Follow up to Fallout

"It's not our fault," my consultant-manager says. That other consulting company has been taking advantage of off-site work time. They're unavailable, they're not getting the work done, and that makes us look good. But client trust remains low, and consultants, in the end, all are painted by the same brush. I'll track and report my work closely this week while I work in my home office.

Long-term consulting poses challenges that are identical to those of permanent staffing. Goals become diffuse and then change, objectives broaden, complexity multiplies, and successes seem incremental. That's just the work. People resist change. If you have an ounce of feeling, when you see the kind of discomfort you're causing and the fight/flight response, you temper the speed of forward movement. Most of us want to lead and recognize it's lonely. But no one wants to turn around to find no one following. That's human, and counterproductive.

To succeed as client partners, to earn our fees, we need to draw clients into commitment, by influence, selling, creative conflict, and by example.

"Relax, Bill. I’m cool with it."

William Shatner’s office called again to follow up on, well, I don’t know what. Turns out, the call came from another associate producer, who put me in touch with C.M., my contact. All of us roundly confused. Then C.M. and I confirmed that the email her “assistant” sent had not arrived. And now I’m supposed to call to confirm I’ve received it. I think, I bet that slips my mind.

I’m going to meet with a field producer named Hammer on August 15th. I only need to put down $5,000 to secure my slot on Keeping America Strong. I’m rubbing my palms together in anticipation of my “meet” with the Hammer.

Fallout: Change without Changing

On Friday, after consultants had all gone home for the weekend, a new 'vendor time-tracking' policy was announced by a senior project manager and delivered by email. The effect is to require us to track not only time spent on activities but daily accomplishments. If one of us plans to work at home, we are required to submit a workplan beforehand, and deliver daily reports describing the work we've completed.

This makes project-management sense. In practice, it indicates that the client doesn't feel they're getting value for the money. Nor getting enough accomplished week by week. No one - client or consulting team - has described the purpose of the new policy. But the level of trust has dropped and recovery will not be easy.

When I joined the project eight months ago, I asked, "How will the structure of the organization change?" The answer was, "That's not on the table." To lead and direct this project, a decision was made (pardon the passive voice) that the first step to a new business processing solution was to keep chaos to a minimum by mirroring existing processes and systems. I lack the information to state it as fact, but my limited experience shows that more organizational change would have made system implementation faster. It's unwise, and apparently costly, to both change and not change.