January 2, 2019

Changing of the guard

Sent by Jonathan Stark on January 3rd, 2019

Even if you are super picky about who you work with, you can sometimes end up with a stressful client relationship if there is a personnel change inside the client organization in the middle of an engagement.

I’ve seen this go down lots of different ways and when it does, it’s usually bad news.

The change could be:

a new board of directors
a shake up in the c-suite
your project contact gets a new boss
your project contact gets fired/leaves
the client’s company is bought by another company
the client’s company merges with another company

In any of these cases, the likelihood of your project getting killed is probably pretty high.

To be honest, I don’t think there’s much you can do to improve your odds of saving the gig.

If you find yourself in this situation, my only advice would be to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. For example, do what you can to line up more work, and make sure the client is paid up.

Speaking of which... it’s very nice to have been paid up-front at a time like this.

Yours,

—J