“Cities were mostly designed by people who didn’t use them.”

The nature of our business puts us in touch with some fascinating individuals. The quote I led with is from a chat I was having with Catherine Barratt, Managing Director of Furnitubes, a company based in England that produces urban outdoor furniture. Working with Furnitubes, and speaking with Catherine in particular, confirms that we don’t need to be engaged in the same business activity to share a set of values.

One of our shared obsessions is to do all we can in a way that has lasting impact because this makes the most sustainable use of resources. It preserves time, materials, and financial resources.

Another shared value is that all we do should benefit as wide an audience as possible. And in the case of Furnitubes, this is taken to mean absolutely everyone.

Consider the supply chain of outdoor urban furniture. The bench you sit on when you’re in a public space like a city square has been manufactured by a company like Furnitubes, directly paid for by the city council, chosen by an urban planner or designer, and finally you get to take a moment’s pause by sitting on it. It is you, this last person in the chain, who has indirectly paid for it all because it’s ultimately our taxes that build cities.

Despite this, for the longest time, cities have been designed by people who were designing for themselves. They didn’t consider other demographics, nor did they take the wellbeing of a large group of people into account. Cities were largely designed for the efficiency of trade and this meant that transportation was central to this design. We built cities around cars and us humans had to make the adjustments necessary to give traffic the highest priority.

In the past, we designed with humans in mind. Barcelona, for instance, was designed to take into account that a high population density will need more open spaces if they are to feel like they can breathe in the city. Cities like Rome and Athens were designed to leave a legacy of beauty behind.

The discourse surrounding the transformation of urban spaces is both timely and essential, as the delineation between indoor refuge and our time spent outdoors becomes ever more pronounced. As we spend more time indoors, the time we spend out of our homes becomes even more precious. And this serves as an imperative for our urban environments to provide us with a healthy dose of wellbeing.

Catherine is fully immersed in this sentiment. When speaking about the way they regard their role in society, she states that, “if you make an area welcoming and functional, it has ripple effects across the whole community. People look after spaces they value, crime goes down, and health indicators improve. We strive to build long-lasting products that benefit the public,” she says. “Our decisions are made with a better future in mind.”

How can the manufacturing industry participate in this movement?

Catherine believes the private sector has an important role to play. “The private sector has a moral imperative to lead this charge,” she contends.  “Businesses must demonstrate the potential and the value of sustainable, human-centric urban design. Every park bench, every planter, every element we introduce into the urban fabric should be a testament to our belief in a more beautiful, more connected future.” And this is the way she leads Furnitubes, to set an example through sustainable practices and innovative design that puts people first.

Peering into the future, Catherine adopts an optimistic stance regarding the trajectory of urban planning. 

She sees cities that embrace human-centric design, nurturing environments that are not only livable but also enriching and inclusive. This forward-looking perspective shows that well-conceived urban spaces can act as catalysts for community, creativity, and well-being

And this reflects a broader commitment to building cities that not only function efficiently but also resonate on a deeper, more personal level: “We have a responsibility to leave a legacy of functional beauty. Beautiful outdoor spaces add value to the lived experience of all those who make use of them. This is what great cities do.”

These are great platforms for us to build a better future on. Innovative design and manufacture around the world gives us a glimpse at what’s possible when manufacturing leads, rather than follows. A new generation of savvy customers are demanding better. The time for inspiring, responsible, and lasting manufacture is here. If we keep this vision in mind, we stand a chance at building the world that we and future generations deserve.

The post Manufacturing a better future appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

If you couldn’t join the live session and would like to access the recording, click below.

Your company is brilliant. Your products are solid. So why is it so hard to articulate your value in a way that truly connects?

Join Ed, our Head of Brand Strategy, for a one-hour webinar designed for CEOs, founders, and business leaders.

We cover:

• The four common “crises” (comms, recruitment, culture, sales) that are really symptoms of a single identity crisis.
• The difference between having a logo and having a brand that builds real equity.
• A step-by-step brand framework to define your Ambition, Purpose, Values, and Personality.
• How to turn this internal clarity into impeccable differentiation in the market.

This session is for leaders who are tired of being misunderstood and are ready to build a brand that is authentic, powerful, and profitable.

The post The Power of Clarity [Webinar] appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

We are not architects, but we are builders – of brands, strategies, and narratives that stand the test of time. We believe in sustainable growth that goes beyond buzzwords and bottom lines. It’s not enough to do less harm. Whether you are constructing buildings or businesses, true sustainability requires beauty, integrity, and long-term thinking.

So while real estate may not be our domain, designing with purpose definitely is. Here’s the perspective we’ve given Money Magazine on the illusion of sustainability in the built environment, and what it can teach us about creating better businesses too.

The illusion of sustainability

We throw the word ‘sustainable’ around and hardly ever stop to consider the full reach of its meaning. It has come to be associated with any activity, resource use, or process that has a lower negative impact on the environment than a comparable equivalent.

That isn’t really sustainable. Neither does it encapsulate the full meaning of sustainability. For something to be sustainable, it must be able to be upheld over time without causing harm or depletion to its environment, society, and the economic ecosystem it forms part of. It implies that our actions today do not impede future generations to meet their own needs.

The starting point

Let’s start from the most essential point of departure – that of our point of view. We depart from a grossly anthropocentric view of everything we do, and this is crucial when speaking about sustainability. While we are the species we are concerned about most, we are but one link in an intricately interconnected ecosystem. What might sustain us at the expense of any other species is not, in fact, sustainable for the entire ecosystem.

From there, we build upwards and consider the multiple ways in which our activities can be sustainable.

If we are to leave an inhabitable planet for our progeny, we cannot leave the old “do a little less harm” definition of sustainability on the table. We must wrap it up in recycled paper and deposit it in the recycling bin. Even a neutral stance is unsustainable. Unless we look at our constructed environment with a view to reverse the staggering amount of harm that we are causing to the natural environment, we are neglecting our duties towards future generations.

