It’s Your Fault
Great thing about being an independent marketing agency is that you are away from so-called “office politics”. OK, you are away from office politics until you start working on a B2B
project with a big corporation. It is not uncommon to get into a cyclone eye, where forces can be stronger than a small agency can stand. You land between opposite fractions within the corporation. The departments have different goals, or just bosses compete with themselves for the promotion. The project is delayed because of the tension and lack of consensus. Then, near the original deadline, both fractions notice that the success is at risk. It is too late to fix the things, so they start looking for the guilty one. They can’t blame each other, so you are the best candidate to be finger- pointed!
How to handle: You have two options. Either on the beginning of the project you require from your customer to designate one of his employees as the project coordinator, who will be responsible for reconciling and providing you with clear customer decisions on time. Or you accept the responsibility for reconciliation on you, possibly in exchange for an additional “project management” fee. This might the right path to go if you really love to manage projects and have good project management tools helping you to coordinate customer tasks.
The Lesson Learnt
There are no simple projects. In every project there are situations which must be handled assertively, for the sake of the project constraints. It's up to you to choose the best way to handle. Talking is always better than avoiding discussion. Finding back the common goals is usually better than fighting.
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