The principle of "Mea culpa" in communication with the customer
Now, perhaps, only the Old Believers in deep taiga do not know what freelancing is. And those of them who have not yet given their food to outsource. And at the same time, as the movement of free developers is gaining momentum, a lot of funny and sometimes dangerous religions are born that are connected with it. I would like to tell about one of them. This article was motivated by this article on Habré - habrahabr.ru/blogs/pm/95548 .
NB: The article is, of course, humorous, and was later moved to HabraHumor, but you can’t get a hold of us and we understand that humor is used so that they can’t get through the main entrance to the market of minds. As the saying goes, a political joke is also a joke. In general, note that it is not the article mentioned that is being considered, but religion, of which this article is a private generation of it ..
So, there is such aparty : religion: the customer is the Enemy, because he is Guilty of Everything. That's right, with a capital "B". Sometimes he is Gad, Bastard and Scum, but in the end he is still Guilty. The deadlines were torn down - the customer was to blame, they woke up with a sore head - the customer was guilty, the milk ran away - the customer was to blame. Any letter from the customer causes a nervous tick, the call - fits of rabies, and the meeting is a ring-fighting game and DeathTrack without any rules.
Naturally, we love him when he chooses us as a contractor. We are inspired when we receive an advance, etc. But we are talking about those moments when the project did not go where we sent it. Or they did not send them, but secretly hoped in their souls that he would go there. It is during such periods that our “dark side” manifests itself and we begin to look for his guilt ... Subsequently, various “guilty ones” are grouped, sorted and cataloged, giving rise to many parables, legends and articles similar to the above. But let me present another point of view.
It is based on my rather rich freelancing experience, which is why the pronoun “we” was used so often. I was there, in the same situation and made the same mistakes (yes, what to hide there, I am still making). He made big projects for pennies and useless for big money, broke off and broke off, cursed customers in tatters and came together again, was himself both a customer and an intermediary, and who just wasn’t. In general, since 1992, when I completed my first order, I could work for anyone, but always remained a freelancer. And the last five years I have been just them.
')
From this it follows that I will only protect the interests of the freelancer, may the customers forgive me. But to protect in a somewhat unusual way. Therefore, many of them, especially beginners, may need a little courage to understand and accept this. For it is somewhat more difficult to admit your mistakes than to admit others.
So, postulate number one, which I cultivate in my freelance work. Any attempt to pass the blame on the customer makes me weaker, as a professional, and in most cases brings more losses than profits. Therefore, never, you hear, never spend your creative potential on searches in the style of “how would I place all the blame on him”. And remember that as soon as you recognized your mistake and started correcting it, you became a little higher, a little wider in the shoulders and the synapses in the brain became a little synapse.
Mistakes are practically the only thing we can learn from. My God, I once spent a lot of time creating synthetic situations in my mind, they say, and what would I do if the number of simultaneous users in a certain application were 1000, and thought that at such moments I would grow professionally. But when, during the emergency days of industrial exploitation, the problem was falling on me that my application worked very badly with a billion records and a large number of users, I immediately began to panic and look for the guilty anywhere, just not in myself. How I needed at that moment a guru who would say: "Idiot, this lesson is worth thousands of your mental projections of spherical horses in a high-performance vacuum, take advantage of them." The search for the goat took more time, and the records were kept only in the “passive” column of my balance. Although I had to use this situation for training and put on an asset a fat plus. I made a lot of mistakes, but damn them, they helped me the most.
