Herding Hostile Dysfunctional Cats
September 21, 2023 6:13 AM Subscribe
You work with many clients. Each client is a snowflake. Some are better at project management and getting things done than others. Some clients are completely dysfunctional and hostile. What tactics, systems and processes do you use to organize the all of the emails, phone calls, texts related to projects and tasks when working with a dysfunctional client?
I just joined a startup that is going to start working with larger enterprise clients. We are fielding requests for new features, bugs, and other work for each of these clients over the term of our engagement.
Our first client is a large fortune 500 company. It's an absolute gong show. Emails are flying in on different topics from different people all day long. People are sending mixed messages/data/dates and everyone is getting confused, although I think most people think they aren't confused and things are going great. The amount of bad communication I am observing is frightening.
On the client side you have a "project manager" who seems to have no system for tracking things. Everything is done over email. Everything is a fire. The project manager runs a weekly meeting by randomly broaching topics without sharing even a spreadsheet with basic stuff that tracks what, who or when. Screens are not being shared. The project manager is openly hostile to both her team and our team. Questioning things brings a heated conversation. The team itself seems to be completely dysfunctional. Decisions and business rules are ambiguous at best and are discussed and defined on the fly. Dates are verbalized but not written down in any structured format. For the most part it seems to be project management by email run by someone who read a book called "Angry Dunning Krueger Chaos Project Management"
If this were an internal team, I could solve this easily by 1) yanking out the bad actor, and 2) suggesting we use Basecamp, Monday.com, Asana, etc or anything resembling a tracking system. My gut tells me the project manager will block me at every turn, thrives in this chaos, and will never want to have her vendor suggest a better way of working. Not sure how to tell our internal champion that their team is not good and this PM should not be the quarterback.
Wondering if anyone else has experienced this dynamic and how you were able to corral your clients and bring some order to the chaos. A good answer might suggest a system but also might suggest how I navigate these large clients and get the ear of the right people and how best to suggest a better way of working and actually getting traction on that better way.
I am open to any and all suggestions.
I just joined a startup that is going to start working with larger enterprise clients. We are fielding requests for new features, bugs, and other work for each of these clients over the term of our engagement.
Our first client is a large fortune 500 company. It's an absolute gong show. Emails are flying in on different topics from different people all day long. People are sending mixed messages/data/dates and everyone is getting confused, although I think most people think they aren't confused and things are going great. The amount of bad communication I am observing is frightening.
On the client side you have a "project manager" who seems to have no system for tracking things. Everything is done over email. Everything is a fire. The project manager runs a weekly meeting by randomly broaching topics without sharing even a spreadsheet with basic stuff that tracks what, who or when. Screens are not being shared. The project manager is openly hostile to both her team and our team. Questioning things brings a heated conversation. The team itself seems to be completely dysfunctional. Decisions and business rules are ambiguous at best and are discussed and defined on the fly. Dates are verbalized but not written down in any structured format. For the most part it seems to be project management by email run by someone who read a book called "Angry Dunning Krueger Chaos Project Management"
If this were an internal team, I could solve this easily by 1) yanking out the bad actor, and 2) suggesting we use Basecamp, Monday.com, Asana, etc or anything resembling a tracking system. My gut tells me the project manager will block me at every turn, thrives in this chaos, and will never want to have her vendor suggest a better way of working. Not sure how to tell our internal champion that their team is not good and this PM should not be the quarterback.
Wondering if anyone else has experienced this dynamic and how you were able to corral your clients and bring some order to the chaos. A good answer might suggest a system but also might suggest how I navigate these large clients and get the ear of the right people and how best to suggest a better way of working and actually getting traction on that better way.
I am open to any and all suggestions.
Best answer: When I was in a simliar place (solutions engineer) I def noticed that sometimes individuals at larger clients liked to throw their weight around and act like it was some 'gift' to us that they were our clients and that the service we provided was essentially replaceable by another vendor if they wanted. Something processes we had that helped up rise above the fray:
- really building internal advocates for us on the other side. You said you have a champion, but you need more than just one and if your champion is higher than the project and the project isn't going well, eventually they may no longer be your champion. You need champions from w/in the people getting things done. In our case that was the software engineers integrating with our APIs. Giving them lot of empathy, quick to answer their questions, helping them plan their integration, understanding conflicting priorities/motiviations when we could , etc.