If we consider that global cement production is accountable for 8% of our CO2 emissions, we can see that the construction industry is a major contributor to the sustained damage to our environment. And that is simply the view of one side-effect of a single material (before we even consider the impact of its transport costs).

Beyond the environment

But sustainability is not just about the environment. A sustainable practice is one that can continue to exist from an economic standpoint. If I decide to spend 10% more than what I earn every year, it is easy to see that there will come a time when my spending becomes completely unsustainable.

As we continue to construct the world around us in a way that is decoupled from the realities of those who inhabit it, we know that we are heading towards an inevitable inflection point. When the supply side outstrips demand – mainly for reasons of affordability, the market finds a way of self-regulating. An easier way of saying this is that there is product on the market but no one there who wants to purchase or rent at unreasonable rates. The fact that we’re still keeping the two sides balanced does not mean the situation will remain as is indefinitely.

What goes up

A long term view of everything we do is essential. We’ve built, torn down, and rebuilt so much of what’s around us – especially when we were forced to look at what we’d built in a hurry. Sometimes there is very good reason to do so. Look at Rotterdam. The city was flattened during the second world war and rebuilt in a hurry. The haste was an absolute necessity. Since then, a large majority of panic building was torn down to be rebuilt in a way that is more practical and more beautiful.

We are, after all, an ostensibly intelligent species. We want our surroundings to be aesthetically pleasing as well as functional and practical. While a war may justify building a city twice within 5 decades, we don’t have too many other excuses to waste time, materials, money, and energy. Concrete is devilishly hard to repurpose and recycle so it usually ends up relegated to the mountains of construction waste that will endure beyond the expected lifespan of our species.

For good, in both senses

Building with a very long term view in mind is sensible and admirable. We are lost in admiration for the structures that have endured since ancient times – Mayans, Romans, Egyptians, Greeks, etc – all  built for posterity and the results of their efforts stand today as proud reminders of what happens when a long-term view is the primary focus of any endeavour worth embarking on. Buildings that look beautiful and last a long time benefit absolutely everyone. As Le Corbusier claimed, those who could not afford to live in buildings he designed ought to be able to benefit from their beauty as they passed by.

Aesthetics and longevity can and should be intertwined notions. We should build to last and we should build for beauty. There is no reason for us to walk through a street and be assaulted by ugly. It’s a challenge to be anywhere around a built-up area of our tiny islands, look around you, and be solely captivated by the beauty of the buildings that surround you.

When the majority of new builds are designed by accountants, it is no surprise that they have the aesthetic appeal of a spreadsheet. We’ve gained density and lost beauty. The Greeks and the Romans and the rest of our global civilisation-building ancestors would be appalled to know how we’ve perverted the example they left us a few millennia ago.

Beyond brick-and-mortar

The principles of sustainable construction extend far beyond cement and steel. Organisations themselves can be built with either short-term expediency or long-term resilience in mind. Just as we wouldn’t want our buildings designed primarily by accountants, we shouldn’t let our business models be dictated solely by quarterly results. Whether constructing physical spaces or building brands and companies, the foundation matters. And that foundation begins with the narratives and values we design into our organisations from day one. Truly sustainable businesses, like truly sustainable buildings, require thoughtful architecture at their core, with systems and structures designed to weather challenges while creating lasting value for all stakeholders.

We are actually in control

When we think of what we’re about to do next we know that the word sustainability is going to be expected of us. It is up to us to define the word in a way that is meaningful to those who come next. Luckily, there is plenty at our disposal to help us construct the world around us in a way that future generations will be proud of.

We have techniques and materials and best practices that have been developed over the years and that are there for us to use wisely as we design and build the spaces we need. There is also plenty we can do to use existing buildings wherever possible. The notions of adaptive reuse, retrofitting, infill development, and even what the Italians call the ‘albergo diffuso’. This involves using existing buildings that are spread around the town as a hotel – not only does it preserve the architectural vernacular but it saves on the material and energy costs of constructing a new hotel building.

Of course, pursuing these ideals comes with practical challenges. Initial costs for quality materials and thoughtful design are often higher, even if they pay dividends over many decades to come. Malta’s dense regulatory landscape, from planning permissions to heritage preservation requirements, can make adaptive reuse projects complex undertakings. Finding architects and construction contractors with experience in sustainable retrofitting or preservation-minded construction presents another hurdle. 

These challenges require creative solutions and perhaps revised financial models that account for long-term value rather than just upfront costs. But what will we think about a century from now? Will future generations dismiss exemplary builds by saying, “They could have saved 10% by skimping on thinking”? I don’t think so.

The post The Illusion of Sustainability in Real Estate: Why Building Less Harm Isn’t Enough appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

I’m okay now, chemo is (hopefully forever) behind me, and I’m now preparing to embark on the next round of treatment.

But this post isn’t about my cancer journey (I’m writing plenty about that over on Instagram.)

This post is about what these last few months have taught me about leadership, culture, and the responsibility that comes with showing up for others – especially when you are struggling to show up for yourself.

Leading Through Uncertainty

Alongside the medical recovery came a very different kind of reckoning:

If I talk about it, do I risk burdening the people around me?
If I don’t talk about it, do I set an example that battles should be fought silently?
Is empathy in leadership about being open? Or is it about protecting your team from your own chaos?

These were the questions that kept circling in my mind for weeks.

And here’s the thing: I still don’t have neat, packaged answers.

But I did make the decision to be transparent about what I’m going through.

Not because it was easy. And definitely not because I wanted to be the centre of anyone’s attention.

Part of that decision was about raising awareness. The particular type of ovarian cancer I was diagnosed with (Low-Grade Serous) makes up just 2-5% of all ovarian cancers. It’s rare, it needs research, it needs attention. And one of the ways you get that is by talking about it.

But just as important was something else. I wholeheartedly believe that kindness belongs in organisations. It’s the foundation of any culture worth building. And if we say we lead with empathy, we can’t only do it when things are going well.

