Last
week, I wrote a post describing “Evidence-Based
Asshole Pricing” used by a U.K, consulting firm, where they had
conducted careful analysis of project costs and concluded that:
We've therefore abandoned the old pricing altogether and simply
have a list of difficult customers who get charged more. Before the No
Asshole Rule become widely known, we were calling this Asshole Pricing.
It isn't just a tax, a surcharge on the regular price; the entirety of the
price quoted is driven by Asshole considerations.
That
post provoked a email from a project manager at a different European
consulting firm, who told me a story about the damage done and costs created by working
with an asshole client. I have organized
the story into short “chapters” changed a few names to protect the innocent and
guilty, edited a couple sentences for clarity, but this is what he sent
to me, and in his own words (His words are in blue text):
The Job
We
are IT Consultants and recently implemented a rework of the information system
of a large European company. We had heard that they were a tough client,
and knew it would be hard, not THAT hard.
The Client’s Asshole Moves
We
got everything and more from our client that you depicted in The No
Asshole Rule, Consider some examples:
- Clients routinely arriving 30 minutes late at workshops, yelling
to get summarized everything that was said, and objecting to any decision that
was made before they arrived.
- People putting down our work every day, arguing day after day
that we were just unskilled, writing directly to our managers.
- Bad faith, lies, threats, physical threats, non-factual garbage
in every meeting, report, email (that would be sent to anyone then).
- Assholes hiring assholes.
- Internal conflicts within
the client organization that we were trying to serve -- between the operational pole, the marketing,
the IT branch, and us in the middle; we constantly paid both financial and
emotional costs because they were late or took contradictory decisions – and refused
to admit that we ever to blame.
- They were constantly spying
on their employees who are answering phone calls all day to check if they're OK
with their customers. We became convinced they were using these tools with us.
- Some people from the customer's crew came to us ask for stupid
things all day long, which slowed our work and distracted us –- and then led us
to be blamed by other people in the client organization.
Effects on the Team
- More illnesses on our team than usual, or people asking to work
at home rather than at the customer's place, me included
- Our own managers in their comfortable offices were even bullshitted into believing we were bad at what we were doing, no matter how successful were our previous missions
- We began to become assholes ourselves, which didn't improve the situation
It was like a huge asshole nest. After being insulted in the middle of an exec
meeting, one of us left and never came back. The core of the crew made up of
the three remaining ones was enriched by two project directors that were flying
too high, and a dozen of the developers. On top of us, the pressure went down,
still below us, the pressure went up, all the more as our development crew was
mostly made of rookies who had never thought IT would be sick like this and who
lost motivation really fast.
How the Consulting Team Helped Itself
Our experience, our professionalism and our charisma, all put
together, saved us and the project
- One of us was a pro of project management and emotional disengagement who would always highlight the customer's errors and support his two teammates. He was the strongest at trapping the customer at its own game, always repeating to himself like a mantra "it's not my company it's not my money."
- I was the one able to
laugh at anything, but I was always surprising these guys at being unmerciful.
I was writing and recording anything, asking for dates, always asking to write
and control every meeting minutes. I surely looked like the paranoid one but it
saved us many times too. Small victories.
- · I was also the development team leader and was supporting and
training the rookies. I was trying to make them report all the pressure on
me/us so that they could still work efficiently instead of resigning overnight.
- · The third guy was the weaker in terms of professionalism but he
was strong at finding the non-certified assholes, the few ones that were simply
infected, and he could "turn them into something good" by repeatedly
inviting them to have a coffee with us or setup some dinner, etc. And they
would remain on our side then.
- · Like you wrote, we were one way or another giving a shelter to each other, regarding our own abilities, in order to workaround and circumvent the asshole nest.
The Key Moment
There was one big issue still: we were working at
the same floor as all the assholes, including the CEO in a separate office, and
it was causing lots of "interferences" in our work on top of that
"sick daily atmosphere".
One day, one of the customer's project managers really
pushed me in front of everyone, and I had to deal with him using a
"calculated anger". It was the perfect opportunity to take my
computer with me and move to the open-space upstairs which I had noticed was
almost empty, without fearing any retaliation. All my team mates followed me
the next day! We had managed to "say no", to "retreat" in a
proper way.
From that day we stopped being infected, being assholes ourselves, and the main
word became "NO" to anything they would ask/do/breathe that was not
part of our contract. It was like digging oneself out of a tomb, not the end of
the story, yet a great step.
Postscript
This
correspondent also sent a second mail giving me permission to use his story,
and adding two interesting facts about the experience:
The asshole I mentioned who was always late and would
object with any decision taken in a meeting left the firm last Friday. The 3 of
us former-teammates bought a copy of your book and sent his gift wrapped!
I estimated that this project cost my company close to 1 million euros. I'm not
even talking about the shortfall of the customer itself. The project has not
yet reached the acceptance stage.
Our correspondent also added some wise reflection
about this 18 month experience, which I think provides useful guidance for
others who have survived, as he put it, "a huge asshole nest.”
You're
right, they're everywhere. Now -with the experience- I realized being only
negative would only make me tired -or worse, depressed, or even worse- with my
work. So I'm trying to get past this and "squeeze some good out of the
bad", no matter how subjective these phrases may be.
I think that blending
this vivid story about the financial and emotional costs generated by an
asshole client with the more detached and systematic analysis that I posted
earlier on asshole-based pricing provides quite a one-two punch; Together they make a strong case for
charging nasty clients asshole taxes, doing asshole based pricing, and when possible
avoiding – or walking away – from projects dominated by such demeaning and
demanding creeps. Indeed, my
correspondent also suggested that his colleagues who worked on the project
continue to face pressure and criticism from the senior management at both his
firm and the client firm –- so another cost of working with assholes is that
they can damage your reputation and career no matter how much of yourself and your skills that you sacrifice for them.
'Asshole pricing' is a perfectly logical concept from an economic perspective, too. Such clients cost more to serve. One expects a certain profit margin on one's services. Therefore, it is perfectly logical to adjust the fees charged to such "higher cost / lower margin" clients to that the margin achieved is the same as with one's better clients. If this means that Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' directs them away from the firm, then that saves having to fire them! Rob.
Posted by: Rob Millard | October 02, 2007 at 07:55 AM
Reading this reminds me of one of the worst customers I've worked with in my role in a software vendor's consulting group. And I realize another risk of dealing with assholes: they may well decide to dishonestly screw you over.
One of our customers continually squeezed needed hours out of Statements of Work so that it would be impossible to accomplish their projects on time, they'd get free hours from us, and then yes, they made unreasonable demands for scope creep while we were on site.
But the worst of it was when we realized they were only licensed for 1/3 the number of users in their system. First they denied it and had us hire external auditors to verify. Then when the auditors agreed they were out of compliance, the company said, "Then go ahead and sue us."
They ought to pay us about $1 million in license fees. But I think we just cut off our relationship with them.
I suppose integrity and respect are more common among non-asshole, and I suppose dishonesty and perfidiousness are more common among assholes. So although an asshole tax may compensate you for the difficulty of dealing with someone, it's can't necessarily protect you when they step outside the expected bounds of the relationship and are dishonest in a big way.
Posted by: BillB | October 01, 2007 at 09:50 AM
So many wrongs by the client here, but this caught my attention:
"Our own managers...believing we were bad at what we were doing, no matter how successful were our previous missions"
Dealing with this caliber of client can't be good for making positive impressions on the people you work for. I wonder what are some approaches to preventing this fallout could be?
DGC
Posted by: Daniel Cooke | September 30, 2007 at 06:57 PM