Dollars, dependence and common sense!
Previously in this series, we have looked at several aspects concerning the cost of Interior Design projects, their investment challenges, ways to finance and ways to spread the outlay over time. However, all the good advice from budgeting and financial management experts can be to no avail if one important factor is missing: Common Sense!
Finances, while extremely important as the “driver” in many choices and decisions, is not the only aspect where your personal common sense must play an important role in your project process.
It didn't take long to verify, with several experts, that among their biggest headaches are the problems that can arise with clients who get into financial and other quagmires simply because they didn't use their every day, garden variety common sense!
A big part of that kind of trouble has to do with too much dependence on their experts. Hiring experts (in any field) doesn't mean that you — their client — should defer to them entirely, be overly cautious concerning a contrary position on something, or completely abandon your own common sense!
Nevertheless, it happens. Even when your Interior Design team assures you that the process is a mutual effort, with you as the power factor for choices and decisions, it still happens! There is a somewhat mysterious transfer of judgment that overtakes some clients. They sigh that sigh of relief that someone else will now take on the load and free them from applying their own good sense to the miscellany that can arise, day to day, when “the experts” aren't right there.
In some ways, it's a double-edged sword! The common sense comes in where that line exists between what you need the expert for and what you can easily decide for yourself. The risks? There is always the risk that a technical or design-specific move may be made on the wrong side of the “client or expert?” fence; it can cause delays and require correcting.
It is certainly true that some experts are flattered by a client's “over dependence.” But, when a client becomes so dependent on an expert's perceived superior judgment that they are hesitant to make any moves without them — it can become a whole separate problem! That kind of problem may translate into multiple, unnecessary phone calls, texts, emails, travel expense and reiterations. And that translates into time and money!
Where the line is drawn between reasonable dependence on your hired experts and your own common sense judgment, of course, varies — client-to-client and expert-to-expert.
Getting to know the intensity of confidence and judgment on either side (as well as the sense of reasonability perceived by both) is essential. It is acquired, at least to a reasonable extent, at the front end of your project, in the planning stages. That's a key juncture where your Interior Design expert listens and learns.
That is where initial assumptions (about each other) are tested for authenticity. That's the beginning of knowing when to defer and when to take the leap. Is it a 100% correct perception? Will it never let you down? No, and No!
But mutual awareness of the appropriate levels of trust and dependency — on both sides for both parties — begins importantly at the beginning. It starts with cooperation and validation in the preliminary investment of planning and development time. (That's just common sense!)
Robert Boccabella, B.F.A. is principal and founder of Business Design Services and a certified interior designer in private practice for over 30 years. Boccabella provides Designing to Fit the Vision© in collaboration with writingservice@earthlink.net. To contact him call 707-263-7073; email him at rb@BusinessDesignServices.com or visit www.BusinessDesignServices.com or on Face Book at Business Design Services.