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Shifty Sharon
This is the first of a series of ‘pen portraits’ of different types of internal client, designed to identify different character traits and ways of addressing related issues.
The personSharon is a Product Manager who commissions lots of research. However, with almost every project, the goalposts shift. This causes havoc, and can make it seem as if you can’t manage projects effectively.
So how do you deal with someone like Sharon? Let’s take a closer look at her. She is:
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Bright, energetic, and enthusiastic. This makes her respected by many people around her.
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Not one for detail – she doesn’t think things through.
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She shoots from the hip, and when a problem arises she is quick to react – often by telling the Insight team, “I need this information as quickly as possible”.
The problem
So what do you do? You try to negotiate sensible timescales and nail down the information she needs. You even produce a brief and get her to agree it. But a little later, someone suggests different ideas to her, or her boss asks some searching questions. So she shifts the goalposts. Any protest is met with: “But that’s what business is like – cope with it!” And when the results fail to deliver what’s needed, whose fault is it?
The solution
For Sharon, everything is constantly changing. You need to get to the root of the problem that led to the request, and address the underlying issue. Although the symptoms of that issue may change from day to day, the problem remains fairly constant.
So when faced with Shifty Sharon, don’t accept her requests for information. Always get to the bottom of the real problem. If her explanation doesn’t make sense, it isn’t because you can’t understand it – it’s because she doesn’t! Persist. Ultimately, if you can’t see how a problem is costing money, and how solving it will make or save money, then you probably haven’t found the true problem!
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