Bullet Dodging 101
How to avoid the doomed client engagement.
Have you ever dodged a bullet? We recently did…sort of.
More interesting to me was that we really didn’t dodge the bullet so much as the bullet worked really hard not to hit us. We were running around, desperately trying to get hit by this bullet and it missed.
As it whizzed past my ear I thought, “Oh my, that was a bullet wasn’t it?”
I could have sworn it was an important opportunity.
But it gets weirder. During the negotiations, every conversation Tonianne and I had was, “Boy, this sure seems like a bad idea. We really shouldn’t do this. It seems like a bullet. It’s all bullet shaped and projectile-like. I think it could would, maim, or kill us. “
Yet, we kept trying. Meetings, calls, proposals, free advice.
Was it a client with great name recognition and an interesting problem to solve? Yes.
But we’ve turned away similar work before without much fuss. Why was this different?
Our main rule is “If we can’t break bread together, we can’t make bread together.” The leader of this company was not someone we wanted to share a meal with.
Our second rule might be “If people aren’t committed to the hard work of an intentional culture an intentional culture can’t happen.” It was clear that the easy work had been done, had been difficult enough for them, and they were confusing that with the hard work.
Two big rules broken. Still we tripped our way down a cracked and broken path.
Finally, it all fell apart after a phone call where literally half my notes were things like “sinking ship”, “seriously?”, and “Oh god, no.”
So again, why?
There were two things I think that propelled this doomed alliance beyond its time. One was a genuine disbelief that the great ideas in the company could be accompanied by such dysfunction. Sort of a misplaced optimism based on our internal ideas of what the company should be.
The second was straight up sunk cost fallacy. We had invested a lot of time and energy into this group. We wanted to see it through. The problem they were dealing with was too delicious.
When they told us that they’d “call in a few months,” we were happy the ordeal was over. But then we did something curious. We blamed them, we were angry with them.
So, here’s the funny thing. They did nothing wrong. They are a company with a dysfunctional culture and are by no means swimming alone in that particular bucket. We were the ones that went “against our gut” and continued to try to make something that didn’t fit…fit.
As coaches or consultants, it’s our job initially to be honest with ourselves about where we can help. We need to make sure we go places that can make the most of what we have to offer and to very honestly enter into situations where they might not.
We need to do this because as coaches we want to solve the hard problems. We want to save the tough cases. We want to do the cool stuff. We will do this at great personal expense. We will mistake bullets for opportunities and stand point-blank to receive our own demise.
About Jim
Jim Benson is the creator and co-author (with Tonianne DeMaria) of the best seller: Personal Kanban. His other books include Why Limit WIP, Why Plans Fail, and Beyond Agile. He is a winner of the Shingo Award for Excellence in Lean Thinking and the Brickell Key Award. He and Tonianne teach online at Modus Instituteand consult regularly, helping clients in all verticals create working systems. He regularly keynotes conferences, focusing on making work rewarding and humane.
