but that was the beginning of this whole topic for me, hit in the face with what am I going to do now, because I don’t want to leave architecture.
David Lecours: Right.
Bill Strong: I really didn’t want to. But I knew I wasn’t good.
David Lecours: Then did you transition into a marketing role at one of the firms you were working at?
Bill Strong: No. I actually started talking to other people, started to do my visioning that you’re talking about, trying to figure out my strengths and weaknesses. I was very active in the American Institute of Architects. This is in the Midwest. I was in Kansas City, Missouri at the time. A lot of my friends who went to school with me were shocked when I told them that I really need to alter somehow. I was fortunate. A larger firm actually started talking to me about a role at their architecture firm that was different and unusual. It wasn’t called marketing then, I have to admit.
David Lecours: Yeah.
Bill Strong: But they wanted to grow, and they asked me to join them to help them work on mergers, acquisitions, transitioning to other firms, and folding them into their organization. Plus help them do better in interviews, so-
David Lecours: Right, right.
Bill Strong: I kind of fell into marketing, if you want to know the truth. But at the same time, when I did this early visioning I really looked at my strengths and weaknesses, and it wasn’t design or technical, but it was people skills, it was networking, it was getting out there and getting to know people. I had no trouble walking into parties and just saying hello. That was part of my early deciding what I’m going to do with my future. This job really … I was there for about nine years, and helped them grow the firm from a one architecture office to 12 around the United States. That was really pretty fulfilling, I have to admit.
David Lecours: Right. I know you’ve worked in a couple different roles as marketing director, chief marketing officer, and now as I understand it, you’re out on your own as a consultant. Is that right?
Bill Strong: Yes. Yes. Yeah, I did move from Kansas City to Seattle and joined a firm there, and specifically looked for a firm that wanted someone to come in with a more business twist, who wanted to really work on the business side of the firm versus be on the boards. I fortunately found a firm. I was there 25 years and retired from them, and knew that I couldn’t stop working. So I am now consulting with architects, and some engineers, and some construction firms on the business side, helping them with strategic planning, or growing, or diversifying, or marketing.
David Lecours: Yeah, that’s awesome.
Bill Strong: Or training.
David Lecours: But you mentioned you had no trouble walking into a room and getting to know people. I can attest to that personally because I got to meet you at a conference, and you are super likable and easy to get to know and talk to. I’ve wanted to have you on this show for a while, and I was trying to decide … You have so many skills. I was like well, what are we going to talk about? You and I talked a little bit about what topic, because I like to have a narrow topic, and you brought up this idea of personal visioning. Maybe tell our audience a little bit more about why you think this topic’s so important.
Bill Strong: Well, I believe it’s really important not only because I had to do it, I had to force myself six years out of school to decide what I wanted to do, but I’ve continued to do it ever since. Every firm that we work for, us marketing people within the AEC, every firm we work for does visioning. They do strategic planning. They create … Well, I shouldn’t say every firm because some firms don’t. But they should.
David Lecours: Yeah.
Bill Strong: All great firms create visions, and missions, and values, and goals, and sometimes for a five year stretch, sometimes for three, sometimes for ten. It all depends. But they craft their future. If great firms do it and they succeed, why the heck shouldn’t we as individuals do it so we can succeed? That’s why I think we should do it.
David Lecours: Yeah. No, it makes sense. Should everybody be doing this? We’re focused on AEC marketers, but I don’t know, do you have an opinion about everybody in the firm, should they be undertaking this kind of exercise?
Bill Strong: I do, I really do because it forces you to take a hard and honest look at yourself, and I believe there are some people in a technical staff in our firms that really should be doing it too, and taking a hard look, and really deciding … Just because the path in most firms is, “Well, you have to be a principal to be successful.” Maybe that’s not necessarily true for everybody. If they found what they really loved and could excel at, and if it isn’t being a principal, or if it isn’t being a marketing director because you absolutely love doing proposals, well let’s find that niche and let’s grow in that area only. I think everybody should be doing it. Honesty with ourselves is powerful as far as I’m concerned.
