Keddies and the need to revisit billing practices

My major post yesterday was on my personal blog - Sunday Essay - Keddies and the importance of values. That post looked at the growing avalanche affecting the partners and former clients of Keddies, previously a major Australian personal injuries law firm. The post includes links to previous writing on my part as well as external sources.

In writing the post, I looked back over my previous posts on alternative professional services billing practices. It's probably time to revisit this. There is no perfect answer, but the Keddies approach actually bet the firm. 

Sustainability vs short term managerialism

As a professional adviser, I try to help firms improve business performance and to resolve problems. More and more, I have found a conflict between reality and aspirations. Reconciliation of that conflict comes back to one word, sustainability.

At a macro level, if the total business objectives set by all firms exceeds the possible growth rate in the economy, then some firms must fail to achieve objectives. If the gap between total firm targets and what is possible becomes large, then the shortfall between objectives and performance for most firms will also be large.

Since remuneration often depends upon achievement of immediate financial objectives, the incentive for managers to do whatever is required to get to immediate target is great. This leads to short termism. Cut now, with the costs coming later. In aggregate, this results in increasing economic instability.

Obviously, the position varies between firms.

If I am advising a start-up or a firm in a rapidly growing market place, then I provide one set of advice. If I am advising a firm that wants to increase market share and is prepared to pay the price, I provide a second type of advice. If the business is unprofitable, then that's another set of advice.

But what do I do if I am providing advice to an existing profitable business in a mature market that wants to improve performance to achieve new growth targets dictated by what is really managerial hubris? How do I say that you are doing the wrong thing? How do I say keep on going as you are, just improve at the margin?

If the reality is as it is that most businesses cannot achieve their targets, then shouldn't we be adopting a new approach? Isn't sustainability combined with incremental growth better?

Say you are a reasonably profitable law firm. What do your partners, your owners, really want?

They want to be able to get on with their professional work. They want a stable income with prospects of reasonable increase. Most don't want the prospect of big increases that risk the business.

Think how nice it would be as an adviser if your client said we want to improve what we do over time. Our focus is on business sustainability, not big targets. We want you to help make things better for clients, for partners and for our staff. We want you to give us practical suggestions to achieve this.

It would be nice, wouldn't it! 

Problems with technologists

The Internet is important to all of because of the way if affects our profession and business. For that reason, I have written a fair bit about it over time.

On Friday 22 July I wrote Academic journals, the shuttle & the internet on my personal blog. It's there because it was triggered by my personal reactions. I said in part:

I am a very heavy internet use. Further, the way I use the net extends well beyond transactions or the discovery of immediate current information. To the ordinary user, the problems that I experience may be of limited relevance. Yet I think that they are quite important.

My thinking to this point has really focused on my own responses, essentially taking the net as a given. I am now wondering just how the net has to change if it is really to meet the needs of that minority group, Belshaw and his ilk.

A lot of the technologists and net enthusiasts I know are not much help. I have been meaning to write on this one for a while. The difficulty from my perspective is that I am expected to fit into their solutions and enthusiasms, whereas I want them to fit into mine! I am, after all, the user!

In Australia, the main law publishing firms are all in the process of releasing their publications as e-books. However, they are also trying to maintain their current charge structures. It's not going to work - the simple addition of a search facility is not enough to justify the cash cost.

When I said in my post that I wanted the technologists to fit into my solutions and enthusiasms I wasn't joking. The problem with technologists is that they won't do this and it's frustrating.

Technology is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Recently I have been working on some internet based projects designed to streamline aspects of professional practice. I think that the thing that stands out most clearly in my mind is just how hard it is to get the interface right between the technology and the business or professional process.

One of the kickers is the hidden cost that lies in simple things like support and training.

I think that there are solutions, but they are going to come from the business, not technology side.     

If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail

Back in May in Clients are their own worst enemies, I returned to one of my recurrent themes on this blog, the need for professionals to educate clients. In the period since, there has been an interesting discussion in other fora on issues associated with cognitive dissonance and the law.