Postulate number two. The customer is guilty only in two cases. The first is that he does not understand the business in which he is engaged. The second is that he does not fulfill his obligations. Point. In all other cases I am guilty. At least that because of greed did not refuse this customer. It is easy to share the point of view that customers should be born with innate knowledge about the formalization of their requirements, filling in bug reports, etc. But it will be later, when there will be so many of us freelancers that at the legislative level we will knock out the relevant subjects in compulsory schooling, and the losers will be forced to change the gene we need. But until that happens, the customer absolutely should not know anything about the process of developing information products and sends documents in the form in which he is used to sending them. Therefore, the only thing we could blame him for was that they did not appear on his horizon earlier and did not get the basics of the process in time. But this, again, is our fault :)
Let us take as an example the first joke of the post mentioned earlier: “The developer — the happy owner of a working computer of the sample of 2005 — will get a lot of pleasure trying to open a megabyte file, digging over a hundred sheets of requirements in search of two lines of changes and increasing the scale of the file being viewed.” From the point of view of the second postulate of corpus delicti in the actions of the customer there is no. According to the first postulate, the freelancer stops hysterics, wipes away tears and starts searching for his guilt. For example, he may find ways to optimize his workplace, convert a document into a format with which he will work more comfortably, finally find out that even Word has the ability to compare two documents in order to easily find “two changed lines”, etc. P. The result: the freelancer has grown up, there is no conflict field (and the thoughts “oh, you scum, again sent in XYZ format” are often created). With each such step you sow on the field of your professionalism. Of course, not immediately, but after a year or two you will begin to harvest. So the dilemma is simple - what kind of crop do you want to collect: skills or neuroses.
And postulate number three. Very cool if you develop in yourself what the bourgeoisie is often called Vision. It can be called a freelancer conscience, and you can just say that you need your personal feature. Everyone can have their own, for example, quality or speed of development, thoughtfulness of the user interface, etc. I, of course, angrily say that the developer must provide all this. But let's be honest, most of us do not provide anything from this list in an uncompromising way. Those. when you do not go to deal with your conscience at all, under any circumstances. For example, if your feature is quality, then you will never slip a project to a customer, knowingly knowing about errors in it, just to turn it in on time, but say directly: “I could pass it now, but I made a mistake, I’m guilty, punish” and this will honestly not give a damn about the severity of punishment, for you do not even consider the option of going against your professional conscience. If your feature is development speed, then you fix errors as quickly as you create an original product. For the speed of development is already a part of your spinal cord and you cannot do otherwise. Those. Rapid development of a raw product and subsequent polishing at the speed of a cochlea is not a feature, it is greed :) Vision can be in areas far from development itself. You can relate to everything with humor, you can correspond with the customer in verse, discuss TK over the game of paintball, etc. The main thing - try to find her since childhood and carefully, in parenthood, to grow and nurture.
In conclusion, I would like to voice a few hints for the brothers in arms:
- You must be able to refuse a customer that you do not like. No matter how prosaic it may sound, greed can make you pay twice. Failure on the contrary will raise your bar of self-esteem. You need self-esteem, because it adds to each message you try to convey to the customer, gives him extra weight. Respect yourself, then in the end you will receive from the customer what you want and how you want it.
- Do not hesitate to make demands to the customer. Keyword - requirements, not "Wishlist." If your high-quality work depends, for example, on documents drawn up in a special form, for certain reasons, then voice it. Fully. This means not just sending the letter “This is our form, fill it in”, but to explain why and why. The refusal will lead to your inefficient work, and the previous hint appears on the scene, say, in the form of a phrase: “Unfortunately, the current situation will not allow me to work efficiently and effectively, so I have to refuse.” I emphasize that this applies to those situations where you, as a professional, are convinced of the effectiveness of the approach. If you want so much because you are just used to it, then just a war of habits begins. Rejoice if your approach, suddenly, was less effective than that used by the customer. So you can add a couple more inches in height.
- Do not be afraid to penalize yourself. Fines can be of different types, both directly material, and in the form of free additional work, etc. This is, in fact, just an early start to work on the bugs, the importance of which I mentioned earlier. It is worth considering that the spoon is good for dinner, and it is better to fine yourself before your customer finds out. This is good not so much because you show off to the customer with your honesty and objectivity, but rather because your punishment system can be much more effective than its censure system. Those. if he does it first, he can spoil you in the astral image, if you can, you can gain experience and +1 attack.
