When Clients Attack!

Does this sound familiar?

You are engaged to work on a project and deliver value to a customer. But as you get stuck in the original brief changes, and then changes again, and again, and again. The customer says "this is priority now", and you go down that direction only to be told that it isn't priority and you should have been doing what you were hired to do.

The guys implementing are stretched and your calls for review meetings get ignored or bounced, and because the progress isn't obvious the team start to
wonder what you actually do.

Every fibre of your being is telling you to hit the brakes on this and force an exception; this project is failing. Yet you are a professional and you will see this job through.

Your an idiot.

You were hired without the full support of the management team, they don't know why your there and have conflicting priorities.

You can't win.

So what do you do?

You must walk away. This is a destructive project, and while you may have some successes the overall objective will never be reached. If as a consultant your job is to listen an add value, listen to yourself, and add value by not continuing to take the fee and provide good advice by articulating why you are not willing to continue.

I despise failure, but it is a painful process necessary in order for us to grow personally, professionally and learn. You don't become a poor consultant overnight, you just chose the wrong customer. Just like in Medical Aesthetics, patient selection is a key factor in a successful treatment choosing the right customer is a key factor in a projects success.

Don't beat yourself up, just accept it, learn and move on. Show me a consultant who hasn't got it wrong and I'll show you a liar.