[Sigia-l] love thy client (was Re: [Sigia-l] "Study: Content Management Tools Fail")

[Nuno Lopes]

Hi all,

Christina wrote:

>This is an arrogant and shocking statement, and I would never hire a 
>consultant that I suspected thought this.

Shocking and arrogant is your remark. I've been in all sides of the
fence so I can in my humble experience express my thoughts. The shocking
"most" word is explained bellow.

Christina wrote:

>BTW, the use of the word "most" is what makes it so bad. "Some" or
better >yet "a few" would have been okay.... ish....

I simple was just making comments within the scope of the article as it
seamed to imply that most CMS projects failed after all. So, while not
knowing those projects inside out the three folded "most" may be
appropriate.

I love clients, consultants and vendors. Any of them are persons like me
:) Each one with their area of expertise. Any of them can make mistakes,
although when a project starts no one thinks of this of course, it would
not be productive for neither. But I'm a believer on this rule "first
you try then you trust" in whatever role. In the first phase trust is
imposed by goodwill or a contract (artificial) in the second either you
trust or don't trust. I believe that we both are still trying in this
talk.

BTW, if the area of automation is new like CM is quite natural the
"vague" word is quite common and natural. What is unnatural is
certainties in face of the new. By all means I have not meant that
clients are less then professional on their tasks or even excellent or
good. Clients read magazines, brochures, comparison charts about the
given problem or simply some colleague in a conference informed about
the possibilities of such automation. Some take problem analysis
seriously other not but still budgets go ballistic and projects fail. 

My comments meant to be a word of caution (including myself) to everyone
in embracing new ideas, project or buying/supplying a new product or
services (CMS). In that scope I think it was not out of order.

>This is an arrogant and shocking statement, and I would never hire a 
>consultant that I suspected thought this.

Furthermore, don't try to capitalize on my words your professionalism
with total disrespect for my cause by speculating that you understand
more clients than I do (although you are one but not mine). That is less
then ethical especially in this case. What if I told I'm a client? Relax
I'm not at this present moment. But when I was I always suspected of
suppliers that told me that I was always right. The inverse is also
wrong, that is why I think the problem is three folded in no particular
order. 

Sometimes the problem is communication, sometimes is not. Sometimes is
human error (error of judgment) and that can happen in whatever kind of
role you have in a business meeting (Client, Vendor or Consultant). 

I'm one of those people that think that being honest is the best way to
reach goal with A marks, whatever is the starting point.

>I've seen consultants ignore what the client said and plow forward with
>what they thought was right. Later, they wondered why their "excellent"
>solution wasn't implemented.

Absolutely but not this one, as far as the people that I've worked with
tell me. So your bad experiences must fall into the second category. 

>Any consultant who tried to pull this nonsense "We'll tell you what to
do, >you hired us to be the experts"
>bullhockey I crossed off the list.

Again second category. I did that too.

>Perhaps that's just one client speaking, but perhaps I represent a few
>others....

Clients were not under attack within the scope of all of my post. Your
comments are less then fair IMO. If you pick the first sentence out of
the scope of the post then Yes your comments make sense but nevertheless
you conclusion are plain wrong when then you project that into my
professionalism (after all I've written all the post). In the end it
simply devitalizes what I was trying to communicate and shuts the door
of knowledgeable understanding. 

But I agree, that the most word can be I'll interpreted and attacked
with pure speculation about my professionalism. It is funny that you
have not mentioned that in the second category I used the word "Usually"
and in the third one I used the expression "most often".

When a project fails it fails for some reason. Without knowing the
subjects of the article the only thing I can do is express those three
hypotheses.

At least I was fair by distributing those three words (with equal
impact) between the three categories. That is more then what I can say
about your comment.

Hire me if you want, or do otherwise. Whatever your decision my
commitment is total.

Best regards,

Nuno Lopes

PS: By the way as a consultant I failed once a deadline but even with
that miss the client was quite pleased. He helped me a lot, and I know
that I've done that for him too but that is another story. The signal
noise ration on this list is starting to bug me!