Comments on: important words if you’re being arrested, or a consultant

By: Steve Radick

Steve Radick — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 01:30:07 +0000

Good points John and I’ve been in those situations before – it’s almost like the “under promise and over deliver” thinking that all consultants try to live by. I feel your pain and have been there before, but in my experience, the “anything you can say may be held against you” thinking is definitely not the norm, although it does make occasional, frustrating appearances.

By: john

john — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:55:50 +0000

i’m like you, steve. i want more information out there, and i want to tell my clients exactly what’s going on. the problem occurs when you’re working on multi-million dollar contracts where the sponsors call around to each consultant, asking a question, until they get the answer that they’re looking for. i have to be intentionally vague and not forthright.

this post was born out of a meeting i had with a client representative. when he asked a question about an estimate on time and effort, i was admonished for my response which was open and truthful. in another meeting a few weeks prior when we disclosed knowledge about a small system bug, a separate official blew the impacts out of proportion and demanded an instant fix rather than waiting for our normal development process to fix the issue as it would have.

it’s becoming harder for me to not be so jaded. maybe you have better clients than i do, or at least more support in being open and transparent than i do. i am being instructed to not answer questions, but to funnel all communications through one specific channel.

as mentioned, it’s hard to balance integrity, openness, and self-preservation. it’s certainly not a dance that i am happy to do.

By: Steve Radick

Steve Radick — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:55:00 +0000

“the thing is, when you provide information, people will find whatever problems they can with that information — and therefore problems with you. there are people (who may even be internal to your organization) that will look for the slightest fault with your presentations, your emails, your meeting minutes… anything — then, they’ll jump on that fault. this much is true: your words will be twisted. someone will take a quote of yours out of context. someone may even use information that you feel is beneficial to their understanding of a situation and turn that information into a vehicle for pushing their own agenda.”

Wow – what a sad sad state of affairs this passage portrays I’m glad that I’m not so jaded in thinking that I work in a world like this, or with people like this. Are there people out there like this? Absolutely. But these types of people are typically amongst the minority. How about looking at things from the glass half full side?

What you say can and will be held IN SUPPORT OF you as well. It works both ways. Take a look at all of the stuff that I have out there – thousands of tweets, hundreds of blog posts, Facebook messages, etc. Sure, there’s a lot that could be taken out of context, but because I’ve shared everything, because I’m so transparent, it’s really easy to see if someone did take something out of context and misappropriate it in some way. It’s also really easy for others to take my words and hold them up in support of me without my knowing that they had to.

I WANT more information out there, not less – especially with my clients. My clients aren’t people whom I need to manage and treat with kid gloves – in the best relationships, my clients and I argue, we debate each other, we point out faults with each other’s information, and we talk things over. And we do that via a mutual respect for each other’s opinions and points of view. Maybe that’s just because I’m confident in my thoughts and opinions, and more importantly, I’m confident in my relationships with them.