The latest post in this discussion is Legal Eagle's The Art of Law. The post includes links to earlier posts, including two I wrote. In the comments Jacques Chester made a very interesting comment @4. It begins: Here in software-land we often quote the old saying that “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.

Jacques' comment drives to the heart of the point that own professional backgrounds dictate the way we see and respond to client problems even if that way is not in fact appropriate. I mention this now because I want to come back to Jacques' points in the context of improving professional practice in a general sense.

 

Clients are their own worst enemies

In December in The importance of a discipline of professional practice I said:

Bluntly, we professionals are letting down our clients. Worse, we are sometimes doing it through our narrow definition of what constitutes professionalism.

I have no truck with approaches that guarantee clients higher costs and worse results, even accepting that clients are their own worst enemy!

While I did not follow up on that remark in the way I said would because of other pressures, the same pressures that forced me to merge my two professional blogs, the issues have been much on my mind.

At the moment I am working on a web based project for Sydney law firm Dilanchian Lawyers & Consultants. I normally don't mention specific clients, but in this case I know that Noric won't mind because we share common concerns.

I won't go into the details of the project. However, it does focus on ways of assisting lawyers and others concerned with law to improve performance. Not performance measured by billable hours, but performance in the actual delivery of, or management of, legal services.  

As part of the project I have returned to the mapping of the service delivery process. I am focusing on legal services. However, the processes involved are common across all professional services. By service delivery processes I am not talking matter management, although I recently saw some rather good workflow software here that makes matter management much easier. My focus is broader.

I have written before about the importance of the diagnostic (Role of the Diagnostic in Professional Services - medicine vs law, Professional services - the importance of the diagnostic). My focus here was on the professional. However, we also need to focus on the client.

Simply put, my argument is that we need to educate clients in the approach that they should follow in seeking professional advice.

Let me illustrate with an example that all lawyers and many other professionals will understand. A client needs a contract or agreement to do x. The client comes to the lawyer and says draw up a contract. This is where the diagnostic comes in because it helps the lawyer better define client needs. Often, the lawyer will find or feel that there are some underlying problems.

Before going on, remember that a contract is no more than the legal wrapping around something that the client wants to do.   

Now what the gun slingers do, they used to be called cowboys in the computer industry, is to give the client just what they asked for regardless of any underlying issues and then move on to the next billing. Others ask questions and try to identify problems.

A difficulty now arises.

Say the case involves an intellectual property matter. Definition of the IP involved is usually central to such matters. This may seem self-evident, but you would be surprised at just how often the IP is ill or even wrongly defined. Then there are the questions of the relationships between the parties - these involve multiple flows (money, management, IP creation) - as well as the various protection and reporting clauses. Again, you would be surprised at just how often these are ill-defined.

The lawyer faces a choice. How much effort should be put into assisting the client to identify and solve what are, after all, commercial or business issues? 

We live in a just in time world, a world of see problem, fix problem in which scrappy emails or even SMS instructions have come to replace proper instructions. This adds to costs. We also live in a world where the thinning out of management, something that I have written about, means that in-house knowledge is less than it used to be. This means that people have become more reliant on external sources of advice.

To the gun slinger lawyer, all this is an opportunity.

If the client has cash and is prepared to pay, then you follow through. Give the client the contract, but ask passive information questions. This process can be strung out. If the client has no money, just give them what they ask and move on. After all, you know that further legal fees will come should things fall over. The more conscientious lawyer will try to help, but also knows that the time costs involved may never be recovered.

All this is not an academic argument. Real money is involved. I have seen cases where large legal sums were paid that were not only unnecessary, but could actually have been seen to be unnecessary early on. 

This is not an attack on lawyers as a profession. Rather, it is an argument that says that performance improvement in the delivery of legal services is a two way street.

