Everyone's favourite face tattoo
Photo by Madison Inouye.
"How did you learn about client-readiness? Like when did you first encounter that concept? And if not client-readiness, per se...when did you learn what it means when something is client-facing?"
"I think it was early. First job was at IBM where the engineers weren't even allowed to think about talking to customers. It meant for a lot of my job, I didn't really know what I was working on. But I knew being in front of clients was important. And that the organization wanted to reduce the risk of it going badly. You?"
"I mean I interned at Edelman as an undergrad. In DC. Which is not exactly a place for low-stakes client engagements. So I was accustomed to having my work checked and triple-checked before it went out. But PR folks mean a pretty standard and clear set of things when they say client-ready. Once I internalized that, I could get more of it sorted on my own."
"OK next one. What about exec-readiness?"
We do this a lot. Find an Important Business Thing that the working world takes for granted. Stuff you ought to know. Concepts that everyone at a certain point in their careers considers table-stakes. And then reverse engineer it. Run the tapes. Because if both of us know it, we learned it somewhere along the way. And that means other people can learn it, too.
The neat part about client-ready and exec-ready hides in the 3000 words behind the hyphenation. At their core, both of these terms communicate expectations. Expectations about typos or the lack thereof. Expectations about polish and tone. And expectations about where we show our work, where we summarize, and even how much thought has gone into that work. But the magic is not that your organization will have expectations around how work happens. Or what's good enough. The magic is in how many of us have internalized a very common understanding of those terms, without them ever being spelled out in onboarding.
The patellar reflex
If professional services firms were going out to get tattoos, a popular option might be "Is this client-ready?" written across one's forehead. At this point, it's reflexive. You not only asked that question yesterday. You asked it this morning. And you'll ask it again this afternoon. Because it's one thing to do the work and do it competently and it's something completely different to say that work is ready for a client or an exec to consume.
What does it mean that your colleague or your boss or another intern in the affectionately named "intern pit" can prompt you to make substantial improvements to your work with four words? Particularly when a moment ago, you would have said it was done.
The implications here are massive. Not only for the tattoo-getting folks in client-facing roles. But for anyone who has to review someone else's work. Which is, you know, every boss we've ever met.
The humility ick
What if we told you that many leaders we meet — and maybe you, too? — are stuck in a contradiction around this stuff. A contradiction that comes from a good place, but ends up letting your people down. It goes a little something like this.
On the one hand, yes, we can all nod along with IBM, or Edelman, and the way we were inculcated into not embarrassing the firm. Yes, yes, you might say, it's good to have standards for this stuff. Of course neither of them is precisely the corporate culture you'd cultivate on the whole. But obviously in a sort of a general way, it's a mark of professionalism and maturity for an organization to have well-established standards. Standards for how to honour our clients' time. Standards for how to make effective use of executive time. Both scarce resources.
You might even go a step further, as a long-time reader of this newsletter, and point out that making those expectations clear is an element of psychological safety. You know, "I know what's expected of me, what risks I can take, and where the guardrails are." Yes, yes, you're very clever. And again, not because these particular companies are such beacons of progressive management practices. But because in general, it's better for everyone if those things are clear. Better for baby Melissa and Johnathan trying to navigate those first gigs. And better for our bosses who don't have to ask for the same 12 changes every time.
Cool. So when is the last time you said to someone bringing you something, "Is this work ready for me?"
Did you just have an ick? A lot of the bosses we talk with have a strong ick response to the idea of saying that to another human. It feels self-important. It feels like they're holding themselves out as better-than. As some fragile, cartoonish, egotistical, bad boss. It feels incompatible with their humility, their sense of themselves as a good boss. They feel like a good boss is a servant leader, a member of the team, not an exacting tyrant and gatekeeper. Ick.
But didn't we all just agree that having clear standards is good? Good for psychological safety, good for maturity of the organization, and for maximizing scarce resources? What's going on here? If a good boss makes those expectations clear, how can articulating them make you a bad boss?
It doesn't
Like, sure, there's a bad boss version of this, and you shouldn't do it. Don't make people grovel. Don't scream at them. Don't use "is this ready for me" as a passive-aggressive way to make them feel small, or stupid, or shut out for making an honest mistake. Having standards is not an excuse to be abusive.
And look, maybe you like to chop it up and get into the details — maybe you miss getting into the details. And so you can comfort yourself with a strawman and say, "I don't need things to be so carefully manicured and prepared, bring me whatever makes sense and we'll get into it together." That feels nice to say. Good servant leadership vibes. But what it actually does is leave your preferences ambiguous. Because the truth is, you do have expectations, here. You're just not saying them out loud. And we can prove it.
When work comes to you from your team, what are the questions you have basically every time?
Where do you end up fixing work the same way over and over again?
Where do things escalate to you that shouldn't, and where do things not reach you that should?
What shit annoys you every time you see it, or feels disappointingly junior?
These answers matter. Hidden in them is information about your team's ability to do good work in ways the organization can consume. Expectations that are going to shape engagement, and job satisfaction, and how work feels. They are a crucial piece of your people's ability to thrive and be recognized by their boss. Because their boss is you.
That may feel weird, too. You might not want to look too closely at the fact that your weird preferences have that kind of impact on the work experience and career prospects of other people. To a point, that's a good instinct. Not every whim of yours is an essential management truth. There is righteous self-work for each of us to do around how we form these expectations, whether we apply them evenly, and whether they even make sense in our current contexts. But whichever of them you can stand behind, you have to find a way to say out loud.
A nice, clear way to start is with "My expectation is..." If that's too direct, there's nothing wrong with "What I've learned about myself is..." And if you're really stuck, you can always just send them this newsletter and say "can we talk about this in our next 1:1?"
— Melissa & Johnathan