Please see above. Look at it. Write it down. Memorise it.
Ever since the first schmuck punched his card we have been inundated with strict timelines and “must hit” deadlines. We get pushed, stretched and begged to satisfy our clients' needs and I reckon we do a bloody good job most of the time.
Deadlines are important, they give you structure, direction and an end goal, but I think there’s a certain few in our beloved community who seem to have forgotten the way of the world. Which brings me to today’s big question: Are clients simply too demanding or are we too accommodating?
Let me take you through an all-too-familiar experience. It's Monday, 3pm the phone rings:
Client: Hey media guy, I need something media-ish ASAP.
Me: No problems, Mr Client, what’s the absolute latest I can get that to you?
Client: Yesterday ... (FYI - people who say “yesterday” as a deadline are massive f*#kwits)
Me: Um, okay but what about everything else I need to get you today.
Client: I need it all by end of play.
Me: Okay well that is a problem because I won’t have time to do it all properly.
Client: Yeah sorry about the deadline, my boss needs it.
And so it basically starts. You push everything else aside to satisfy your client’s unrealistic and unconstructive request. And what is the outcome? You stay late and finish it at the expense of all the other work you need to do. If you ask me, we are allowing our clients to forget that quality work takes time.
But how much do they really care about quality? My biggest challenge was always pushing back when I felt that a demand was unrealistic but now I feel it’s gone a step further and I have to convince them to give a shit about the importance of quality work. Clearly, more has to be done around selling in the value we can add to their business.
More and more we are going beyond our job roles. We are finding ourselves in that grey zone, doing work we aren’t paid for and things that arguably should never be asked of us. It’s great to go beyond the call of duty but are we allowing ourselves to inherit too many of our clients problems? Too often we convince ourselves that they are our own and allow responsibility to be shifted on us.
We’re in the communications game, not accounting. The right answer isn’t a number, it’s an idea, a thought or a strategy and those things don’t work on a one-day deadline. We need to shift our clients’ expectations away from deadlines and onto quality.
Of course there should be a balance. Deadlines are there for a reason and in some instances are unavoidably imposed, that’s a given. But we must not forget that the most important thing should always be delivering quality work. It sounds like something that’s should be pretty obvious but too often is being forgotten.