- If things aren't being shared then you have to create those shared documents in lieu of their documents, keep showing them and saying is this a correct understanding? You use those and the gaps in them to drive the conversation, who cares how they are/aren't documenting it on their end. Maybe they won't engage with your docs but you can continually point back to it if needed to resolve conflicts, answer duplicate questions, etc. Any integration question an engineer asked was kept in that document. We often found that we had a better record of the work than the client did and this was crucial to maintain our internal advocates when their personnel inevitably changed midproject. People's frustration at their work often was expressed as frustration at us and being able to help them get their job done helped our reputation.
- for things that were bugs, feature requests, etc. there was a hosted by us/shared to them spreadsheet or with regular status updates. Description, date recorded, last date updated, prioritization, context (what does this block on their end?) and what is blocking progress if we've all agreed it's going to be done etc. This is esp good to show dysfunction on their end that may be causing you to look like you're not delivering "we'd like to fix the handle design on teapot X but we're waiting on signoff from your team, do you have any updates". Part of meeting should be review of this that's so pedantic people do the things so they don't have to keep discussing it. (per orangedisk's comment that your client won't like you taking charge of documenting.)
- for the flurry of emails we had an alias we'd cc and encouraged them to use and would forward emails sent to individuals on out team to so we could all see look back on various conversations & history. There are surely better customer mgt better tools for this than we were using, but not everyone on our team had access to things like salesforce.
You don't say what your role in the projects is but it was often helpful to have someone who could backchannel a bit to give context we weren't getting.
This worked for us but we also got eventually burned after a few years - our process was very high touch and you have to have a strong process from moving away from it or eventually charging for it if you aren't already. Or you'll burn out your client facing folks.
posted by snowymorninblues at 8:53 AM on September 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
- really building internal advocates for us on the other side. You said you have a champion, but you need more than just one and if your champion is higher than the project and the project isn't going well, eventually they may no longer be your champion. You need champions from w/in the people getting things done. In our case that was the software engineers integrating with our APIs. Giving them lot of empathy, quick to answer their questions, helping them plan their integration, understanding conflicting priorities/motiviations when we could , etc.
- If things aren't being shared then you have to create those shared documents in lieu of their documents, keep showing them and saying is this a correct understanding? You use those and the gaps in them to drive the conversation, who cares how they are/aren't documenting it on their end. Maybe they won't engage with your docs but you can continually point back to it if needed to resolve conflicts, answer duplicate questions, etc. Any integration question an engineer asked was kept in that document. We often found that we had a better record of the work than the client did and this was crucial to maintain our internal advocates when their personnel inevitably changed midproject. People's frustration at their work often was expressed as frustration at us and being able to help them get their job done helped our reputation.
- for things that were bugs, feature requests, etc. there was a hosted by us/shared to them spreadsheet or
- for the flurry of emails we had an alias we'd cc and encouraged them to use and would forward emails sent to individuals on out team to so we could all see look back on various conversations & history. There are surely better customer mgt better tools for this than we were using, but not everyone on our team had access to things like salesforce.
You don't say what your role in the projects is but it was often helpful to have someone who could backchannel a bit to give context we weren't getting.
This worked for us but we also got eventually burned after a few years - our process was very high touch and you have to have a strong process from moving away from it or eventually charging for it if you aren't already. Or you'll burn out your client facing folks.
posted by snowymorninblues at 8:53 AM on September 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
Best answer: In similar chaos, I have a tightly structured weekly meeting with time limits, an agenda in a spreadsheet with all relevant data in other tabs, and I wrote down next actions decided in the meeting. I also have direct and no-senior management chat groups to work directly with people or at least get back channel conversations going. I put a fair amount of effort into warm relationships with the project people - some are just hostile and I don’t waste energy there.