Lawyers can improve their performance through things such as better diagnostics. But we also need to educate clients as well.       

24/7 and the professional

Just because I haven't been posting here because of other pressures doesn't mean that I have forgotten this blog, nor the connected interests. I think about them all the time.

The title of We need a management revolution is pretty self-explanatory. In part of the post I talk about the problems a 24/7 world creates for we professionals.

I don't have a proper answer, just frustrations. I have dealt with elements in my discussions on the need for a discipline of professional practice, one that crosses the professional silos. Yet it's hard.

How do you deal with a just in time clients who asks for an instant response when they haven't thought the issues out?

The importance of a discipline of professional practice

Back in September 2006 in Towards a Discipline of Practice I began a discussion on the importance of the development of a discipline of practice that spanned disciplines. Here I said in part:

On the surface, the application of each profession in practice may not seem connected. What do, say, law and medicine have in common? At least this:

1. Common techniques can be used to analyse the processes followed by professionals in their work.
2. A least some of the elements in those processes are common. For example, both lawyers and doctors have to begin each engagement (matter in the case of the lawyer, consultation in the case of the doctor) with a diagnostic. Comparison of the different application of common process elements between professions can yield fruitful insights.

The commonalities between management of practices across professions are better understood. However, there is in fact a gap here.

If you look at the literature you will find a range of general advice and principles drawn from management. You will also find a volume of nitty gritty material classified under the general head of practice management. This is often encapsulated in specific practice management courses and qualifications.

The gap as I see it between the two, and I think that this holds even though David Maister among others has written on the topic, is the gap that Prem points to, the absence of a fully articulated philosophy of practice that takes into account the unique features of professional practice.

The link to Prem's comment is included in the original post.

Back in June in Reflections on professional experience, I said: 

I have been off-line for a little while simply because I have been thinking! Part of those thoughts relate to my own directions, part relate to the core focus of this blog.

Over the last few years, I have changed my mind on some issues. For example, I am a stronger supporter of partnership models than I was so long as the partners accept the limitations involved.

On some other issues such as the the profit per equity partnership concept, I think that they are just as dangerous as before unless very carefully defined.

Then, on some issues such as time based charging, I have formed the view that a lot of the discussion simply misses the point. Time based charging has its problems, but it still is the best approach in some circumstances.

I have also become frustrated about my inability to get advice across about the need for change.

Part of this relates to a purely professional question that I have discussed before. What do you do when your client wants advice that you know won't work or must be just plain wrong? Part of this relates to my own professional skills, my inability to get a story across. However, part also relates to current management structures and attitudes within professional services. Some of this is just plain wrong.

Over the next week or so I thought that I might record my conclusions from all my thought. It's hard for a professional to accept his/her failures. Yet if we don't, how can we improve? 

As so often happens, events intervened. However, experiences over recent weeks have reinforced the need to write something. Bluntly, we professionals are letting down our clients. Worse, we are sometimes doing it through our narrow definition of what constitutes professionalism.

I have no truck with approaches that guarantee clients higher costs and worse results, even accepting that clients are their own worst enemy!

So, given this, over the next few posts I want to continue my discussion on a discipline of professional practice.  

Keddies, Slater & Gordon & the law

This cartoon is taken from the Sydney Morning Herald.

In Corporatisation, Keddies and professional ethics, a post written back in July 2008, I reported on the problems faced by Australian law firm Keddies as a consequence of its billing practices. I gave a brief update in October 2008 in Keddies case threatens legal billing practices.

Although I really didn't say so at the time, I did wonder whether or not Keddies could survive. In fact, they did and have been purchased by listed Australian law firm Slater & Gordon for a reported $A35 million.

Russell Keddie, Keddie's founder, has admitted to the NSW Legal Services Commissioner that he was responsible for the gross overcharging of a client and plans to retire from practice.

All this has led to some scathing criticisms from regular legal commentator, the SMH's Richard Ackland.