David Lecours: Right. I know this term visioning and vision gets thrown out a lot. You hear things like vision boards and stuff like that. Maybe before we get too much deeper into this, maybe just some real practical, or … my concrete example of some aspect of visioning that we’re talking about, just so we can marry the word visioning to what our expectation is.
Bill Strong: Okay. Well, let’s see. You said practical, so in my mind, we should do it just like we do for our firms. Most of us, if you’re involved in strategic planning, if you’re not, you do some planning ahead of time. You realize, well, we need to have a retreat, and we need to do this, or we need to do that. They plan ahead, and they pick a place to go away from the office. They’re gone for two days, three days, whatever it is, and they prepare ahead of time whether it’s get a facilitator or not, or do a lot of research or not. But they prepare and they predetermine what they need to accomplish by the end of their retreat, what are the outcomes they want. I think that we need to do the same kind of thing for a personal retreat. There are some real live items that we need to prepare for ahead of time, and processes that we need to follow. Everybody’s heard of a SWOT, strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Our firms do that. Well, we need to do those kinds of things for our own personal visioning also.
David Lecours: Yeah.
Bill Strong: That fully answered your question, but there’s others, I know.
David Lecours: Yeah, yeah. I guess when I think of it, I just think of visioning as what do you want to be in, let’s say three years. What is this future vision of yourself? Whether that’s giving yourself a title, or maybe there are certain responsibilities, or certain things you want to learn, it’s looking ahead and identifying all right, that’s where I want to end up, so that you could take steps to get there.
Bill Strong: Exactly. And you need to put together goals, and objectives, and an action plan in order to get there. Yeah. Over the years, I honestly have done it about every five years, literally. Maybe it was six, one. But I’ve done it about every five years. There was times when … As I said, I was with the firm for 25 years, and there were times when other people that I got to know just because I was out there, some people wanted to convince me to come over to their firm. They enticed me with a lot of things, but I needed to really … Maybe that visioning was all about do I want to stay where I am, and if I do, what do I want to do next where I am? Or do I want to move? I had to really think about that.
Bill Strong: But there are other times in my five year plans where I said to myself I really want to be involved, I really want to be a principal, and this is a little bit unusual for architectural firms to have someone in a business role to be a principal in the firm at that time when I was doing it. That was my five year goal, was okay, what do I need to do to become a principal at my firm.
David Lecours: Right.
Bill Strong: So yes, you need to have a big picture goal for the end of the five years, whatever it is. If I want to be the best proposal manager in the world, that’s my five year goal.
David Lecours: Right. You answered my next question, which is great, because I was curious how frequently should somebody do this. I think it’s obvious that if you do this every five years, you’re coming up with a five year plan. Then at the end of those-
Bill Strong: Exactly.
David Lecours: Yeah, okay.
Bill Strong: Yeah, yeah.
David Lecours: Captain Obvious, here.
Bill Strong: No, no.
David Lecours: You started to mention a couple things like how to prepare for this visioning. Is there anything else you want to elaborate on that?
Bill Strong: Well, I do a little bit because I think if you have this big picture idea, all right, I want to become a … I’m a marketing manager now, but I want to become a marketing director or whatever. So, you not only do research, what is the difference between a marketing director and a manager? But I think really need to go and talk to others, talk to your mentors that you’ve had, talk to some marketing directors out there within your city that are really good at what they do, and you recognize that they’re good at what they do. Have some honest conversations with them and find out what are the traits and skills that they had to learn. What have they found out about themselves? What do they wish they would have done five years earlier to be prepared for this role, etc.? You do need to do some honest searching, research, and talking to other people, and learning about them. Buy a book on marketing directors if you need to. But really learn about it so you can be honest with yourself. That’s part of preparation.
David Lecours: I would be remiss if I didn’t say that SMPS has a lot of great resources on their website about defining what these roles are, and what the typical expectations are in terms of job responsibilities. That’s a-
Bill Strong: You bet. You bet.
David Lecours: A great place. But I love that you said find people that you admire and use them as inspiration. Whether or not they become a formal mentor or not, just the idea of having somebody out there that you’re like, yeah, I want to be that person, in your own way, in five years is fantastic because it shows that it’s possible. Yeah, and I love it. Yeah.
