Client Management Articles and Blog Posts

Tales of Acquisitive Growth

In the world of agency mergers and acquisitions, a lot of wide-ranging advice already exists on valuation from the perspective of the buyer, much of it delivered from the more egocentric angle of "What have *I* built?” So, how do you add value to your company that is NOT dependent on one founder?

In the world of agency mergers and acquisitions, a lot of wide-ranging advice already exists on valuation from the perspective of the buyer, much of it delivered from the more egocentric angle of “What have *I* built?” So, how do you add value to your company that is NOT dependent on one founder?

Diplospeak in Client Management: when and how?

In Professional Services we are normally on one of two sides, either “the client is always right”, or “there comes a time to tell the client they are just plain wrong.” How do you make both true? What to do with a client who is often easily frustrated when spoken to in a candid and direct manner.

I grew up spending a lot of time watching people both sell large projects and advocate to politicians. When you’re trying to get a commitment on building something as large as a hydroelectric dam, you end up having to deal with every possible personality type, from the hyper focused profit driven business man, to the politician, who, while is altruistic about the environment and serving his constituents, is still “a politician”. In such a complex environment of personalities, there is always at least one person that has an oppositional personality, and in those cases, no matter how polite you may be in your candidness, they take offense.

There were times I found myself amazed at how that team would deal with a difficult situation in a way that at first it almost seemed like they were speaking in circles and not directly addressing what was just said by the people standing in front of them. They would have seemingly impossible levels of patience while the people across the table from them were demanding, adversarial, and sometimes even irrational in the communication of their points of view. The project managers’ way of, not just staying level-headed, but actually finding a way to address the issue while skirting the confrontation almost seemed like verbal dancing. I was fascinated.

It was years later, I heard the term “diplospeak” which is shorthand for a diplomat’s way of conveying very difficult messages without ever being confrontational. They must remain truthful and excessively polite in the face of high tension political environments. In their line of work, simply using the wrong words could quite literally start a war.

The blog post that took 21 years to write…

Even if it takes you months, take good advice from good friends

For those of you who know me from the WordPress community, you might know that I’ve been in this business since 1994. What you might not know is that I have never had a public website of my own. I’ve followed and then come to know many of the very smart people in the WordPress community: I’ve read their blogs, met them in real life, and forged some great friendships. Along the way, most of them who write eventually ask me, “do you have a blog?” I would always find one way or another to get out of answering the question by making a quip on the anecdote of the cobbler’s children’s shoes.

As my personal and business friendship deepened with Chris Lema, he began to increasingly urge me, as far back as two years ago, to start blogging about some of my experience and outlook on managing and growing professional service firms.