Q. How do you evaluate the
proposed plans?
We do that in one of
these ‘two or three times
a year’ meetings we
have. We get together as
a group and we put the
plan up and talk about it.
We say, ‘This section of
the plan, we said we
weren’t going to pursue
that.’ Or, ‘We have a
niche in the power market, and you’re not
addressing that niche.’
So we all take turns
looking at each other’s
plan up on the board and
commenting to it. You
find out at that point,
people present their
plans, and we all act as
constructive critics to
find out if it’s real, if it’s conservative and if it’s on point with
our overall market goals.
People tend to trend to what’s
familiar and easy, and what’s
familiar and easy may not necessarily be what is strategically
right.
We went through a strategic
change a couple years ago. We
used to do a lot of work for the
federal government, then we
redefined ourselves, identified
our core competencies and
found out which markets we
should be pursuing in the private section in these regions
we’ve committed to. Some of
our people — all they knew was
government business, and they
felt very uncomfortable going
outside of that cocoon.
Some people were able to
make the transition, and some
were not. Some left voluntarily
because they were uncomfortable with that, and we had to
hire people who would take us
to those new markets.
Q. How did you handle that
transition?
We had to look at ourselves
through the view of our competitors and firms we would
like to emulate. If we have
these competencies and this
firm in the marketplace has
those competencies, we actually look at their marketing
brochures and analyze how
they’re doing business. Then,
we take portions of that, that
match our core competencies
and see how to apply those.
Once we identify them, you
find that you have to improve
some of your offerings. You
have to know what you don’t
know now. That’s one of the
things that we didn’t realize.
For example, we went into
health care. We thought that
our internal programs and
procedures were first-rate.
Well, they are first-rate, but
they’re not first-rate for the
health care industry.
We didn’t know that there
are other issues regarding life
safety and infection control
that were not a part of our current procedures. So we had to
learn what we didn’t know.
Q. How do you learn those
things in a new market?
First, go out and talk to the
customers. Of course, there is a
large amount of health care
infrastructure being built, so we
went out and talked to a few
clients about what their needs
were. They were very happy to
tell us what we would have to
do to play in their world.
They guided us toward associations; we joined those associations and attended their meetings and updated. And finally,
we did enough of that where a
specific client committed to us
and gave us a contract.
HOW TO REACH: Pangea Inc., (314) 333-0600 or www.pangea-group.com
