{"id":2178,"date":"2016-04-28T01:39:24","date_gmt":"2016-04-28T06:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/?p=2178"},"modified":"2016-04-09T11:52:23","modified_gmt":"2016-04-09T16:52:23","slug":"my-customer-and-me-and-our-difficult-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/2016\/04\/my-customer-and-me-and-our-difficult-problems\/","title":{"rendered":"My Customer and Me, and Our Difficult Problems"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n

When confronted with a difficult situation with a difficult customer, it is often better to step back and ask a few fundamental questions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The setting:<\/strong> I am a developer. I am building a system for a customer. The work is going poorly. We seem to make progress on some days, but most of the time we restart the work with great angst.<\/p>\n

Let’s ask a couple of questions so that we can then ask better questions and possible work our way into a better situation.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Are we discussing the developer\u2019s problems or the customer\u2019s problems?<\/li>\n
  2. Are we discussing the problems or the symptoms of the problems?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The first question: My customer is not me. I cannot say, \u201cMy customer\u2019s problems are my problems.” No, they aren\u2019t. I can say that to try to establish a relationship with my customer, but it is not a true statement. We are different persons, we have different problems.<\/p>\n

    The second question: This one often confuses me. For example, “My problem is that I’m not getting enough sleep.” That is not a problem; it is a symptom. What is causing me to not sleep at night? The answer to that will point me closer to the actual problem.<\/p>\n

    Here is the summary advice. When I’ve been in these situations I hated hearing this advice because it caused me to think. Instead, I wanted quick, miraculous solutions. Too bad as quick, miraculous solutions rarely exist. Instead:<\/p>\n

    Get questions (1) and (2) straight, and then talk, but not before.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    by Dwayne Phillips When confronted with a difficult situation with a difficult customer, it is often better to step back and ask a few fundamental questions. The setting: I am a developer. I am building a system for a customer. The work is going poorly. We seem to make progress on some days, but most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,60,67],"tags":[174,180,187],"class_list":["post-2178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-problems","category-reframe","category-work","tag-problems","tag-reframe","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2179,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2178\/revisions\/2179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}