I did wonder and still wonder about the wisdom of the Keddies' purchase. Time will tell.

Canadian material on professionalism

In Lawyers like history, Christopher Moore reports on The Chief Justice of Ontario's Advisory Committee on Professionalism's 13th Colloquium on the Profession. The theme of this year's colloquium was History of the Profession: Lawyers, Legends, Legacies and Lessons from Ontario Legal History.

Chris's post led me to the Law Society of Upper Canada's page on the Advisory Committee. I mention this because the page contains links to material on professionalism, including papers from various colloquiums. I haven't had time to read the material yet. 

Reflections on professional experience

I have been off-line for a little while simply because I have been thinking! Part of those thoughts relate to my own directions, part relate to the core focus of this blog.

Over the last few years, I have changed my mind on some issues. For example, I am a stronger supporter of partnership models than I was so long as the partners accept the limitations involved.

On some other issues such as the the profit per equity partnership concept, I think that they are just as dangerous as before unless very carefully defined.

Then, on some issues such as time based charging, I have formed the view that a lot of the discussion simply misses the point. Time based charging has its problems, but it still is the best approach in some circumstances.

I have also become frustrated about my inability to get advice across about the need for change.

Part of this relates to a purely professional question that I have discussed before. What do you do when your client wants advice that you know won't work or must be just plain wrong? Part of this relates to my own professional skills, my inability to get a story across. However, part also relates to current management structures and attitudes within professional services. Some of this is just plain wrong.

Over the next week or so I thought that I might record my conclusions from all my thought. It's hard for a professional to accept his/her failures. Yet if we don't, how can we improve?        

Why active listening is important to all professionals

Just back to duty and still very saddle sore.

The only really professional thing that I have done this week was a consultation for a manager seeking advice on how to manage a particular problem. This got me thinking.

Most professionals know, I think, that the capacity to listen is a key professional skill. This holds equally true for a lawyer, management consultant or doctor. The problem for most of us, however, is that time is limited and that as soon as we identify a problem we switch into problem solving mode. See problem, fix problem.

The difficulty here is that the first identified problem or problems may not be, often is not, the key problem. This is true whether dealing with individual or corporate problems. Too often, the first identified problem is either one of a number of problems or simply a symptom of a deeper underling problem. So we need to probe through active listening.

Active listening involves several different processes.

One is simply the gathering of information. We do this by listening and by asking questions. We also have to analyse the information as we go along. What does it mean? What additional information do we need? This leads to further questions. 

We also have to test the ideas we are forming. This may be done by asking questions or by summarising, testing our conclusions with the client.

Summarising can be used as a validity test, but it is also used to change a direction in the discussion. In this second case, we summarise and then ask a question, taking the conversation in a new direction.

We can all consciously practice these steps.    

Decline of the professions in Australia

Over on my personal blog I have been reviewing Professor Don Aitkin's What was it all for? The Reshaping of Australia. (Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2005). The first post is here, the second will come up tomorrow.

The book itself examines social change in Australia over the last fifty years in part through a prism set by the Armidale High School leaving certificate class of 1953. 

I don't think that anyone of us would not accept that the professions have declined in status and not just in Australia over the period covered by Don.  I mention this because he has some interesting material on what he perceives to be the causes of the decline in the professions in Australia.

The first thing he points to is the sheer increase in the scale of the professions. They grew and grew. Further, the growth was associated with the emergence of mini-professions, constant subdivision into smaller areas of knowledge, each with their own societies, journals and specialist knowledge.

As the numbers in the professions increased, as the number of professions also increased, so the general respect in which professionals were held declined.

The growth in the professions was linked not just to the growth of knowledge, but also to a broader process, the "professionalisation" of work. Here I want to quote Don:

Name and fame went with specialised knowledge, and the generalist became seen as someone who knew very little.

The problem is that this professionalisation process and the consequent rejection of the value of broader knowledge has aided the process of locking the professions into narrower silos that have, of themselves, reduced the effectiveness and power of the professions.

