After a 4-month maternity leave, I was a little anxious about jumping back into work full-time. The interactive space changes quickly and I was worried about what I might have missed. Additionally, I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to get back into the groove of things and remember exactly how to do my job.
All my anxiety was for naught. In fact, I have never had more clarity about my job, and more importantly, how to be better at my job. Taking four months off gave me the space I needed to clearly see our project and client approach and processes.
On my first day I sat in on a meeting for a project that I would be assigned to. I expected to be lost, since this project was at least halfway complete. I didn’t know the clients, the politics, the expectations, desires, timeline, etc. But without any of the specifics I was able to see all the generalizations, which gave me an enormously eye-opening experience.
This meeting was a complete déjà vu. In this meeting I heard the same issues that I’ve heard in every project meeting I’ve ever attended. All of my past projects starting flitting through my mind as I listened to the team recount the current state of affairs and their issues, and I realized that most project meetings are exactly the same, regardless of client, project, budget, process, or timeline. Like that movie Groundhog Day, we relive it over and over and over again.
What most surprised me, was realizing that the main reason for this is because projects teams have unrealistic expectations of clients.
Yes, I know that the reverse is true too. Clients expect to get more than they can afford in less time than it takes to make dinner. My point is that everyone knows this is the case, yet we consistently act like it isn’t. Seriously, we should know better. (Check out this awesome demotivational poster to get a good visual of my point).
Here are some examples of things that clients consistently do or expect, that we know they consistently do or expect, and yet we consistently act like this client will be different. Most of these are no brainers.
- Inadequate Budget: Clients always expect to get more than they can afford (unless you’re working for the defense department)
- Unrealistic Timeline: Clients will always want it now and really have no idea how long it will take to build.
- Clients Can’t Visually Communicate: Clients will nearly always want to combine elements of whatever designs you show them.
- Ownership: Clients often want to pull what you’ve made back in-house after you’ve finished it, whether or not they are capable of maintaining it.
- The Client Swap: The main stakeholder is completely inaccessible and won’t provide feedback, “delegating” the project to a few subordinates, but maintaining final say.
- Agency Competition: The client is working with a branding/marketing agency who wants to get into the interactive space and sees you as a competitor instead of a compatriot.
- Internal Divisions: Marketing hired you behind the back of their in-house design and/or development teams, but you’ve still got to work with those teams.
- Obama Effect: Clients know they need change and want change, but are scared to death of change.
- Bling vs. Bang: Clients want the biggest bang for their buck, meaning heads-down design and development, but actually need bling (meaning pretty prototype designs and vision demos) to sell the idea to their company, or vice versa.
I guess I’ve finally had it and don’t want to put time and energy into over-managing these issues, the drama is losing its appeal. I want to have more fun with clients, and I imagine they want the same. But these issues aren’t going away; clients will be clients. So I’m going to dedicate the next few postings to creative ways with preemptively managing them. And I’d love to hear more consistent issues and creative solutions ideas any of you out there in the trenches.
