A grown-up conversation

Several places I’ve worked have spoken about the client in two contrasting ways: one, hushed tones suggesting that they’re too sensitive to handle whatever reality we’re dealing with; two, derision suggesting that they’re too much of an idiot to understand whatever reality we’re dealing with.

Both are clearly untrue (to greater or lesser degrees), and both serve to make our jobs harder because they distance us from the most important person in any project.

So here’s a list of questions I would like answered:

• why do we keep secrets from clients?
• why are we so keen to promise tight deadlines?
• why do we try to squeeze in extra stuff for them?
• what if we treat them as part of the team?
• what if we made them fully aware of the repercussions of their decisions?
• what if we made demands of them, in order to deliver
• what if we explain how risk builds up, and what they can do to mitigate it?

I honestly don’t understand the prevailing attitude towards client in my industry – after all, we can view them as the other, or we can view them as our extension in another organisation, where they have their own set of clients that they are trying to satisfy. After all, we do what we do in order to succeed don’t we, to work our way up the ladder? If my job becomes one of enabling Joe Client to do well in his job, then he and I are allied with a common purpose, rather than sitting opposite each other across the client-agent divide (which is what creates the kind of attitudes I mentioned at the start).

So let’s pretend that clients know what they’re talking about, and that we are there to support them when they don’t. And let’s start down that path by having sensible grown-up conversations with them where we are open about the effect that they have on the success of the project.