Here we get into somewhat slippery territory.

Central to the concept of a "profession" is the idea of professional independence. Without this, a profession becomes simply another occupation. I accept that the concept of independence is a difficult one. In practice, no profession has ever been completely independent, yet the ideal is still central to the professional ethics that lie at the heart of any real profession.

The killer today, as Professor Aitkin notes, is the rise of the concept of "compliance", a concept that has come to replace the old idea of professional independence,

In simple English, to comply means to obey. That is exactly the way the term is now used.

When people speak of compliance, they mean that the profession in question must comply with rules. Of course professions have always had rules, more precisely sets of ethics. However, now we are talking about externally, especially government imposed, rules.

One can mount a case for Government regulation. However, the modern use of compliance is in fact far broader than simple regulation. In a practical sense, it increasingly substitutes rules for ethics and professional standards.

To my mind, this lies at the heart of the decline of professions as professions.       

Keddies case threatens legal billing practices

Back in July 2008 in Corporatisation, Keddies and professional ethics I reported on the problems facing Sydney law firm Keddies centred on allegations of overcharging. Since then the firm has been forced to retrench staff, while the whole legal billing system in Australia is now under review.

Those interested can find out further details here.

Establishing a Discipline of Practice - stocktake of posts

I hold two strong professional views. The first is that the professions can learn from each other. The second is that we need to establish a consolidated discipline of practice across the professions.

This post simply list previous posts discussing the development of a discipline of practice.

• 21 September 2006 Towards a Discipline of Practice
• 22 September 2006 Role of the diagnostic in professional practice - medicine vs law
• 8 January 2007 Reflections on Professional Practice and Practices
• 16 January 2007 Towards a Discipline of Practice - Evidence Based Medicine 1
• 22 January 2007 Towards a Discipline of Practice - Evidence Based Medicine 2
• 23 January 2007 Towards a Discipline of Practice - Evidence Based Medicine 3
• 27 January 2007 Lessons for the Professions from Evidence Based Medicine 1
• 3 February 2007 Lessons for the Professions from Evidence Based Medicine 2 - Evidence Based Management
• 10 February 2007 Lessons for the Professions from Evidence Based Medicine 3 - Evidence Based Management 2
• 29 October 2007 Professional services - the importance of the diagnostic
• 9 November 2007 On saying no to clients
• 11 November 2007 On saying no to clients 2 - the importance of a discipline of practice
• 16 November 2007 Clients are people too - Introduction
• 20 November 2007 Clients are people too - looking after the client
• 23 November 2007 The Australian Prime Minister and Evidence Based Public Policy

Overcoming chaos in the home office

For much of the last few years, I have largely worked from a home office. Then I moved to on-site work.

My home office was always a bit chaotic. Things deteriorated rapidly after I moved to on-site work, not helped by the habit of my family of dumping things in my space for me to get rid of!

For reasons I won't bore you with, the need to find past papers has suddenly made tidying up a matter of urgency. So I have been going through the piles. In doing so, I suddenly realised that my presence in the on-line world has actually changed the way I work. More precisely, the way I should work.

I have my computer with its electronic files. Then there are my various blogs, web sites and social networking sites.

I tend to keep paper records because they are easier to read, while I have also been worried by things such as computer collapses as well as software changes. The quantity of electronic material that I can no longer access is quite astonishing! So paper records have been of great value.

No more. There are still some things that need to be kept in paper form, but now I have a wide range of storage options, as well as a content creation and modification process. Let me illustrate what I mean.

In my personal as opposed to professional space, I am an historian and economist. I write a fair bit of historical stuff that I would like other people to read. However, I struggle to find the time to write proper journal articles.

I know from experience just how ephemeral records can be. There is no certain way of ensuring that material is preserved. However, with an effective content creation process, you can improve both access (this is important in a professional sense) and the chances of your writing surviving.

