Bad News Up Front
Architect Dulcie Horwitz, AIA, owns Horwitz A+D in Thousand Oaks and has been practicing for over seventeen years.
In these days, it is hard to watch a job go away. Business coaches line up around the block to help us “lower the initial barriers” to closing sales with potential new clients by “softening” the difficult issues we can immediately see with their budget, their schedule, and their expectations. Clients don’t want to hear what their wishes actually cost or how long it will take to build their projects, and most of them are completely unaware of the permitting and construction process. This “bad news” can throw a serious wet blanket over any excited potential new client. But as we are aware of the bad news, it is our duty to do the best we can to educate people—not only about how wonderful our services are and how important the built landscape is, but also about issues that they are unprepared for or that run contrary to their expectations. We lovingly call this “bad news upfront”: hard to do, but important. Inevitably, it is the best policy for everyone involved—properly setting the client’s expectations so that all obligations are squarely met.
Bursting people’s bubbles around the cost issue is never any fun. A lot of what I would term “grade A” clients (with a great sense of design and aesthetics) really have no idea how much things in Dwell magazine cost. It is difficult to explain to well-meaning clients that most creatively wrought ideas do not cost twice as much as Home Depot/Lowe’s, but sometimes four or fives times as much. It is tempting to want to beat the “good design can be achieved cost effectively with cheaper materials” drum, but I’ll never forget Paul Ryan of Ryan Associates Construction saying simply that, when you take inexpensive materials and bring them together in new and unusual ways, you have just made it expensive again. So it is sad for me when a potential new client finds an article on a house project that someone was able to do for less than $200/sq. ft. with all these nifty design details and asks if we can do that for them. It is hard to say “no,” but it’s the truth and needs to be explained.
We point out that, in many of those articles, the owners were also the general contractor and built much of the cabinetwork themselves; they also may live in another, less expensive part of the country. We go over the hard truth of the “golden triangle” of good/fast/cheap: pick any two. That, if you go the good and cheap route, you pay for it in time—usually an inordinate amount of time and labor at the owner’s expense. Once this conversation is had, we have seen many projects wilt or die. But the other option would be to say, “Yes, we can do our best to meet your budget needs,” and then slug it out in value engineering, but more than likely one will end up with a client who has “paid thousands of dollars on plans we can’t even use.” This is the most common complaint I hear from people regarding the architect they are falling out with. People deserve true and proper information in order to put together a realistic budget that matches their tastes.
I walk people through a few of my projects online while we are in the pre-interviewing process, in order to more accurately adjust their radar. I have to be willing to watch a job go away if it would mean “massaging the truth” in order to keep it.
If I have done any massaging of the truth, it has been in telling people how much time a project will take. I get asked this question almost every time in the pre-interview. In the beginning, I would actually tell them . . . (laugh freely here). Now, I just tell them how long it will take to do the part I have the most control over: programming through design development (barring any city council submissions), budgeting, and construction documents. Of course, I heavily qualify this part of the conversation with how much time they take to make decisions, and I emphasize the need to not go back on those decisions once they are made. I also point out the length of time it may take a builder to budget the job at the end of design development (or maybe even after schematic design). The amount of time that this usually takes is also typically a surprise to residential clients, or even landlords. Again: hard to deliver any disappointment, but important to not over-promise and under-deliver. In fairness to myself, I may not actually be massaging the truth at all, as I have found that trying to estimate how long plan check and construction will take is fruitless, as one truly never knows for sure. So telling them how long our part will take is probably the only reliable information we can give them, in any case, and itself plenty hard to do.
Which also brings us to the permitting process and construction. This bit of bad news is easier to deliver to clients, I suppose because it protects us from misperceptions that could later cause unnecessary strife. Nonetheless, an education about the permitting process and real world construction is equally important to arm the client for the process they are about to undergo.
We all know how baroque the permitting process can be. I usually provide my clients with examples of both good and “unexpected” paths that my colleagues and I have traversed and how the process varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Clients are no less upset when things that seemingly don’t make common sense are foisted upon them, but it doesn’t catch them completely unaware, either; surprise is the quickest way to lower the client’s morale.
Similarly, I have found that even the most professional, intellectual, and even creative residential clients are woefully unprepared for construction, so we take the time to sit down with them over a “construction launch” meeting, where we disabuse them of common misperceptions about the process and tell them what it is actually like. Again, this doesn’t eradicate bad feelings during construction, but it does provide enormous grounding for the perception the client has once they find themselves there.
Over the years, I have met many architects who vary on this position. A few stalwarts say that the budget is none of their business and solely the client’s responsibility, others say that what the clients don’t know won’t hurt them. And the most common approach is, “I really want this job/client; we’ll work it out somehow as we go along.” It could be just a personal preference, but I think clients deserve to know all the facts going in, giving them the ability to make responsible and sometimes hard decisions for themselves.
Speaking In Silence
Craig Park, FSMPS, Assoc. AIA, is Principal Consultant at The Sextant Group past national president of the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS), the author of The Architecture of Value: Building Your Professional Practice.
When working with clients, it is as important to listen to what they do not say, as to what they say. Personal, political, or economic issues face an organization every day. Their leadership may feel that it is not appropriate or relevant to share this with their consultants. However, through observation and intuition, it is possible to become aware of their unspoken needs.
Depending on your level of experience and the depth of your professional relationship, that silence is sometimes indicative of a need for change. As a consultant, you may have done all that was asked. Yet those same external (sometimes internal) dynamics that are impacting the client’s company may compel them to seek advice and counsel from alternative resources.
The key to addressing this issue, when it is realized, is honesty. If you feel that silence is in direct response to your performance, you need to ask. The best that could happen would be to learn that issues other than you are facing the company at this time, and that, when appropriate, they will reengage the dialogue.
The worst would be that they have determined to seek or work with someone else for your professional service. Again, honest dialogue can yield valuable insight into where your performance was lacking (creativity, timeliness, or cost), and arm you with information that will help you with other engagements.
We come to the heart of what those closest to use are thinking and feeling when we are willing to look past their words in order to discern the deeper meaning beneath their speech. Silence may be golden, but sometimes it speaks volumes. It is up to you to listen.
Originally published late 2012, in arcCA 12.1, “On Good Behavior.”