Bill Strong: Yeah. You’ve got to take that information, because to me that’s part of the … If you have a two day retreat for yourself, that’s what I usually did, went away for a weekend, left the other half and kids at home, and literally went away. I had to then really take the information I’d learned from other people, and do my own strengths and weaknesses chart, and compare it to those traits and skills. What do I have that fit into those traits and skills that I learned from these other ideal mentors or ideal people out there? What don’t I have? I had to be honest with myself and start … Okay, well how am I going to gain in those traits and skills that I need to gain? Yeah, it’s a real hard look every single time, at yourself. It’s important to talk to others ahead of time.
David Lecours: You mentioned strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. Sometimes it’s hard to be objective about yourself. I’m imagining that I could get some really good input from my wife about what my strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats are going to be. Does it make sense to bring somebody else involved in the process?
Bill Strong: I wouldn’t bring them, but I would actually spend time with them ahead of time. That’s why I would research and talk to other people. So yes, your spouse is very much … your significant other is very much a part of that. But bringing them might pull you away from actually really working hard and being honest with yourself.
David Lecours: Yeah, no. Right.
Bill Strong: Even if it is a spouse. And you’ve got to really do that and look closely. But when it’s done, you’re going to come back to your spouse and say, “Here’s what I decided. Give me some feedback.” That’s follow up.
David Lecours: What do you think?
Bill Strong: That’s part of follow up [crosstalk 00:15:30].
David Lecours: Right.
Bill Strong: Anyway. So-
David Lecours: Yeah.
Bill Strong: The other thing you really have to do too, ahead of time and then during your retreat, is think about the firm that you’re with and what’s the … In strategic planning we call it what’s the situational analysis, shall we say. You’re trying to figure out where’s our firm headed, and is there more work in the healthcare area, and what are the trends that we need to … Well, you do the same thing … Where am I? Where is the firm? Has the firm ever had a marketing director before? Do they even understand what it is themselves? What are the firms needs and strategic goals, and how will you, as becoming a marketing director, fit into the firm’s strategic goals and direction that they want to create? You have to do that while you’re gone, also, and somebody else being there might not really understand that side of the firm, etc., and they might impede you from getting to those honest answers, also.
David Lecours: Sure. That alignment, I think, is key, right?
Bill Strong: It is.
David Lecours: So taking the firm’s goals, and then aligning yours. Maybe the exercise tells you, hey, my goals and visioning isn’t in alignment with the firm, and maybe this is a time for me to do a little research and find out is there a firm out there that is more aligned. Sometimes there may not be, and you may realize hey, I’ve got it pretty good here. Maybe I should just tweak a thing or two.
Bill Strong: Yeah, yeah. If I’m going to go back and basically convince the existing principals that I need to be a marketing director, or I need to be a principal in the firm, I’ve got to make sure it aligns with their goals and their strategic plan in the long run, also. Otherwise, I’ll be barking up the … whatever, a tree that won’t respond.
David Lecours: Yeah, yeah. You may have mentioned this already, but I am curious if there’s anything else about a recommended process. I know going away is really important, but other than that, a process for getting this done. What should somebody do?
Bill Strong: Yeah, well, I … To me, if you’ve done some research, and you’ve talked to some people, a lot of times the first thing I do is really just review all that information I’ve gathered, because maybe it’s been a couple months of gathering information. Maybe I got a bunch of information from SMPS, a book on leadership, or whatever, and I read it all, and I took notes. Well, my first step is really to review everything I’ve gathered and what I’ve done, and then I actually state out loud what I would like to be. Five years from now, I want to be a principal in the firm, or five years from now, I want to be the marketing director. Then I start to really work on, okay, well let’s start with my SWOT. Let’s start with my strengths and weaknesses.
Bill Strong: In firm retreats, you might have a facilitator up in front of a big pad, and they’re writing everything down, and they’re filling the room with sheets or whatever. I have to admit, it’s just me. I do a lot of journaling, so I have this journal and I’m just putting all this stuff, and each page would be one of these things, or maybe my strengths are one page, my weaknesses on another, etc. That’s when I really start to dig into me and what I have to offer this firm. I think I mentioned all of them, but the process needs to … Midway the second day, it needs to … because you’ve already done the situational analysis, and you’ve already figured out whether you … this goal of yours could or could not fit into your firm.