Pretending I was fine would have been hypocritical. One of the most important things I want to teach my son is that you should never hide parts of yourself to make other people feel more comfortable. And I cannot teach him that if I am not willing to live it myself.

Culture goes beyond what we see when everything is easy.
It’s what holds you when things fall apart.

When Culture Becomes Tangible

These past few months have been some of the hardest of my life – physically, mentally, and emotionally.

There were days when I couldn’t find the strength to get out of bed, let alone open my laptop or jump on a call.

But even on the darkest of days, I had something that every person in any organisation deserves to have: the peace of mind that I would be supported, fully, even when I couldn’t show up.

What struck me most during those moments was this: I was never met with pity or sadness. There were no awkward silences to fill. No uncomfortable conversations to tiptoe through. Just strength. Flexibility. Care.

And that doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by design. 

This is what we mean when we say culture isn’t cosmetic – it’s structural. It’s the thing that holds, even when everything else shakes.

Storms test structure. And I couldn’t be prouder of the one we’ve built together at Switch; a culture shaped by intention, held together by care.

For years, we’ve prioritised our deeply ingrained core values to guide every decision we make – whether it’s about the business or about our people.

We’ve made space for real conversations. About purpose. About what we stand for. About what makes us show up and feel fulfilled. 

So when I shared what I was going through, I got to experience (yet again) that those values aren’t just words in our brand book. They became tangible. They showed up in how the team responded. In how the work continued. In how I was treated – not as a manager in crisis, but as a human being navigating something hard.

A strong foundation doesn’t mean you won’t face storms. It just means you won’t be swept away by them.

The Test of Strong Foundations

Here’s the tricky part about having strong foundations: 

Living by your brand fundamentals doesn’t always feel comfortable. In fact, the strongest, most authentic values an organisation can have are the ones that push us out of our comfort zones by making us ask the hard questions. Again and again. 

For me, that meant showing parts of myself that don’t fit the polished, curated version of leadership we’ve been taught to portray.

What I’ve learnt though is that by showing up as our whole, authentic selves, we model something vital.

We show our teams that being human is allowed. That strength and struggle can co-exist. That we don’t need to compartmentalise who we are from what we do.

I can’t stress this enough: culture isn’t a line item on a spreadsheet.

It’s not a yearly quota measured by how many team-building events you’ve organised.

Culture is the invisible infrastructure that holds everything together – or lets everything fall apart.

Storms will come. In life. In business. In leadership.

The question isn’t whether we can avoid them. It’s whether we’ve built a culture strong enough to stand in the middle of them.

So I’ll leave you with this exercise. Get your team together and ask yourselves:

• Have you built a culture in your organisation that could carry you through both a business and a personal storm?
• Are your values known, lived, and visible — or are they just words on a wall?
• What version of yourself are you hiding at work — and what would it take to let a little more of it be seen?

The post The strongest foundations are built before the storm appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

I’m not an engineer or a mathematician, but I appreciate that if you make a number of small improvements to your system, the cumulative benefits can be monumental given enough time and progress.

For years on end we focused on this, tweaking parts of the engine to squeeze out some profitability here and there, to reduce costs, to increase efficiency. We looked at every aspect of our business until we got to a stage of diminishing returns. 

As we made progress, the market changed. There was more competition and budgets were squeezed from clients who constantly seemed to be going through a cost-cutting exercise. The tiny incremental moves we made were just about helping us keep afloat. They were changes that became necessary to keep us in business, not to thrive.

And there’s very little you can do to squeeze out more when you’ve been improving incrementally year on year and you’ve looked at every aspect of the business.

Evolution is important, but from time to time you need a revolution. Sometimes you need to strip your business down to its core and make some bold moves to get yourself out of a rut. Because, as someone bright once said, the definition of insanity is trying the same thing twice and hoping for a different outcome.

Over the course of the next few paragraphs, I want to share some lessons I learned from one of our boldest moves ever as an agency, definitely one of the boldest moves I’ve ever made in my career, and seeing it pay off has been extremely satisfying. It’s also been a good lesson on the importance of bold moves, the pitfalls around them, and the benefits you can reap. Looking back, there are a few lessons that I wish I had known before.

Should we make bold moves? How should we make bold moves? What are they, and how can we know if we’re prepared for them?

Let’s start at the beginning.

The Bold Move at Switch

Our bold move was pretty radical, and it was multifaceted, we had to make multiple moves at once for it to all make sense together. First, we took a decision to reduce the number of services we offer to just two, then we also chose to only focus on one type of business to offer it to (B2B clients). The benefits we saw were major, but they would take a great amount of courage because to get to our destination we had to accept that we’d be refusing business from our traditional client base.

It’s been a couple of years now, and it’s not always been easy, but now we can confidently say that we’ve moved past the hardest thresholds of the bold move, we’re now only onboarding clients in the two areas we’ve chosen to focus on, and it’s put us in a position where we’ve effectively moved away from being seen as a commoditised service provider. There are far fewer potential clients for us locally, but we’ve built a reputation that allows us to go after our ideal clients no matter where they are in the world.

Triggers for bold moves

Triggers for bold moves can be both internal and external:

On a macro level, external triggers that might signal the need for a bold move include geopolitical ones, and larger events outside your control (wars, pandemics). These can be easy enough to spot when they’re as dramatic as a war or a pandemic, but there are other signals that creep up on you at a much slower pace (a country’s ethnic mix changing gradually). Other external factors include changes in the market, or new technological shifts (generative AI, anyone?). On a smaller scale, you can have opportunities opening up more directly, such as a competitor going out of business or, on the other extreme, buying out another of your competitors and consolidating.

Internally you can have quite a few catalysts that might require bold moves. An employee (or a whole department) resigning can be devastating, especially if they had a skill that was unique to your business. You could have too much cash in the bank, or not enough (this is always riskier, but potentially a better catalyst for change), or you could have simply witnessed a plateau for a few years and want to jolt the company out of it.

