Their Lack of Planning IS your Emergency
Once, my best client gave me a heads-up that a juicy strategic project was coming. It will need “my team’s best work” because they wanted my agency, DesignCaffeine, to think “out of the box” and provide “vision for the next 5 years” and as much as possible to provide “patentable ideas.” I naturally expressed excitement and eagerness and let the client know that I will ideally need 6 months, and a minimum of 3 months to do the work.
In anticipation of the project, I continued to retain key contractors for as long as possible while the new project kept getting delayed. Oh, how I begged the client to get started ASAP, explaining the highest quality of talent I have especially assembled, how the slate was cleared for them deliver their best work… But of course, the client faced delays of their own, and the project sat idle. Finally, several weeks after I had to let go of my key talent because I had nothing to pay them with, the client came through—an excellent paying project, exactly in my sweet spot: the intersection of datavis and search.
The catch?
The project had to be completed in just 6 weeks.
Now you have surely seen signs like this one:
Some silly bureaucratic balderdash about the customer’s lack of planning not being your emergency.
It’s utter nonsense.
The customer’s lack of planning certainly IS your emergency.
You can bet that my Head of Client Services and I tried to argue that the client was hurting themselves by cutting the timeline. How this time compression dramatically increased the project risk, and so on. Unfortunately, the timeline was apparently fixed and unalterable, and we were to start ASAP and deliver the best possible standard of work they were used to from previous engagements.
Nevermind that I had just let go of my best talent.
The TLDR version is that we’ve come through. Because after you tried to talk your client from jumping off a cliff and they are still committed, you take their hand and jump together. And damn the torpedoes.
I had to do most of the work myself, and it was the result of many sleepless nights and 16-hour workdays. It was highly speculative and unpolished, as we barely had time to recruit a handful of research participants. However, we did manage to create several novel approaches, which the client secured with 3 patents.
It was more work than I wanted, and even though it paid well, it put a huge strain on my life and personal relationships. I’ll think twice before I’ll plunge into something like this in the future, but it was also highly inspiring to come to what I thought was my limit and push through. I am proud of the work we did, and I’m proud of the fact that we came through for our client.
Today, UX is often on the front lines of most valuable and strategic projects, and that’s a good thing. Unfortunately, it often means we have to operate within highly compressed timelines and make decisions based on thin evidence.
On the one hand, UX can insist on always having the perfect project timeline, complete requirements, the right staff, etc. This means risking a distinct possibility that those juicy strategic projects will be handed off to someone else or decided without any UX input, ultimately hurting the clients, the company, and the employees.
On the other hand, UX can accept an occasional fire drill as table stakes to play a key part in strategic projects with the big boys and girls. Given this requirement, we can set up our DesignOps to be ready (to the extent possible) to handle the unexpected and put in place the processes and policies to handle them. It will be easier and less stressful when emergencies do come. Because it’s often in these emergencies and “do or die” moments we learn most about our clients, our team-mates, ourselves, and our subject.
In future articles, I’ll show you exactly how to prepare your DesignOps to handle the unexpected load so you can take part in strategic decisions. Don’t miss our next post — sign up below:
