If you’ve worked long enough for a couple of different bosses or clients, there is one archetype that is very common and you’ve probably run into it. In fact, you’ve probably run into it more times than not, the boss or client who constantly changes his mind. You know the type. He gives you something and then waffles back and forth and back and forth.
These bosses have been known, in particular, to drive their employees and freelancers crazy. Start, stop, start, stop. Start this but then scrap what you did and start again in a different direction. And so forth. And it never ends!
If you haven’t encountered that situation, it only means you’re too young or too inexperienced. You will!
My preferred strategy for dealing with these sorts of clients or bosses is two-fold.
On the one hand, when in a state of flux (regarding a certain project or assignment), I tend to prioritize other work deliverables. Why? After a bunch of back and forth, it almost-always cools down and settles on one path. The problem isn’t the changing of minds so much as the boss just being so eager and excited that he tells you before it’s ready.
In other words, with this type of boss, whatever he gives you will change over the next few days. So, no point in spending 8 hours on it when it is very likely to be scrapped. So, spend 8 hours on one of your other deliverables, like some of the lower priority stuff you’ve been meaning to catch up on, and by the time you get to this, it will probably be in a more stable state. Hopefully, at least.
The second way to deal with this is to talk to the client openly about this. The challenge with that is that at each moment he likely thinks that his decision is the final one. (Clients lie to themselves more than they lie to you!) So, use gentle but clear wording. I often frame it like this, “I’m worried that I’m going to start working on this and then you’ll realize we need to do a key detail differently after I start. What if we put this on ice for one week and then come back to it, so I don’t lose time building things that we will scrap?” or alternatively, “What if I move ahead and build this, but if you then realize we need to make a change, then at that point, we’ll put it on ice for a week?”
Note what is effective about the wording there, I’m not telling the client he always “changes his mind,” which makes him sound weak and indecisive, so it could be construed as an insult! I reframe it positively as “realizing what you need to do differently.” Suddenly, it’s not an insult, but an acknowledgment that great realizations will lead to better products! At least in his mind.
