PixelMEDIA Inc.

It’s the conversation you never want to have with a client. You’ve been working together for six months, and your customer’s over the moon about the work they’re getting – and they credit it all to one person. Since day one, one of the key members of the consulting team – let’s say it’s Rachael, the lead designer – has been working closely with them, and they love her. She is not just a senior-level billable resource. Rachael flew over for a three-day workshop at the client’s headquarters. In Minot, North Dakota. In February. Rachael led the team that produced the designs that made their stakeholders’ and investors’ and spouses’ eyes light up with joy: “This design captures the vision of our widgets! We didn’t even know we made this kind of a widget until Rachael set us straight!” Rachael knows the names of their kids. Rachael is the reason the client’s talking about a phase two, and a phase three.

And you have to tell the client that you’re giving them a new lead designer.

You probably have a good reason for doing it.  Maybe Rachael’s starting a new project. Or maybe, in an ironic twist on every resource manager’s “worst case” scenario, she literally got hit by a bus. Consultancies are like any company: people grow, they change assignments, they move on. And somebody else fills their shoes.

But that’s not what your client wants to hear. Let’s say you break the news to them via conference call. You casually mention that some guy named Dudley will be the new designer. The client responds with utter silence. You could hear a pin drop. A little staticky sound signals that someone on the other end of the phone is using their BlackBerry, probably to e-mail their boss: “It’s time to find a new agency.”

Did you make a mistake? Some consultants argue that we should always present ourselves as a team, of equal but indistinguishable talents. Individual names should be deemphasized. Official correspondence should be written in the first-person plural. And if one resource is swapped out for another, the client should have no cause to care – as long as they don’t have to pay to bring anyone up to speed.

In other words, you pretend you have a Clone Tank. It’s a large facility at an off-site location, with tubes pumping food and fluids into one end and a conveyer belt carrying billable hours and white papers out the other. The clones have no lives, no family, and no weekends. And if a clone breaks loose and runs away? The project manager can just reach into the Tank and drag out a replacement.

As silly as the Clone Tank sounds, many consultancies implicitly pretend they have one. They try to hide the friction and setbacks that come with working with individuals. And that also means they hide the strengths.

All agencies – and especially the ones that thrive – are made up of individuals, with their own strengths, work habits, and quirks.  In the best case, a client values what the individuals can bring to the table. And I suspect it’s the same with most agencies, no matter how hard they hide it.

Which makes it more awkward when we need to change a teammate. But that’s the other side of hiring an agency: a good one will have managers in place to handle that friction, to make up for setbacks, and to smooth out the experience even when the Rachael a client fell in love with has to split up with them. Instead of papering over the differences between our resources, a good agency finds the best ways to take advantage of them.

None of us can afford a clone tank. But a sharp eye for talent is even better.

Tags: breaking bad news, resource allocation