Bill Strong: Then you start … You need to really re-identify your big five year goal, but what are the three to five sub goals that will lead you there, and the priority or the step, the right steps to get there. What’s the first thing to do? That’s your first goal. What’s the second thing to do? Then have objectives underneath each one of those also so it leads you to an action step process because you need to have that by the end of the second day if you’re gone for two day, or three days. You’ve got to have that. You’ve got to have the big goal, the three to five secondary goals, and the objectives, and then the action plan.
David Lecours: In terms of format, are we really talking about a written document, or is there a visual component to it? As a designer, I’m always thinking visual, but maybe that’s not the way to go.
Bill Strong: Well, no. It’s totally up to you and what you’re like. I do believe … I do journaling, like I said, so I have this book and everything with all this stuff in it, multiple pages. But I do believe in order to make sure that you’re going to do something about it, or … which my follow up is to share it with other people. You’ve got to get down to one page, whether that’s one 8 1/2 by 11 page, or is that one infographic, 11 by 17, that really has a visual impact. But it’s got to be easy to share with other people, and easy for you to look at once a month or so, to be able to say, “Hey, I’m keeping on track, here,” or, “Uh oh, I better get my rear in gear here.” So to me, all that journaling has got to get down to a one page kind of a thing. That’s important to me, the format.
David Lecours: I think there’s something about synthesizing down to a single page that also forces you to prioritize a little bit. You may have really lofty goals and want to do a lot of things, but five years is a finite period of time and you want to be realistic that there’s other demands on your time. There’s something good about that in that it forces you to really prioritize and narrow it down. Then hey, if you accomplish all those things in three years, then hey, you can add some more. But I’d rather see people get things done. I like that idea of having it all on a single page. Quick reference. You could put it up in your office. You could put it up in some private place that forces you to look at it frequently. I love it.
Bill Strong: Yeah. Having sub goals, and objectives, and action plans, you literally can just start checking some things off and visually you’re seeing, yeah, I am getting something done. You don’t want to have it so lofty that you can’t get anything done. That’s really defeatist and you don’t need that. You’ve got to have some … not simple, but some easier things on the list, too, that you can go, “Yes, I got that done.” It gives you the momentum to keep going.
David Lecours: All right, so you’ve got this one pager. That’s the deliverable to yourself. What’s the immediate follow up after that?
Bill Strong: Well, to me it’s sharing. I have to admit, it is sharing. You’re going to come back and share it with your spouse, and I would too. But I really want to come back and share it with any existing mentors I have, or any of the people that I researched with that I want to continue as a mentor. I need to come back and share it with them. On top of that, and you’re going to … I’m sure the audience is going to gasp at this. But I think we need to come back and share it with our boss.
David Lecours: Oh, wow.
Bill Strong: With your boss. The direct boss, or the CEO of the company, or whatever. But I think we need to come back and share it with the boss. Not in a threatening way, or not in any way except for I have created my own vision, and I want to see myself as a marketing director five years from now. I just want you to know that that’s my goal and this is where I’m headed, and I have a five step plan to get there, and I’ll share the whole thing with you. But I want you to know that this is where I want to go, and I want your support to get there. I think that’s really, really important because they will actually push you, also, along the way.
Bill Strong: Then I have, sometimes in the past, I didn’t early on, but after I was doing this quite a bit, because I had people working for me at that second … the firm I stayed for 25 years. So I shared it with some of my own marketing managers and marketing coordinators. I shared with them what my five year plan and goal was also. Especially towards the end. I did one when I was 60 years old because I knew I was going to retire from [inaudible 00:24:04] at 63, and so … or my firm. I shared it with them, definitely, about what my goal was to become a consultant, and how I was going to do things in the firm my last three years that will help me propel myself into my consulting, also, which was interesting.