- I want to go on and on, but it will be too much. In conclusion, I advise you to follow the principle of Wayne Gretsky. Be guided not where the puck is now, but where it will be in the next moment. You should not focus on the current conflict by the customer, but on leaving it. The conflict has not even begun, and you have already left it :)
PS In fact, I tried to write what I would like to say to myself when I started now, to remind myself once again of what I know, but which I don’t follow so often, unfortunately ... Maybe someone will find it useful my experience.
NB: The article is, of course, humorous, and was later moved to HabraHumor, but you can’t get a hold of us and we understand that humor is used so that they can’t get through the main entrance to the market of minds. As the saying goes, a political joke is also a joke. In general, note that it is not the article mentioned that is being considered, but religion, of which this article is a private generation of it ..
So, there is such a
Naturally, we love him when he chooses us as a contractor. We are inspired when we receive an advance, etc. But we are talking about those moments when the project did not go where we sent it. Or they did not send them, but secretly hoped in their souls that he would go there. It is during such periods that our “dark side” manifests itself and we begin to look for his guilt ... Subsequently, various “guilty ones” are grouped, sorted and cataloged, giving rise to many parables, legends and articles similar to the above. But let me present another point of view.
It is based on my rather rich freelancing experience, which is why the pronoun “we” was used so often. I was there, in the same situation and made the same mistakes (yes, what to hide there, I am still making). He made big projects for pennies and useless for big money, broke off and broke off, cursed customers in tatters and came together again, was himself both a customer and an intermediary, and who just wasn’t. In general, since 1992, when I completed my first order, I could work for anyone, but always remained a freelancer. And the last five years I have been just them.
')
From this it follows that I will only protect the interests of the freelancer, may the customers forgive me. But to protect in a somewhat unusual way. Therefore, many of them, especially beginners, may need a little courage to understand and accept this. For it is somewhat more difficult to admit your mistakes than to admit others.
So, postulate number one, which I cultivate in my freelance work. Any attempt to pass the blame on the customer makes me weaker, as a professional, and in most cases brings more losses than profits. Therefore, never, you hear, never spend your creative potential on searches in the style of “how would I place all the blame on him”. And remember that as soon as you recognized your mistake and started correcting it, you became a little higher, a little wider in the shoulders and the synapses in the brain became a little synapse.
Mistakes are practically the only thing we can learn from. My God, I once spent a lot of time creating synthetic situations in my mind, they say, and what would I do if the number of simultaneous users in a certain application were 1000, and thought that at such moments I would grow professionally. But when, during the emergency days of industrial exploitation, the problem was falling on me that my application worked very badly with a billion records and a large number of users, I immediately began to panic and look for the guilty anywhere, just not in myself. How I needed at that moment a guru who would say: "Idiot, this lesson is worth thousands of your mental projections of spherical horses in a high-performance vacuum, take advantage of them." The search for the goat took more time, and the records were kept only in the “passive” column of my balance. Although I had to use this situation for training and put on an asset a fat plus. I made a lot of mistakes, but damn them, they helped me the most.
Postulate number two. The customer is guilty only in two cases. The first is that he does not understand the business in which he is engaged. The second is that he does not fulfill his obligations. Point. In all other cases I am guilty. At least that because of greed did not refuse this customer. It is easy to share the point of view that customers should be born with innate knowledge about the formalization of their requirements, filling in bug reports, etc. But it will be later, when there will be so many of us freelancers that at the legislative level we will knock out the relevant subjects in compulsory schooling, and the losers will be forced to change the gene we need. But until that happens, the customer absolutely should not know anything about the process of developing information products and sends documents in the form in which he is used to sending them. Therefore, the only thing we could blame him for was that they did not appear on his horizon earlier and did not get the basics of the process in time. But this, again, is our fault :)
Let us take as an example the first joke of the post mentioned earlier: “The developer — the happy owner of a working computer of the sample of 2005 — will get a lot of pleasure trying to open a megabyte file, digging over a hundred sheets of requirements in search of two lines of changes and increasing the scale of the file being viewed.” From the point of view of the second postulate of corpus delicti in the actions of the customer there is no. According to the first postulate, the freelancer stops hysterics, wipes away tears and starts searching for his guilt. For example, he may find ways to optimize his workplace, convert a document into a format with which he will work more comfortably, finally find out that even Word has the ability to compare two documents in order to easily find “two changed lines”, etc. P. The result: the freelancer has grown up, there is no conflict field (and the thoughts “oh, you scum, again sent in XYZ format” are often created). With each such step you sow on the field of your professionalism. Of course, not immediately, but after a year or two you will begin to harvest. So the dilemma is simple - what kind of crop do you want to collect: skills or neuroses.
