Challenging Client-Consultant Relationships
Written by @Giorgos Vareloglou
The author:
When we launched REBORRN, we put ourselves in a mission to challenge the traditional consulting model, which hasn’t changed much in the past decades. We see REBORRN as a living experiment of how things can work differently in a consultancy. So we constantly try new things. Most of them will probably fail, but some will work. We will be sharing the learnings of this journey as part of our transparent culture.
A couple of months ago, we published an article on our Problem solving methodology the 58 Session. Following the positive response from the community, we are now planning to build a platform for 58, making it available with all the details and templates for anyone to use.
Today I want to share our thoughts on Client Consultant Relationships, since we believe that the way we choose to engage with Clients has major impact on Price, Go to market timelines, but also the quality of work.
We believe that due to the fundamental lack of trust that by nature exists in a “Vendor-Client” relationship we tend to overdo it when it comes to client service. If you’ve ever worked in Professional Services (be it a lawyer, an adman or a consultant) you’ll know what i mean.
Producing huge documents to tell a story that could fit in a three pages, just to make sure you prove to your client that you worth the man-hours he was billed, or attending meaningless meetings to discuss issues that could be tackled with a 10' call just to prove you are “present”?
These are just two examples of what we like to call fat in a client-consultant relationship. The challenge is how we train ourselves, and then our partners, to find ways and cut this useless fat. We figured out that if we come up with a set of rules that would make our ways of working more lean and efficient, both sides would win.
1. We could afford lowering our prices for the same deliverables or increase the quality of our work with the same effort.
2. Cutting the fat would also get the job done faster, which matters a lot when it comes to Digital Consulting.
3. But there is one more thing. Cutting the “fancy” stuff in our engagements creates more honest and direct relationships, which combined with great work, creates trust.
Based on that, we kicked off a new habit where before starting to work with an organisation we always share with our partners our “Rules of Engagement”.
“Rules of Engagement” is a set of rules that we have at Reborrn that gives you a hint on what to expect when working with us. It’s not a management of expectations, it’s a way to commit ourselves (before our clients) to a lean and more honest way of working. Everyone that works at REBORRN should follow these rules and a way to make sure it happens is making it a promise to all of our clients.
Key Rules:
Email killers.
If it’s a quick one, let’s skip the formality of email. WhatsApp, viber, slack, all is fine with us.
No presentations.
Short documents over presentations. Let’s avoid spending man-hours on creating fancy decks.
No soul-draining email threads
If an issue needs more than 5 mails to be solved, stop. We can discuss over a call. Let’s put an end on soul-draining threads with Huge emails.
Paperless
We are paperless. We never print anything. At least we try not to. So to e-sign NDAs, Contracts, Sales Orders. It saves man-hours and the planet.
Productive meetings over meaningless chit chats
So we don’t do alignment meetings. A meeting is necessary for decision making. Coordination can happen through a structured email.
If a meeting needs less than 30' to discuss whatever it is, let’s meet virtually. We save time and the world, from fossil fuels.
A meeting needs to have a facilitator, an agenda and action items.
We’ll never be late. We expect everyone to be punctual.
Radical Candor over rounded talks
We’ll be brutally honest, even if that is against our scope of work.
We’ll be super responsive: The 2/24/0 Rule.
That’s my favourite
Whenever you need us, expect to acknowledge your request within 2 business hours. Within 24 hours we promise to get back to you with what to expect. If it’s a quick one you might get what you want in a day, if not you’ll know what needs to be done by when. The zero stands for zero delay in whatever deadline we commit upon.
This November we launched our v1.0 in the following document:
Do we always follow these rules? No.
But we try really hard.