Each one of these motivators has a different effect on us, as business leaders, yet in most cases, each one of them can be equal parts terrifying and exciting. Rocking the boat is never something that most of us are naturally inclined to do, so we’ll make all the excuses we can to keep things as is, improving ever so slightly wherever we can.

Building the courage to act

This can be the hardest part. The fear of pain is often even worse than the pain itself. Think about all the time you spent thinking about your next dentist’s appointment. I’m pretty sure you spent far more time anticipating, and fearing, the pain than the time you actually spent in pain. And I’m also pretty sure you felt much better once you were done, too (or at least I hope so, for your sake).

Bold moves with business are pretty much the same. We tend to spend too much time overthinking them and fearing failure than we do actually taking decisive action. This is not to say that you should rush into major decisions without giving them the proper consideration, but neither should you postpone the move indefinitely.

Prepare yourself psychologically, and if you can place proper risk management strategies in place. In some cases, if you’re lucky enough, you can run a test, or a series of tests and mitigate the risk. On our end, for example, we effectively ran a small separate agency within Switch that specialised in our new areas before actually shifting all our business externally.

The benefit of breaking the move into smaller pieces is obvious. It makes it easier to test out your hypothesis. However, this brings a major drawback with it: it can potentially slow down how well you can judge the changes you’re making. Once again, looking back at our bold move, the longer we took to make the shift, the harder it was to serve both kinds of clients, to attract both kinds of clients, and crucially, to work on both sets of services at once.

Types of Bold Moves

I can’t possibly list every kind of bold move for every possible business, but in general, some of the bold moves I’ve seen when working with businesses across all walks of life include mergers and acquisitions, shifting products or services sold (or, as in our case, reducing the number of products or services to specialise), exploring new distribution channels or simply deciding to hire someone new to start on your journey to expansion.

And in the end…

Bold moves aren’t about reckless risk-taking – they’re about calculated actions that can transform your business. You have to have the courage to implement something that might feel like it’s out of your comfort zone, but if you do you’ll find success. 

The post Revolution or Evolution: Choosing a New Beginning appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

This is the third year of our four-day work week experiment, and we have an update. 

Last year, we increased our four-day weeks to every other Friday, in addition to taking the entirety of summer as a four-day work week. This year, we’ve carried on the experiment, with a little bit of help from our friends (Asana, Google Meet, and Strava). 

This is how it’s going so far. 

The Prelude: Why Four Days?

It’s estimated that the amount of time spent on deep-focused work averages just over 4 hours and 48 minutes per day. When including collaborative work and multi-tasking opportunities into the overall calculations, the average employee is actively engaging with their work for a total of just under 7 hours – an hour less than the span of a typical work day. 

Additionally, not all work is made equally: 1 in 20 professionals spends more than twenty hours in meetings, and 60% of other valuable time is spent on ‘work about work’, such as chasing for updates. 

The quantity of work has significantly increased in the last handful of years, and the immediacy of email and work chats have pivoted towards an unsustainable working environment that ultimately can lead to burnout, low engagement, and dissatisfaction, thus stagnating company development. Above all, the four day work week is also a testimony to the belief that the mindset that prioritises astronomical growth at the cost of work-life balance is becoming increasingly unsustainable, both for business and the planet that we live in. 

Remote work is not a cure-all for bad company culture, but coupled with employee-led initiatives and continuous amendments, we feel that the four-day work week is the way of the future working world – and we’re just getting started. 

The Four Day Work Week, Year 3

Throughout the year, every alternative Friday is off; in summer, every Friday from June to October is off. Leave allowances and wages are untouched. In addition to Fridays off, while official working hours span between 9 – 5PM, employees can choose their own schedules and go out during the day to run errands, go to the gym, or work from different locations. Throughout the year, client meetings are scheduled from Monday to Thursday; the first year, Friday meeting requests were still very common, and they are down significantly this current year. 

In addition to our four-day work-week experiment, we are also a fully remote company with team members working from around the world. This decision was taken post-COVID-19, when there was no significant decrease in productivity, which introduces a new paradigm to the four-day work week. Most of us have no commute, adding several valuable hours to our free time, with the caveat that there is also less structured time: lunch is a moveable opportunity, and while there is liberty in scheduling work, there is equally less liberty in sticking to allotted end-times or start-times for the work day. While this has not proven a detriment in our own case, companies that experience crunch or have more stringent work demands can find a fully-remote and four-day work week a difficult combination to adopt. 

The benefits of a fully-remote, four-day work week

The ultimate aim of Switch’s working practices has always been to reduce the amount of time spent at work, and to complete more meaningful, high-quality, and valuable work for our clients. The three-day weekend falls in line with this plan, and additionally adheres to a changing understanding on work overall. Of the clients we’ve spoken to, most were understanding of the decision to remove communication on a Friday (and some have asked if we have any vacancies!). 

Some of the benefits reported are:

• A greater feeling of restfulness on Mondays. The three-day weekend adds another day to finish off errands, meaning that the weekend is fully and totally left for enjoyable activities. 
• Better work-life balance, and the ability to ‘reset’. 
• Working days showed higher productivity and focus. 
• Employee retention and recruitment prospects have increased. 
• A general sense of pride. 

Most notably, these benefits are in line with reports undertaken by much larger companies. 

• Microsoft’s three-day weekends boosted productivity by 40%. 
• 39% of employees in the UK experienced reduced stress levels due to the four-day week. 
• Half of respondents in a pilot study in the UK noted improvements in productivity; the remaining only noted that productivity stayed the same. 
• 56% of recruiters saw increased employee retention. 

The challenges of a four-day work week

A four-day work week is not without its drawbacks, and while the benefits can be clearly seen, there’s less focus on the negatives of having less time to work. Specifically for Switch, the challenges we most ran into were: 

• A greater difficulty in scheduling meetings, coinciding with the peak summer holiday months where parts of the team were unavailable. 
• Completing more detailed and elaborate tasks in a shorter week and with less time. 
• Coordinating with clients who work five days a week. 

