Mentoring as an investment

Have you ever asked how your project is there, in which you have invested a tremendous amount of time and energy to hear that “since that time they have completely changed the design”?

I had it, and it left me with a certain feeling of desolation.

After some time floundering, I realized that I needed to find a new way of thinking about how I work, and what really matters in my career as a consultant. And my answer: a sign of a really good consultant is investing in people. Focusing on investing in people ensures that you will continue to work and see results even after the application is redesigned, and that this is the very change that matters in the long run.
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In this article we will look at three areas in which we can focus our efforts: mentoring, training clients and members of our own team. I hope this helps us to be the best consultants and make the best investments.

Mentoring for clients as an investment

There are always opportunities to invest in people "from the client", but these opportunities may not always be obvious. I will give two examples.

On one recent project, I acted as a designer in a pair with the newly hired UX-director, who was slightly puzzled by the new work. When we talked, it became obvious that he needed a mentor who would deal with him, since he was not able to cope on his own.

I spent lunch with this man, talking about the UX strategy, how my company described the workflow, and eventually I worked on a project that I invited him to help me with researching the user audience.

You probably decide that this mentoring was not part of my work. I did it because it was right. It was an opportunity to invest in something more than the current project, and see how someone flourishes right before your eyes, and this makes the investment of time much more valuable.

By the end of working with this client, he was incredibly grateful that I had spent my time on him to steer him in the right direction, which allowed him to manage the UX capabilities much better than before. For me, this turned out to be the most satisfactory work I have done over the years. Fortunately, both my company and client were incredibly grateful for the time I spent on their people.

The second example relates to the implementation. I was an interface developer for an intranet project, and the client had a talented user interface specialist who had some questions about CMS and the approach we used. The situation was complicated by the fact that we took up the project after they fired another company for its inability to complete the task. This woman received scant advice from a previous artist, and she really had a lot of questions about how to implement everything correctly. It's pretty easy to get exhausted with external consultants, and I wanted to make sure that she and her team could trust us.

I made an appointment with her twice a week throughout the four months of implementation. Before we even started development, we marked out the amount of work with it and discussed all the details, down to such trifles as the class names in CSS. Regular meetings gave her the opportunity to understand and contribute throughout the process.

Another advantage of this approach (except for those that are accumulated in the process of cooperation) is that, ultimately, there was no significant transfer of knowledge. It was something that was part of the project from the very beginning.

As companies become more rational, we can benefit twice from closer collaboration and knowledge sharing: first, we spend a lot less time writing a lot of documentation as we share everything along the way, and second, the solution has a much better chance of long-term success, as we spend time investing in these people, who will take over when we leave.

Customer education as an investment

We can also educate customers, even if they do not personally live in the UX world. The large intranet project I was working on was originally supposed to be responsive, but it was still clear at the beginning that the design developed for it was not the best way that my company could implement it; it was not designed for mobile devices.

I had two options: either I just scored on it, do my job and move on, or I take the time to get the attention of the client and train him. I knew that this project was already moving on, but I could lay the foundation for the future success of the client.

The first thing to assess is whether the client is interested in such a relationship. Sometimes, despite your good intentions, customers are only interested in terms, and do not want to spend a large amount of paid time to learn or retrain.

And I had to ask myself the question: what is valuable to me? Am I just here for the money, or can I help make a lasting change and provide real value?

This client was not a practicing UX specialist, and he needed an expert he could trust. Working with people who are not connected with UX is quite difficult, as you have to explain in detail why it is important to do everything correctly, even if they do not understand the consequences or do not value the time required to do everything as it should.

I pulled it into several face-to-face meetings where we talked about everything, starting with the correct definition of responsive design, understanding mobile-oriented design, and even about things like using and abusing carousels on the main page. In the end, this not only improved our relationship, but also gave me a higher level of trust and understanding from the client.

It was this client who was ready for discussions and was even delighted with the expansion of our cooperation, but if you have a client who doubts you, do not give up. Show him the quantitative benefits of expanding cooperation, focusing on your past experiences, or on the fact that the time spent on you will turn him into dividends in the future.

Remember that even if things cannot be changed in the short term, you can invest in people for the next project and in the longer term.

Teams as investments

There is another last group that we should not forget about - our employees. These are people who become practically family, which will never happen to customers. Project after project, these are people with whom we work, and to some extent these are the most strategic people in whom to invest, but at the same time, sometimes it is very difficult to do, because we can simply overlook them.

When our company was engaged in the implementation of SASS CSS preprocessors, my team consisted mainly of young people who were looking for leaders in all areas. This time I got the opportunity to help others use this powerful tool. I took the lead in understanding the implications and how to use it in our team, after which I spent a lot of time with each member of the UX team to help them understand how to use technology in terms of program and process. Using this opportunity improves relationships with members of your team and shows them that you care a lot about their professional development.

To date, members of this team are turning to me with questions and in search of best practices, as they trust me. It's amazing how little detail, like the CSS preprocessor, can help you with your team.

Each of us has our own motivation for the work we do, and I imagine that for most of us, money (in their best sense) is not the main factor. Instead, talented people try to become experts, introducing changes and guiding others. Real leaders are not given the opportunity to lead - they find such an opportunity. Leadership within your organization will make you as indispensable as possible.