It's been proposed in this forum that virtually any impasse between staff and management or between consultant and client can be resolved by improving your communication skills and concentrating on understanding and incorporating the client's concerns and values. It is true?
Now I'm as supportive of good communications and good working relationships as anyone. But can it always overcome the effects of hostile takeovers and broken budgets, irrational or inept management or hidden agendas on the parts of the other individuals? Will it provide the single, guaranteed, timely, cost-effective solution in every instance?
And if not, then what's you plan B for getting or retaining that otherwise good client?
-ENO
ENO
I think you're asking about two different things here
- Communication as a way to resolve conflict,
- and how to get/keep clients in a consulting business.
I don't think that what is good practice in one case is necessarily ideal in the other!
I wouldn't say that communication resolves an impasse, just that it is the way to discover what the impasse is, a way to define it (or decide if it really even exists). And I don't think conflict should necessarily be resolved, sometimes you might want to ignore or exploit it.
As a consultant, what clients are often looking for is a bit of magic, and that generally means taking away the thinking issues. Make it so they don't need to consider how their resources are being allocated, or what standards their software meets. You might decide not to raise an issue because one of the reasons you're valuable to the organization is that you take away their need to spend time thinking about technology.
If you're trying to get and keep a client, your plan for communication may be very different than if you're an internal manager or board member trying to get an organization to meet its mission most effectively.
Helen
PS I don't want to imply that somehow consultants are worse for an organization than internal IT staff. Just that the question posed was partially about getting and keeping clients. I think a lot of this is transferable to an internal IT person trying to please senior staff.