The starting point is my blogs. I use these to explore and record ideas. In survival terms, I am dependent here on Google. If Google were to go down, this material would be lost. But in the meantime, blogging is a good way to develop ideas for later access and re-use.

Some of this material I transfer to my existing web sites. Here I can make longer material available in differing forms. As part of this, I have access to a password protected intranet that I can access from anywhere in the world. So I can post work in progress in various forms for later use.

This the most vulnerable point in the whole process in that survival depends upon the survival of the site provider on one side, my ability to keep payments up on the other.

To overcome this, I have begun to use Wikipedia to put up historical material, thus ensuring broader access. I have also just started to turn some of my material into forms suitable for book publication.

Linking all this back to my home office point. I simply don't need to keep a lot of the stuff I used too because my whole process has changed.

Clients are people too - looking after the client

In my last post I spoke of the need to recognise that clients are people to with their own needs, personalities and places within the organisation.

I now want to extend this analysis, focusing on the needs of clients as people working within organisations.

The management and business related professions as a whole face a problem. Too few of us have actually worked in management roles within organisations, too many of us have spent our whole careers in particular professional slices. Among other things, this can make us insensitive to the practical and political problems faced by our clients.

All organisations have their own structures, processes and cultures. We know this. In fact, many of us advise on ways of changing structures, cultures and processes.

Yet in all this, we can forget that our clients as people have to operate within organisations. To them, the structures, processes and cultures are a daily reality. Their ability to operate in an effective fashion depends critically upon the way that they are perceived within the organisation.

To illustrate by example.

A well recognised individual usually has power and influence extending well beyond their formal position. This makes it easier for them to do things.

Conversely, a poorly regarded individual's power and influence will normally be less than that notionally attached to their position. Their ability to do things is consequently reduced.

As consultants, we generally notice this because it affects our ability to do a job. If our direct client is well regarded, things become easier. Poorly regarded, and we strike delivery obstacles and road blocks.

How does this relate to our role? At one level, these are just things that we have to work around if we can. At a second level, we should never forget that that what we do affects the position of our direct personal client within the organisation.

If we do well, then the position of the individual client will improve. If we stuff up, then their position is likely to be damaged. So over and beyond but still subject to our professional obligations, I think that we have a responsibility to look after our clients. We need to be sensitive to the fact that failure on our part affects not just us, but also the client as a person.

This does not mean breaching professional standards. Rather, the requirement to be sensitive to the needs of and and to look after the client should be seen as one element in those standards.

Clients are people too - Introduction

It is sometimes easy to forget that clients are people too with their own personal needs and drives. This may sound dumb, after all we all know this. But failure to recognise this simple fact is a major cause of failure in consulting assignments.

The client-professional relationship is first and foremost a professional relationship. As professionals, we are hired to do a particular job in the best way that we can. Our formal client is usually an organisation, the person or people we deal with represent the organisation.

In all this, we forget the personal element at our peril.

The people that we deal with have their own personalities that affect the way we interact with them, as well as the way that they interpret our advice. We have to take this into account in the way we phrase things, in the processes that we follow in managing the assignment.

We also need to recognise and understand internal structures and relations within the organisations since these affect both decision processes and the people we deal with directly. While this, too, may seem self-evident, it is remarkable how often a simple question to consultants reveals that they do not in fact know anything about internal decision processes and structures affecting the assignment and the individuals they are dealing with.

This does not usually matter with straight forward assignments, although it may affect chances of getting follow up work since this can depend upon broader and positive exposure within the organisation.

However, it can matter greatly where the assignment links directly or indirectly to sensitive internal strategic or political issues that the consultant is simply unaware of. Here disaster may follow.

Knowledge of internal workings may not prevent this. However, it does increase your chances of at least identifying and managing the problem.

On saying no to clients 2 - the importance of a discipline of practice

My last post dealt with the problems we all face in saying no to clients at the time we are seeking the assignment. In this post, I want to talk about how to say no to the client during the assignment itself.