A lot of proxy scheduling and project management - I have a jira board where a good third is tracking their jira ticket. I do the scheduling and review draft documentation. It’s ridiculous, but it’s necessary to keep the project going. Make sure you distinguish between your internal notes and what the other team sees so you don’t accidentally reveal your real take on their latest screw up.
Before you do this, be clear with your internal team what the situation is and get your boss to ok putting in the extra effort to do this management by proxy. You cannot do all this extra work and deliver the same as you would with an ok partner. The chaos bites into your available time and resources. Scale expectations down, build in hidden buffers for delays, plan for a lot more resources to deliver progress.
If your management won’t support either slower delivery or give you more resources with a chaotic client, don’t waste time planning for them. Plan your job search.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 11:17 AM on September 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
A lot of proxy scheduling and project management - I have a jira board where a good third is tracking their jira ticket. I do the scheduling and review draft documentation. It’s ridiculous, but it’s necessary to keep the project going. Make sure you distinguish between your internal notes and what the other team sees so you don’t accidentally reveal your real take on their latest screw up.
Before you do this, be clear with your internal team what the situation is and get your boss to ok putting in the extra effort to do this management by proxy. You cannot do all this extra work and deliver the same as you would with an ok partner. The chaos bites into your available time and resources. Scale expectations down, build in hidden buffers for delays, plan for a lot more resources to deliver progress.
If your management won’t support either slower delivery or give you more resources with a chaotic client, don’t waste time planning for them. Plan your job search.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 11:17 AM on September 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
Best answer: My gut tells me the project manager will block me at every turn, thrives in this chaos, and will never want to have her vendor suggest a better way of working. Not sure how to tell our internal champion that their team is not good and this PM should not be the quarterback.
Large enterprises have many layers of people. Those dealing with smaller suppliers such as yourselves, may often operate in their own self contained world - insulated from those further up who have the real power and responsibility. If you happen to end up with somebody narcissistic, lazy, or incompetent, then they are no doubt adept at blaming their vendors (and direct reports) while making their bosses believe they are wonderful.
You can mitigate some of this by procedures, as suggested. But there is maybe also something to discuss with your internal champion: are they able to cultivate relations with people further up the management chain. They are the ones who it is useful to present the evidence to should it come to a show down (it will).
posted by rongorongo at 4:03 AM on September 22, 2023
Large enterprises have many layers of people. Those dealing with smaller suppliers such as yourselves, may often operate in their own self contained world - insulated from those further up who have the real power and responsibility. If you happen to end up with somebody narcissistic, lazy, or incompetent, then they are no doubt adept at blaming their vendors (and direct reports) while making their bosses believe they are wonderful.
You can mitigate some of this by procedures, as suggested. But there is maybe also something to discuss with your internal champion: are they able to cultivate relations with people further up the management chain. They are the ones who it is useful to present the evidence to should it come to a show down (it will).
posted by rongorongo at 4:03 AM on September 22, 2023
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Once you have clarity on that, you need to institute very rigorous processes on your side.
This would look something like this: the person who received the email responds to the client with something like "Thank you, I need to talk to others and get back to you." They save the email into the tool you are using (asana, monday.com, whatever) and tag a project manager. The project manager extracts the action items from the email and circulates them to the right people, and when they have signed off, a response is sent to the client (maybe by the person who received the email, maybe by the PM, but regardless, you need clarity about who replies). IMPORTANTLY, the person who receives the email has to do this even if they know the answer to the question.
Then you create a decision log from the action items, and share that with your client at the next check-in meeting. Maybe you email it and don't discuss it, beyond saying "hey, we attached a list of all our activity this week." Even if the client never looks at the decision log, your company's ass is covered by it. This will also help you when the project runs out of money -- you'll be able to tell them (and your bosses) that the client changed scope three times on date1, date2 and date 3, and that led to overruns in such-and-such a way.
Your client might not like this, and will likely complain about a slow down in the work. Tough. If they won't institute good management practices, it's even more important that you do so.
posted by OrangeDisk at 8:19 AM on September 21, 2023 [7 favorites]