Bill Strong: I think that’s really important, is to share with other people. And identify help, then. When I share with this mentor, I want your help in this area. When I share with that mentor, I want this help in your area. When I share it with my boss, I want your help in this area, etc. That’s a powerful aspect of this visioning in my mind.
David Lecours: I can imagine if somebody came to me with this type of thing, I would be really impressed, and I would want to reward them in some way for taking the initiative and saying, “This is where I want to go.”
Bill Strong: Exactly.
David Lecours: Even if they’re not there … and I love how you said you don’t say it in a bragging way or a threatening way. I think communicating this with humility, saying, “Hey, look. I know I’m not there, but I also know that this is the path and these are the steps that I’m going to take that are going to help get me there. Is there anything from your perspective that you would see-
Bill Strong: Exactly.
David Lecours: Yeah. So not only are you sharing it up, but I think … within the organization, but you’re also sharing with people that might work for you so that they can support you and help you to get to where you want to go.
Bill Strong: Exactly. That’s where I also wanted it to be included in my performance reviews.
David Lecours: Right.
Bill Strong: That’s where I would ask my boss to also help me through those. I would review some of those in the performance review. So yeah, it’s very active.
David Lecours: Five years is kind of a long time in today’s world where we want everything tomorrow. How do you stay on track during this period to making sure that you’re fulfilling your goals?
Bill Strong: Yeah. Well the one page summary helps, I have to admit. My other half helped push me along, I have to admit. Hey, did you get to that area yet, or where are you now on such and such? So that helped. But I really kept it, especially since I did share it, I actually kept it hanging on the … it wasn’t a bulletin board, but right next to my work desk, right there so I actually looked at it. But I did specifically take time. I just happen to be an early person, so I was always at work by 6:30 in the morning or something.
David Lecours: Right.
Bill Strong: Architecture firms, people don’t usually show up until 9:30.
David Lecours: No.
Bill Strong: There were … Once a month on a Friday morning, I literally took about … Oh, it depends. 30 minutes, sometimes an hour to actually just sit there and see where am I, what have I done, what haven’t I done. Uh oh, why am I not facing this goal or this objective? What’s holding me back? So I had to do a little bit of honesty and searching then. I did it once a month on Friday mornings for about a half hour to an hour, and really checked in on myself. You could do it more or less. Once a month was enough for me, and if I really started to see some issues, then quarterly I would have to really dig in a little bit deeper and really figure out what’s going on and why I’m not getting where I want to go.
David Lecours: Right, right.
Bill Strong: That’s how I did it. The one page summary, or infographic, or whatever, really helped me keep on track, and it was right there in front of me every day.
David Lecours: So, listeners, you may be doing this. You may not be doing this. We’d love to hear from you. If you go over to PSM.show and drop us a line about some suggestions about visioning, what’s worked for you, what hasn’t. Man, Bill, this has been super helpful. I’m inspired. I feel like I need to plan my own personal retreat and start doing some of this visioning because if you don’t vision, it’s just, you know, it’s not going to happen. Seems like we all want to control our own destinies, and not just let circumstance dictate for us.
Bill Strong: Sure. That’s true. There’s times you might get in your car and you’re going to go away for a vacation, and you just want to wing it, and you want to just see where you end up. But there’s other times that you really want to plan ahead and know you’re going to be in this part of the world at this time. If you don’t plan it, you never know where you’re going to end up, so I believe in planning ahead of time.
David Lecours: Awesome. Where can our listeners find out more about you or your consulting services?
Bill Strong: I do have a website, BillStrongConsulting.com. But my email, if anybody wanted to contact me also to ask some questions, is Bill.Strong, S-T-R-O-N-G, at live, L-I-V-E, dot com.
David Lecours: Awesome, and we’ll post those links in the show notes over at PSM.show.
Bill Strong: Perfect. Wonderful. Well, thank you, David, for-
David Lecours: Yeah. Thank you.
Bill Strong: Allowing me to rant and rave.
David Lecours: Absolutely. So that’s it for this episode of PSM Show on personal visioning with Bill Strong. Big thanks to Bill and to our sponsor, SMPS. We told you where to get in touch with us, PSM.show, and we will talk to you next time.