That said, it is significant that the challenges faced this year are far less than the ones experienced in our previous four-day work week experiment, and can possibly be rectified with restructuring further. Two years into the four-day work week experiment, many of the initial issues have been smoothed out – but not without a certain level of effort. 

What does it take to make a four-day work week work?

For companies who are starting the four-day workweek themselves, this is a factor that is hardly spoken of: the effort, time, and practice it takes to perfect the way a four-day work week works within your organisation. 

And while we can only supply the information that we have learned over three consecutive years of experimenting with Fridays off, whether in sequence or alternative. 

The key factor to success is this: the leadership and management teams have undertaken the greatest task of streamlining Switch’s existing processes to remove opportunities for lag and delay. The biggest success of the four-day work week is down to this, and to realising that the company needed a set of values and principles to adhere to in order to make sure that we could take on the same level of work without the hitch of miscommunication. 

This has not been easy. 

But as a practice, it has been worthwhile, even outside of the four-day work-week experience. Streamlined processes and clearly communicated values mean that the potential for issues arising during work is much reduced, and as our clients continue to come to us from all corners of the world, and all around the clock, it has proven to be the most valuable asset for achieving high quality and repeatable results with a full eight hours of work removed from the week.

The four day work week: a global perspective 

What the four day work week has taught us about the way we view work is equally valuable – and about the flawed understanding that working hard means working from the first crack of dawn to overtime, every day. As the studies above show, longer hours at work does not equal higher productivity or more complete working days, and the four-day work week at Switch is concurrent with those findings. 

Additionally, what it has proven is that the pace of work has continued to accelerate, and that people are having trouble keeping up – but what that means is not trialling longer working weeks or shifting wholesale to AI to continue meeting and exceeding growth expectations that are developed slightly out of focus with the current reality.

What it does mean, and what Switch has decided to adhere to, is that we could all use sustainable growth measures over the idea of growth at all costs. Companies and company profits have reached record highs repeatedly, which has resulted in businesses staying open, unsociable hours increasing, and worker burnout on the rise. A step towards a more equitable way of working has proven great for us – and we believe it is the way forward for businesses. 

The four-day work week may not work for you. But neither will the idea that you should spend most of your waking hours at work.

We don’t have all the answers. What we do have is proof that working longer hours is outdated, at least for us. Shorter working weeks has led to happier employees, healthier life balances, and a better environment within the workplace when we’re together. 

If that isn’t the way forward for the future, it’s unclear what should be. 

The post The 4 Day Work Week Initiative, Year 3 appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

We’ve all either said or heard someone say that at work, and it usually stems from a fundamental misalignment or miscommunication between stakeholders about what should be considered a priority or about the way things should be done at a basic level. If you’ve had an experience such as this with a business partner, it’s usually an omen of things to come.

Tension is a natural part of growing a business. Without a little bit of the right kind of pain, businesses remain static. But that pain should be related to building skillsets, pushing boundaries, and improving internal processes. It’s the muscle soreness you feel after a challenging run or session at the gym.

Unfortunately, the kind of tension we’re often subjected to at work stems from a less productive place. It’s usually around incompatibility with those we’re working with – either internally or externally. If it’s an internal issue, then that’s governed by the company culture you’ve built over time and the way HR conflicts are resolved. The external side of things is where things get murky. 

Do you sacrifice a profitable relationship with a client or supplier simply because they stress your team out?

I’d argue that you should. That is, if you value growing your business via quality of work rather than just volume.

If your business’s financial situation relies on these existing high-stress partnerships, then removing them immediately to avoid stress is an obvious no-go. But building a plan to eventually replace these high-stress partnerships with more productive and fulfilling ones should be your next step. 

And that starts with a manifesto. One about what kind of external partners you want to work with. Not based on their industry or specialisation, but rather on what they stand for and what they value in a working relationship. One that you’re confident enough in to make public.

How do you build an effective manifesto? 

If you haven’t already, articulate your core beliefs around how you think business should be done. This set of principles will serve as the foundation of your manifesto. They should cover your collective attitude towards the way you feel businesses should treat each other. 

For example, at Switch, we believe that business can, and should be a force for good – that focusing on purpose and people inevitably leads to profit. We believe in kindness and empathy as a strategy. We think that true success is measured in the positive impact we have on our people, our clients, our planet, and our bottom line. And we’ve taken concrete actions that align with these beliefs.

As a result of that, we can easily outline the kinds of partnerships we’re looking for. We want to work with people who embody genuine kindness in and outside of work, that strive to revolutionise their industry efficiently and responsibly, that truly prioritise their team’s wellbeing, and that have taken real steps towards embodying these virtues.

We want to work with people who share our beliefs. We want better business.

Every time these beliefs have been aligned, the relationship has been fruitful for both sides – both financially and in terms of internal growth because of the fact that everyone involved is aligned in terms of attitude and priorities. Operating from the get-go on a basis of mutual respect and equal standing makes any relationship near-seamless, and even difficult situations are significantly easier to deal with and overcome. 

As a result, we’ve learned that leading with these beliefs in both our external communications and during chemistry meetings with potential partners allows us to attract the right kind of business and more easily detect whether a relationship will turn sour in the long run, and nip it in the bud.

Potential clients and partners are desperate for a value match as well. The right alignment always increases our value proposition and ends up being the major deciding factor for the partner in question when they have other options on the table that, from a technical point of view, tick more boxes. 

The bottom line

Running a business this way isn’t easy, and it doesn’t happen overnight. Companies often need to take on work that isn’t perfectly aligned with their values because payroll needs to be met. 

Slowly replacing stress-inducing partnerships with ones that complement your values can be financially daunting, but it is worth it in the long run. A happier, less stressed team is more productive, more easily retained, produces better results, and brings innovation. As long as you can back up your talk with the right walk, getting good business will lead to more good business. 