This one is really hard. You have worked to get the job. Now, mid-way through delivery, the client may be demanding changes to scope, changes that add to costs. Sometimes the changes may only be small, yet the aggregate effect can be significant.

In fixed price charging, you see your profit margin shrinking. In time based charging, you see the client's bill blowing out.

As a second example, what do you do if it becomes clear that the assignment won't deliver the expected results? When and how do you explain this to the client? What do you do if a better approach emerges, but this requires changes to approach that will cost more?

A final example, one especially relevant to those working in a public policy environment. You have done the work, prepared a draft report. Now the client demands changes to the report. These may be a series of minor drafting changes that do not add to the substance, but simply reflect different drafting styles. But they can also involve requests to alter conclusions and arguments.

Management of these types of problems requires an effective and professional discipline of practice.

To begin with, you need to know job costs. If you are not keeping and/or monitoring your time records, then costs can blow out before you realise.

How often have I heard my independent colleagues suddenly complain towards the end of a job that they are losing money, essentially working for nothing? How often have you heard clients complain about the unexpected size of bills, or seen monthly performance reports suddenly show substantial write-downs?

If you know your costs, then you are in a much better position to manage client client requests. If the job is within budget, then you normally don't have to think about saying no. If the job is running or may run out of budget, you have to information you need to at least discuss the matter with the client.

Good cost records are a subset of a broader issue, the need for an effective and professional project or assignment management approach.

As a professional, you want to do the job in the most cost-effective way, given the specific client requirement. This includes identifying and resolving problems as early as possible. As a general rule, clients hate surprises. Jobs often blow up where a client is faced with a sudden, unexpected, problem.

A good project management approach also includes a process for agreeing variations to the scope of the assignment. I am not talking here so much about formal agreements, but rather a standard approach that ensures that you and the client are aware of and agree on the significance of changes.

This does not have to be complicated. A simple email noting agreed variations or actions is normally sufficient.

The key point to note is that you are the professional. You know or should know what is and has to be done, how much it is likely to cost. The client cannot be expected to know this. So, at least as I see it, you are responsible for alerting the client where a proposed change or action is likely to have significant effects on cost or outcomes.

On saying no to clients

In my recent post Professional Services - the importance of the diagnostic I talked about some of the reasons why consulting assignments failed. There is a linked issue, when to say no to clients.

Several years ago I was walking back from a meeting with a colleague. I took a call on the mobile from a client wanting me to bid on a job. I was polite, but indicated that I might not be able to do it.

After I finished the call, my colleague expressed surprise that I appeared not to want the work. I explained that I had had problems with this particular client before, that in my judgement the assignment was unlikely to be worth the effort involved.

As it happened, the client was insistent and, against my better judgement, I put in an expression of interest. I should not have. The job did not proceed, and I wasted a fair bit of time.

Knowing when to say no and indeed how to say it, is an area that I have wrestled with across the full spectrum from marketing through award to completion. The problem is especially acute in those areas of professional services dominated by project based work, most acute for the smaller independent professional. It is very hard to say no when you really need the work.

Again, there is no magic bullet. Perhaps the most important thing that I have learned is that the process of getting the assignment is not just a marketing exercise, not just persuading the client to give us the work, but also an interview process during which the client has to be assessed.

This assessment should take place at two levels.

At the first level, do you actually want to do this task or even to work with the client full stop? If your antennae are picking up danger signs, then it may be best to exit gracefully.

At the second level, you have to decide how best to work with the client. Here you have to be prepared if necessary to lay down your own ground rules, not just accept those put forward by the client.

Creation and Use of Case Studies

This post continues my practice of tidying up past posts to make the material more accessible.

Most professionals use case studies. However, the practice is especially important in training. For that reason, I ran an earlier short series on the creation and use of case studies. You will find the introductory post here.