And postulate number three. Very cool if you develop in yourself what the bourgeoisie is often called Vision. It can be called a freelancer conscience, and you can just say that you need your personal feature. Everyone can have their own, for example, quality or speed of development, thoughtfulness of the user interface, etc. I, of course, angrily say that the developer must provide all this. But let's be honest, most of us do not provide anything from this list in an uncompromising way. Those. when you do not go to deal with your conscience at all, under any circumstances. For example, if your feature is quality, then you will never slip a project to a customer, knowingly knowing about errors in it, just to turn it in on time, but say directly: “I could pass it now, but I made a mistake, I’m guilty, punish” and this will honestly not give a damn about the severity of punishment, for you do not even consider the option of going against your professional conscience. If your feature is development speed, then you fix errors as quickly as you create an original product. For the speed of development is already a part of your spinal cord and you cannot do otherwise. Those. Rapid development of a raw product and subsequent polishing at the speed of a cochlea is not a feature, it is greed :) Vision can be in areas far from development itself. You can relate to everything with humor, you can correspond with the customer in verse, discuss TK over the game of paintball, etc. The main thing - try to find her since childhood and carefully, in parenthood, to grow and nurture.
In conclusion, I would like to voice a few hints for the brothers in arms:
- You must be able to refuse a customer that you do not like. No matter how prosaic it may sound, greed can make you pay twice. Failure on the contrary will raise your bar of self-esteem. You need self-esteem, because it adds to each message you try to convey to the customer, gives him extra weight. Respect yourself, then in the end you will receive from the customer what you want and how you want it.
- Do not hesitate to make demands to the customer. Keyword - requirements, not "Wishlist." If your high-quality work depends, for example, on documents drawn up in a special form, for certain reasons, then voice it. Fully. This means not just sending the letter “This is our form, fill it in”, but to explain why and why. The refusal will lead to your inefficient work, and the previous hint appears on the scene, say, in the form of a phrase: “Unfortunately, the current situation will not allow me to work efficiently and effectively, so I have to refuse.” I emphasize that this applies to those situations where you, as a professional, are convinced of the effectiveness of the approach. If you want so much because you are just used to it, then just a war of habits begins. Rejoice if your approach, suddenly, was less effective than that used by the customer. So you can add a couple more inches in height.
- Do not be afraid to penalize yourself. Fines can be of different types, both directly material, and in the form of free additional work, etc. This is, in fact, just an early start to work on the bugs, the importance of which I mentioned earlier. It is worth considering that the spoon is good for dinner, and it is better to fine yourself before your customer finds out. This is good not so much because you show off to the customer with your honesty and objectivity, but rather because your punishment system can be much more effective than its censure system. Those. if he does it first, he can spoil you in the astral image, if you can, you can gain experience and +1 attack.
- I want to go on and on, but it will be too much. In conclusion, I advise you to follow the principle of Wayne Gretsky. Be guided not where the puck is now, but where it will be in the next moment. You should not focus on the current conflict by the customer, but on leaving it. The conflict has not even begun, and you have already left it :)
PS In fact, I tried to write what I would like to say to myself when I started now, to remind myself once again of what I know, but which I don’t follow so often, unfortunately ... Maybe someone will find it useful my experience.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/95605/
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