The post A Manifesto on Manifestos: Minimising Stress via Business Development appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Of the 5% of businesses that are ready to make a purchase, it is statistically unlikely that they are on the initial day-one list that B2B buyers have in mind when seeking out vendors. 90% of B2B purchases are made off that initial list, where companies land as a result of marketing, strategic influential partnerships, and a robust content marketing plan. 

Challenges for Small and Mid-Sized B2B Organizations

For larger B2B organisations, the cost of doing business, while exponentially higher, can be readily absorbed by ongoing business. Larger B2B organisations are in a better position to play the long game, providing more opportunity to take their time to reach marketing leads, and pivoting when planned returns do not materialise. Smaller B2B organisations, in their initial start-up phase, do not have the luxury of pivoting or big-spend marketing, so the client acquisition decisions are removed from operations until they reach a point where leads start to dwindle. 

The problems arise when those smaller businesses do grow into a mid-sized entity. To move from a mid-sized business to a larger one requires more business, and to escalate to more business, more clients are needed — however the statistics of new client acquisition are far from ideal. 

Smaller and mid-sized entities, with less of a marketing budget, and facing a marketing landscape that is outright difficult to break into, can thus decide that the cost of professional marketing is too high, and attempt to advertise the business themselves. While it’s an effort worth trying for smaller businesses that have some room to grow, mid-sized entities will not see the greatest benefits of marketing with DIY efforts. 

The Importance of Content Marketing and Brand

To quantify the value of marketing, it’s prudent to identify the value of a good brand and a good content marketing plan. 

• Companies that excel in personalisation generate 40% more revenue from those with little or no personalisation. 
• 89% of B2B buyers engage with content before talking to a sales rep. 
• 49% of B2B spending happens online. 
• There is a 55% increase of buyers relying on content to research and make purchasing decisions.  

Content marketing and brand are increasingly serving as differentiators in a crowded and noisy B2B marketing landscape. They function in similar ways to B2C marketing, primarily because the variations between B2C and B2B marketing are narrowing as a new cohort of B2B buyers – millennials and Gen Z – take over decision-making roles.

B2B buyers are online, overwhelmed, and looking for easier decisions to make. Marketing and a strong brand have become a non-negotiable aspect of B2B. 

DIY Marketing: a consideration of price

The reality is that, while B2B brand and content marketing is a non-negotiable aspect, smaller brands can be priced out of the conversation or have to rely on DIY marketing just to get by. This will work until the next growth stage is reached, at which point professional marketing becomes a necessity to continue meeting business demand and scale outside of existing clients. 

While DIY marketing can definitely have a short-term benefit of growth, there are some things that hamstring its efficacy in the long-run for larger businesses. 

1. Time spent on marketing. 

On average, B2B marketers at medium-and-large enterprises spend 82% of their work hours on creating content, including social media posts, newsletters, and blog posts. In addition, they send a significant amount of their time on content strategy creation, managing existing campaigns, and posting content. 

Social media and blogs alone take, on average, 3.4 and 4.7 hours respectively; ebooks, whitepapers, videos, and webinars all average nearly 5 hours. This is a significant amount of time to take out of a packed work day to create content. The hours also do not average out when taking into account that it takes upwards of seven interactions with a brand before purchasing. 

2. Lack of expertise across marketing disciplines.

Effective marketing requires expertise across disciplines, and an eye on current research, trends, and consumer shifts. For an untrained professional to specialise in one aspect of marketing, such as SEO or Google Ads, is possible, but the efficacy of those campaigns can be limited. As the discipline becomes more complex, the reality is that it will be harder for DIY marketing to reach the same level of benefit as professional marketing. 

3. Fundamental misalignment. 

A misalignment between sales and marketing can be difficult to overcome, primarily because it might be considerably harder for a non-professional to identify which of their marketing efforts is producing the misalignment. Regardless of understanding the root cause, a misalignment between sales and marketing can lead to a 10% revenue decline, as discovered by Hubspot. 

It is also one of the most common issues for B2B organisations, with 92% of companies admitting to weak alignment between sales and marketing to Forrester Research, and 52.2% of sales professionals citing lost sales and revenue as a direct cause of misalignment.

4. Inconsistency in marketing efforts 

The B2B buying cycle is fundamentally a personal one, and consistency is key to attracting high-quality leads and triggering the purchase process. Businesses that prioritise lead nurturing and engagement can generate up to 50% more sales-ready leads that they can continue to grow as a result.

Furthermore, brand consistency is another key metric that DIY marketing can struggle with, with consistent brands seeing 10-20% more revenue but more than 47% of brands admitting that they publish off-brand content a few times per year.   

5. Lack of strategic approach.

92% of B2B marketing budgets are spent on short-term, bottom funnel objectives such as lead generation, which has little effect on future buyers, and does not take into account future developments for your business. By targeting engagements that focus only on bringing short-term opportunities through the door, it is likely that the B2B marketing cycle will eventually stop producing leads and new clients, which can be difficult for a smaller business to overcome. A strategic approach ensures that clients trickle in at a steady, manageable pace that allows for the business to scale reasonably. 

6. Cost-effectiveness in the long run.

With an understanding of the right tools to use, the right metrics to monitor, and the time taken to ensure that campaigns are continuously maintained to deliver high results, professional marketing is cost-effective, a promise that is far harder to achieve with DIY marketing. On average, professional marketing will base any marketing on information generated through business operations, allowing them to tailor marketing tactics to generate the greatest possible opportunity for sales. DIY marketing may have access to the same information but without the necessary skills to adapt marketing tactics to serve that information, therefore leading to lost costs. 

Misconceptions about marketing for DIY marketers

While 67% of companies outsource their marketing needs as a matter of course, the ones that prefer to DIY their marketing have specific considerations for why they opt to keep control of their marketing. 

The top two reasons appear to be based on misconceptions. 

1. Lack of control over brand. 
2. Lack of discretionary budget to conform to agency fees. 

These matters are considerable worries, however they can be easily amended by finding the right agency to partner with. Effective marketing partnerships can allow a growing business control over the fundamental aspects of their identity, and merely strategise and build communication around what already exists. 

