Once upon a time, I dated a successful lawyer who once told me, “Morgan, more than half of all client work for lawyers isn’t dealing with the law itself. It’s just managing the client to help him figure out and document what he wants and how he wants to get it, making sure he doesn’t go crazy and doesn’t drive us crazy.”
The next night, I happened to go out with another friend, a successful doctor. He told me, paraphrased, “Morgan, most of my client consultations are fairly routine. But the key to being a successful doctor is managing your patients and helping them figure out what they want and how they want to get it, making sure they don’t go crazy, and they don’t drive us crazy.” Okay, it wasn’t the exact same words repeated, but in my memory, it’s fairly close.
A lot of client work, including work for your boss, who is effectively your client, isn’t actually about the work per se; it’s about figuring out how to manage the clients.
Over these chapters, I’m going to document tips & tricks for designers on how to manage clients so that their experience working with you has as few bumps as possible, and your experience working with the client has even fewer bumps.
My favorite strategy is something conceptually really simple, that we all know we should do, but we don’t, and I’m going to argue here that it’s overwhelmingly worth it to do so: write everything down. And by the word “everything,” I mean everything. I suggest writing down:
- Meeting notes at the end of each meeting, even if it’s a quick meeting or a chit-chat
- Delimited action items
- Chatter-like conversation using platforms like Slack, so there’s a written documentation of the chatter.
- Put all goals, promises, expectations into writing as well, even the smallest ones like: “Tomorrow, I’ll write the article up, and it will take 10 minutes.” Even a tiny 10-minute promise—put it in writing.
Pretend you’re a secretary, one of the most underrated jobs out there, deeply important, but constantly ignored despite its crucial role, and it’s YOUR role to document everything. Even if you’re the Big Boss, which means you’re the one doing the down and dirty little annoying work that no one else wants to do. Like meeting notes!
When? You don’t need to write it down immediately, a day or two later is fine. But you should always send the written document to the other parties and encourage them to review it.
Where to write it down? Anywhere is better than nowhere: email or Slack is good for starters. If you want an A+, then create organized lists, such as shared To-Do lists via Google Docs, or a directory on Google Docs called “Client Meeting Notes,” or really, just do all your writing directly in Google Docs. Or create tracking spreadsheets for each little initiative, no matter how small, in Google Docs. Did I mention Google Docs is a Godsend?
At this point, you are probably thinking it seems like you have to be absurdly [insert inappropriate word here, in our imagination, please] to write every tiny little thing down. Is it worth the effort? Really?
My argument is that in a client-professional relationship, especially in a client-designer relationship, this is one of the hearts of enforcing good behavior. Why? A few reasons off the cuff. Here they go:
- People have bad memories. Really, really, really bad. They remember everything in a way that makes them look good. It’s a tiny, subtle, little bias, but it’s unavoidable in human nature. “No, I didn’t say it would be ready Thursday, but Monday!” the most well-intentioned people have flaky memories when it comes to their own deliverables.
- Clients will change their mind a zillion times—and they won’t realize how much they’re doing it. But when you have a written record there, it becomes clear, even to the client, how many twists and turns he is causing. You can even write up the notes (in a non-passive-aggressive way) to document the changes: “On [dateX], we started doing [Y], and as of today’s meeting, we’re changing it to do [Z].”
- Building on the last point, sometimes you need to call the client out on their bad behavior. And if you don’t have it in writing, it turns into an emotional “he said, she said” war in which there is no winner, but everyone always emerges with seemingly endless frustration. But if it’s in writing, it suddenly becomes objective, “Hey, look at the record, here is what happened.” You can’t dispute documents that were written and shared (and given the opportunity to be reviewed) at the time of the issue.
- It makes the client respect you more. It not only gives off an air of professionalism—it is professional indeed! Think about it this way: imagine you’re hiring a professional, like a lawyer or a doctor. Would you want to hire the lawyer who you spend an hour with and chit-chats for a while and then maybe who knows what will happen after the meeting? Or the lawyer who, after the meeting, sends you an email, “Morgan, I just wanted to summarize the 3 key decisions we made on today’s call, and review the trade-offs for each…” I know which lawyer I’d want to hire! And the same holds true not just for each lawyer, but for each professional we work with.
This issue comes back down to a broader question: what is a professional? That’s a whole other topic (in fact, one which your humble writer wrote a chapter of his college thesis about!) but one way to think about it is this: do you want a job where you’re just following orders? Or a job in which you’re telling the other person what to do and they’re listening to you? If you’re anything like me, you’ll want the latter type of relationship. But to achieve that, you can’t do it through the force of words alone. You need the right ideas, the right words, and to be organized and structured about it. And writing everything down is the first step in doing so.
