Surviving with your reputation—and your dignity—intact

Shit hap­pens. It may be trite, but it’s true. You can be the most organ­ized, thoughtful, and thor­oughly pre­pared busi­nessperson in the uni­verse, but even­tu­ally, some­where along the line, things will spiral out of con­trol. Sud­denly, your metic­u­lously planned pro­ject has turned into a beast: a mess of missed dead­lines, a slew of thwarted expect­a­tions, or an end product that simply isn’t shaping up right.

I’m a con­trol freak, so of course I don’t let this happen too often. How­ever, last week, a big pro­ject I’ve been working on for some time got away from me. It had been slowly plod­ding along, months behind dead­line and mostly-stagnant, while I worked on other things and waited for the bits and pieces I needed to come in. I figured nothing was wrong, really—sure, we were way behind dead­line, but the client knew that, since they missed their dead­lines, right? The design pro­cess tends to stall if the client isn’t coming up with their end of things (feed­back, con­tent, etc), so I’m used to pro­jects that go into a bit of stasis for a while. I figured it wasn’t a big deal.

Kabloo-ey!

Wow, was I ever wrong. Sud­denly, some­thing happened with the client—I’m guessing that my con­tacts got chewed out by their boss—and they started emailing me three times a day, asking where things were. I was working on a team with a writer and a pro­ject man­ager, plus two client con­tacts, and there was sud­denly a massive influx of emails flying around all over the place, each more aggressive and inflam­matory than the last. I had been working with an illus­trator based out of [some­where far away], and I started to realize he just wasn’t deliv­ering in a timely manner, he’d go AWOL for days on end, and that I wasn’t able to prop­erly com­mu­nicate my client’s vague dir­ec­tions to him. My stress levels spiked, and panic set in. I’m going to fail, I told myself. I’m going to fail, the pro­ject will tank, and I’ll never work again. It’s over for me. Might as well start handing out resumes to cof­feeshops now.

But appar­ently I’ve now got this big bad logical-calm-adult brain going on. It told the pan­icky screaming little kid inside my head to shush, and started fig­uring out how to fix things. Now, a week later, the pro­ject is nearly fin­ished (well, sort of), my stress levels are reduced sig­ni­fic­antly, and I’m working with a new illus­trator who’s turning stuff around at light speed and gets my client far better than I do.

So, appar­ently all projects–except maybe the most dire of cases—can be salvaged. Regard­less of who’s at fault or what’s gone wrong, the pro­cess of finding a solu­tion is rel­at­ively con­stant. This is how I go about it.

1. Get communicative.

Good com­mu­nic­a­tion can fix a whole slew of problems—and in fact, in my exper­i­ence, bad com­mu­nic­a­tion tends to be the cause of most prob­lems. The moment you realize things have gone sour, you need to get in touch with everyone it’ll affect (cli­ents, sub­con­tractors, third parties) and let them know what’s going on. You may not be able to fix the problem right away, but everyone will appre­ciate feeling as though they’re in the loop. I’ve found it’s also helpful to email people if I won’t be able to tackle a task within 24 hours—a quick mes­sage to say I got your email, and I’ll deal with it tomorrow when I have time is often enough that your client doesn’t feel like you’ve aban­doned him. This is enough of a danger when a pro­ject is run­ning smoothly—when things have gone amuck, it’s doubly so.

2. Own up to your mistakes.

Ideally, you won’t be respons­ible in any way, shape, or form, for the project’s failure. Real­ist­ic­ally, I’ve found that in most cases of pro­ject hell, every party involved is at least frac­tion­ally to fault. Take respons­ib­ility for your own errors or mismanagement—without making an ordeal out of overly pro­fuse or insin­cere apo­lo­gies. Identi­fying your own fail­ings up-front and hon­estly shows your client that you aren’t afraid to admit to your mis­takes. If you can identify and apo­lo­gize for your fail­ings, it also means that your client can’t blame you for prob­lems that aren’t your fault, and you don’t get sucked into a vicious cycle of accus­a­tion. At this point, playing the blame game gets you nowhere; what you need is a solu­tion.

3. Figure out a solu­tion, or two, or three.

Once you’ve admitted fault, it is abso­lutely neces­sary to imme­di­ately present alternate solu­tions, so as to avoid focusing atten­tion on the blame por­tion of the con­ver­sa­tion. Ideally, you want everyone to be focused on solving the problem, rather than get­ting wrapped up in what went wrong and who’s to blame for what. (That’s a con­ver­sa­tion for later.) Remind everyone that the primary con­cern is solving the problem. Then, present as many solu­tions as you can dream up. By offering up choices, you are giving your client a renewed sense of con­trol, which will reduce his panic while also serving to limit your respons­ib­ility, should things go sour again. Remember when presenting solu­tions to out­line all the pros and cons of each option, and don’t hes­itate to sug­gest the “best solu­tion”, if one exists.

4. Be willing to bend, just a tiny little bit.

Your flex­ib­ility should be dir­ectly pro­por­tionate to how much at fault you are. Missed an important dead­line? Promise pri­ority turn­around for the remainder of the pro­ject, without a rush fee. Sent the wrong file to the printer? Offer to work a few hours extra for free, and swallow the costs. Don’t put your­self in the poor­house, but do what you can. Some­times just a ges­ture of com­promise will be enough to make your client realize that you’re doing everything you can to get things back on track.

5. Make it very clear who is respons­ible for what.

Espe­cially important in a pro­ject where dead­lines are an issue (I’m thinking that would be all of them?) and you require feed­back or con­tent from your client. Send them an updated timeline that out­lines each party’s respons­ib­il­ities, and the dead­line for each deliv­er­able. I don’t often tend to use “hard” dates, as I find the moment that one gets shifted, everything else gets thrown out of bal­ance. Instead, I’ll count the days required for turn­around. Want a web­site done by next week? Give me con­tent tomorrow—I can have it turned around in four days. If you wait ’til next week, your web­site won’t be done on time. That way, your client can better under­stand what his respons­ib­il­ities are in order to meet a deadline.

6. Learn from your mistakes.

It seems like a given, but it’s important to make sure you learn how to avoid the situ­ation in the future. If the client is open to it, con­sider having a brief post-mortem after the project’s completed—this way, you can get their input both on the dis­aster itself and on how you handled it.

Follow these steps for dis­aster recovery, and you’ll be able to min­imize the damage to your busi­ness and to your repu­ta­tion. After all, a good client will appre­ciate your forth­right­ness, your ability to adapt to a bad situ­ation, and the fact you can learn from your mis­takes!

I can’t resist a good fire photo. You know how it is.

Tags: business, industry, process