Budgetary concerns, on the other hand, are a little harder to overcome. For businesses that are still in the primary start-up it can be effective to retain all marketing efforts and keep them in-house – but as the business does start to grow, marketing in-house will lead to a lot of missed opportunities. 

The opportunity to outsource

Over half of B2B marketing teams outsource at least one aspect of content marketing. What this provides the company is the flexibility to prioritise their in-house operations while simultaneously benefitting from the expertise of a fractional agency. Outsourcing marketing activities allows for a better opportunity to generate content that drives leads, and leave the internal team free to continue with the work of running the business. It takes the pressure of the intensive, day-to-day monitoring and content creation away from upper management and puts it into the hands of experts who can focus solely on your content. 

For B2B organisations to thrive within shrinking market share, there needs to be an adjustment made for the state of the industry at the moment. The B2B buying cycle is long and complex, and communicating at the right time and with the right idea will make a significant difference to the business — but that path is time-consuming, and complex in itself. 

Outsourcing your marketing will at least enable you to both prioritise your business and your marketing, without one sacrificed for the other. It’s the most sustainable, economical way forward, particularly for businesses who want to pay for proven results. 

And all it takes to start with this path is the right partner. Get in touch to see how we can help you create lasting growth and success through strategic, results-driven marketing.

The post The Cost of DIY Marketing appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

One of the principles that defines the work we do at Switch is a long-term view – we strongly believe that all resources are put to better use when viewed over time frames that span more than quarterly results. This is a consideration we emphasise when onboarding a new client, and one that took on a life of its own when we started to work with Mattermake.

Early on in the relationship, it was evident that we had the same quarrel with the word ‘sustainability’ and the way it has become such a throwaway term. It’s right there at the top of every business agenda, and yet we see slow and incremental progress that’s mostly incited by regulatory frameworks. Rather than sticking to our internal views, we reached out to Mattermake because we know they are thinking in radically different ways about almost everything. It’s been a privilege to work with architect, designer, manufacturer, thinker, and innovator Steve De Micoli and a conversation with him is always stimulating and thought-provoking.

Are ESG frameworks too restrictive?

Steve is the founder of Mattermake, a fabrication-oriented architecture and design studio and, in his quiet and humble way, a rare visionary. When speaking about the word sustainability itself, particularly in the context of the ways in which we construct our built environment, Steve was quick to lament the issues with frameworks such as ESG because they lay out a prescribed set of policies that one must adhere to if they want to consider their efforts to be sustainable. These frameworks, he points out, allow the industry to simply tick the boxes without the need to innovate or even collaborate with other industries for a multi-skilled approach to the issues that surround us.

The construction industry has long focused on reducing its environmental impact through the use of recycled materials and energy-efficient designs. However, a simple “reduce and reuse” approach may no longer be enough to create truly sustainable and regenerative built environments. Steve believes that the key to meaningful change is not reduction, but regeneration.

This echoes the sentiment of another of our forward-thinking clients – Furnitubes – and we’ve been working with them to garner support from some radical new approaches to material choice that goes into the manufacture of urban outdoor furniture.

Cultivating abundance via positive impact

Their definition of sustainability is strikingly similar to Steve’s in that it breaks the mould of “doing more with less” – rather than merely lessening the negative impacts, the goal should be cultivating abundance through designs that actively enhance the ecosystems they inhabit. “Push for abundance, not frugality”, Steve insists. This shifts our mindset from one where we attempt to limit the impact of our activities to one where we think of maximising the positive impact we could have.

In the UK, new policies now mandate all construction to increase local biodiversity by at least 10%. We should consider this a baseline – the ambition is to vastly exceed these targets through designs that give back more to their environments than they consume.

The future may lie in unusual collaborations

Another issue is the compartmentalised view that most industries take to sustainability, patching up existing practices rather than looking outwards and seeking to make unusual connections. Collaborative thinking is a staple of thinking in our industry – we work with an incredibly diverse set of thinkers as a matter of course – but it is very unusual in the construction industry. Luckily, it is not completely unheard of.

One remarkable example of this approach is the use of waste fabric to reinforce concrete. This unlikely collaboration between the fashion and construction industries demonstrates that unusual allies are everywhere to be found. As Steve notes, “Once you start to see the infinite possibility of connections we haven’t yet made, you realise how much innovation is still untapped.”

Mattermake’s innovative projects embody this spirit of interconnectedness. One such project involves 3D printing organic-looking structures that can be stacked to create artificial “coral reefs”, which is a collaboration between Mattermake, Zibel & University of Malta. This pioneering work is intended to adhere to the submerged walls of concrete jetties, typically barren wastelands, transforming what was once a lifeless structure into a concentrated node of biodiversity by providing a habitat for a multitude of marine species.

By leveraging cutting-edge techniques and sustainable materials, Mattermake is redefining the boundaries of what is possible in construction. His studio is a playground for a vividly imaginative team that applies their minds to unusual solutions for sustainable dwellings, workspaces, and, apparently, the bits no one ever thinks about such as the invisible part of our constructed coastline.

Rather than focusing on individual dwellings or buildings, we can design entire cities that thrive in harmony with their surroundings

Steve De Micoli

We’re suddenly talking about permaculture. Steve draws inspiration from principles of permaculture and biomimicry – models that have existed for decades yet struggled to permeate mainstream construction. Just as regenerative agricultural practices enrich rather than deplete, Steve believes the built environment must transition to a symbiotic, interconnected approach. Combining this with a regenerative mindset, we can move beyond mere sustainability and strive for abundance, rather than compromise.

This paradigm shift has far-reaching implications. “Rather than focusing on individual dwellings or buildings, we can design entire cities that thrive in harmony with their surroundings”, is Steve’s take on this.

It’s clear that the construction industry is poised on the cusp of a revolution. The old paradigm of compartmentalisation and reduction is giving way to a new era of regeneration and abundance.

Steve, and the international community of like-minded innovators, are illuminating the path forward for a construction industry that is ripe for transformation. As we navigate the complexities of sustainability, it’s clear that the most profound innovations will arise from the intersections – between industries, disciplines, and ways of thinking.

Building the future of the construction industry

As we look to the future, it’s clear that the construction industry has a critical role to play in shaping a more sustainable, regenerative, and abundant world. And it has an obligation to do so. If we have the wisdom it takes to listen to the visionaries leading the charge, we can create a built environment that not only minimises its impact but actively enriches the world around us. 

Where does this leave us? We can all work on as much as is within our reach. At Switch, we can do what we do best, working with those who have technical brilliance and need the ability to communicate their mission with clarity and in a way that reaches the right audiences, no matter how unlikely they may be. When successful, it will be clear that the possibilities are endless. It’s up to us to create an environment that fosters unusual discourse with the intent of maximising our impact on the planet as long as it is a lasting and positive one.

If you think in terms of impact, people, and then profit, reach out. We’ve got a couple of slots open for collaboration with organisations that are driven by doing the right thing.

The post Beyond Sustainability: Constructing a Regenerative Future appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

“Cities were mostly designed by people who didn’t use them.”

Catherine Barratt, Managing Director of Furnitubes

The nature of our business puts us in touch with some fascinating individuals. The quote I led with is from a chat I was having with Catherine Barratt, Managing Director of Furnitubes, a company based in England that produces urban outdoor furniture. Working with Furnitubes, and speaking with Catherine in particular, confirms that we don’t need to be engaged in the same business activity to share a set of values.

Shared Values

One of our shared obsessions is to do all we can in a way that has lasting impact because this makes the most sustainable use of resources. It preserves time, materials, and financial resources.

Another shared value is that all we do should benefit as wide an audience as possible. And in the case of Furnitubes, this is taken to mean absolutely everyone.

Consider the supply chain of outdoor urban furniture. The bench you sit on when you’re in a public space like a city square has been manufactured by a company like Furnitubes, directly paid for by the city council, chosen by an urban planner or designer, and used by a member of the public (yourself, in this case). And it is you, this last person in the chain, who has indirectly paid for it all because it’s ultimately our taxes that build cities.

Despite this, for the longest time, cities have been designed by people who were designing for themselves. They didn’t consider other demographics, nor did they take the wellbeing of a large group of people into account. Cities were largely designed for the efficiency of trade and this meant that transportation was central to this design. We built cities around cars and us humans had to make the adjustments necessary to give traffic the highest priority.

This is not always the case. When planning Barcelona, Cerdà took into account the amount of air we need to breathe properly and recognised that high density urban areas weren’t conducive to wellbeing. Even when the horse-drawn carriage was the staple mode of transportation, Cerdà devised a grid based on wide avenues and octagonal blocks with chamfered corners to give more space and more visibility to the pedestrian, effectively founding the study of urbanisation.

Long-Term Vision

Then there are the aesthetics of a city. As a civilisation we are judged by what we leave behind – a notion we are entirely familiar with when judging our past but often seem to ignore when constructing our present. The same people who marvel at the remains of Greek and Roman cities are usually responsible for planning buildings on a spreadsheet, constructing a depressingly dystopian environment.

Roger Scruton, perhaps ambitious in his regard of beauty as a fundamental virtue, placed the responsibility on our shoulders to consider the wider-reaching impact of our actions, “We do not merely study the past: we inherit it, and inheritance brings with it not only the rights of ownership, but the duties of trusteeship.”

The discourse surrounding the transformation of urban spaces is both timely and essential, as the delineation between indoor refuge and our time spent outdoors becomes ever more pronounced. As we spend more time indoors, the time we spend out of our homes becomes even more precious. And this serves as an imperative for our urban environments to provide us with a healthy dose of wellbeing.

Urban Planning Revolution

The narrative of urban planning is undergoing a profound evolution, transitioning from designs that prioritized vehicular movement to those that advocate for human scale and environmental sustainability. We can observe this shift as the more enlightened cities are driving gradual reclamation of spaces for pedestrian use, the proliferation of green infrastructure, and the heightened emphasis on accessible, welcoming public realms. Cities such as Rotterdam and Paris exemplify this shift, with their innovative approaches to urban redesign and commitment to enhancing the quality of life for their residents.

Catherine is fully immersed in this sentiment. When speaking about the way they regard their role in society, she states that, “if you make an area welcoming and functional, it has ripple effects across the whole community. People look after spaces they value, crime goes down, and health indicators improve. We strive to build long-lasting products that benefit the public,” she says. “Our decisions are made with a better future in mind.”

So how can cities accelerate this transition? Catherine believes the private sector has an important role to play. “The private sector has a moral imperative to lead this charge,” she contends.  “Businesses must demonstrate the potential and the value of sustainable, human-centric urban design. Every park bench, every planter, every element we introduce into the urban fabric should be a testament to our belief in a more beautiful, more connected future.” And this is the way she leads Furnitubes, to set an example through sustainable practices and innovative design that puts people first.

Looking Forward

Peering into the future, Catherine adopts an optimistic stance regarding the trajectory of urban planning. She envisions cities that wholeheartedly embrace human-centric design, fostering environments that are not only livable but also enriching and inclusive. This forward-looking perspective champions the idea that well-conceived urban spaces can act as catalysts for community, creativity, and well-being, reflecting a broader commitment to building cities that not only function efficiently but also resonate on a deeper, more personal level: “We have a responsibility to leave a legacy of functional beauty. Beautiful outdoor spaces add value to the lived experience of all those who make use of them. This is what great cities do.”

There are bright spots to build on. Innovative urban projects worldwide offer glimpses of what is possible. And a new generation of planners, designers and citizens is demanding better. “The time has come for urban spaces that welcome and uplift us all,” Catherine concluded. “If we keep this vision in mind, the cities we get are the cities we deserve.”

The post Value-based Brand: Planning the Urban Spaces We Deserve appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.