Savage counsel – dealing with giant turds
In a piece that first appeared in Encore, Chris Savage tackles your career and agency dilemmas in his weekly advice column.
Hi Chris,
My friend is an art director for a well-known and respected agency. Her very well-known client is being a real shit, the result being that she’s never out of the office before 9pm. How do you push back on big and important clients like that? How do you manage a challenge of that nature internally and externally? My friend can’t go on like that – she’s on the fast track to burnout. Please help.
Ours would be the best business in the world if we did not have clients. We’d starve, of course, but it sure would be easier. Clients have a tough role and face enormous pressure. We are one aspect of their world they can really lean on. Sometimes this goes too far.
What to do about it? I read this quote once: “Managers who preach and practice the long-standing axiom to put the customer first often overlook their employees who are the people actually responsible for creating and nurturing the customer experience. Truly great bosses concentrate on making sure their employees are happy, healthy and can do the work required.”
Here’s the rub, though: when we lose clients, we usually lose people and that’s not good for our employees. The reality is we need to keep this big client, unless it is just untenable. Offer me a big client that requires a 9pm finish and we’ll take it in a flash. Then we’ll find great people only too happy to do the work because it suits their lifestyle. Your question, though, relates to an employee who is not loving it, and could burn out. That needs attention. Fast.
There is no silver bullet but here is a step-by-step guide to how I’d approach it. The key is to try and make a series of small changes to improve the situation.
Firstly, speak to the employee. How does she really feel? What is the impact on her life? How can we improve the situation? For example, are the 9pm finishes okay for a period of time if she can start work at 11am three days a week (and we ensure ‘cover’ for her for that time)? What if she had a gym membership at a gym closer to the office or got to leave by 6pm on Tuesday so she could go to a music lesson?
Can we make her role more flexible or support it with some simple steps so she can more happily work a later finish, though less often? Sometimes that can suit. Let’s assume changes can be made to help make the late finishes more sustainable. So − progress.
Second, the right agency leader needs to speak to the client. Make it all about the client. “Susan is great as you know − your team loves her. She is being burnt out. It would be a bummer if she left. We need your help, please, to reduce the burden on her. Can we look at ways to reduce the need for constant late finishes, perhaps agree for another team member to replace Susan two nights a week from 6pm so that we can be more efficient and effective in the way we work?” Whether the client is unaware of their impact, or they know they are being a shit, they are likely to make some effort to ease the situation.
So we now have a more sustainable situation for Susan. Go forth.
Let’s assume, though, that Susan does not want flexibility, she just wants to get home by 6.30pm four nights a week, and also that the client is a giant turd. I had one of those for years. Much too profitable to resign but just awful to work on. Here we did ‘deals’ with employees − work on it for an agreed period of time, suck it up, learn, enjoy, laugh. And at the end of that time we’d evolve you off and on to something better. This team had its own special bond and ‘events’ to keep spirits high. Plus we ensured other benefits that eased the pain. But there WAS pain. It worked – the giant turd (and they acknowledge they are relentlessly ruthless on our people) is still a client today, and a tour of duty working on the account is a ‘rite of passage’ badge of honour worn by many of our best executives in that agency.
So if we can’t get change from the client, and Susan does not want flexibility, either replace Susan on the account − kapow (and look after Susan of course) − or do a deal with her where she keeps going for an agreed period, try to give her more balance and incentivise her commitment. Ultimately, if the client is just totally debilitating, you have to resign it. But tread cautiously − times are really tough, clients have much higher expectations than ever before.
We all have to do more for less and working even harder is becoming an increasingly common fact of life for all in our fast-changing business − for agencies and clients.
I don’t like this, but it is simply a fact.
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Yes, we are working harder for less but we really have to start adding up the cost of that.
Of course, there’s the obvious way: look at the retainer / remuneration agreement. It probably states that the client is paying for 100% of that art director’s time. However, what it probably doesn’t say is that equals 60 hours per week. If it does, it needs to be questioned as ultimately someone is getting 50% (an extra 20 hours per week) of poor old Susan’s work for free (it might be the agency looking to increase margins, it might be the client not wanting to pay the proper rate, or a mixture of both).
Why should Susan (and probably Susan’s family) be asked to foot the bill for any of the following:
-inefficiency and process problems from the client
-inefficiency and process problems from the agency
-inadequate resource (from either)
The simply fact is that we don’t necessarily have to work harder for less. This is only the way if we play by convention.
The smart people will simply find another way to earn a living or ply their trade. Do we really want the smart people leaving our business? What’s that ultimately going to do for the quality of work and your profit margins?
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I think Arthur summed it up pretty well.
This is ultimately a big part of the reason that agencies are being paid less and less for their work. We devalue our own work. The whole attitude of “taking one for the team”, and “rite of passage” is rubbish.
If an employee is being made to work 150% of a normal working week, regularly, it means one or both of two things a) The client isn’t paying for the work or b) The time planning is poor.
Is the employee being paid overtime? Of course not. So therefore the employee is being made to shoulder the burden of either greed or mismanagement from the client or the agency or both. Wrapping it up in old school Mad Men bravado is just a poor attempt to cover that.
Unfortunately, the reality is that Sarah won’t be moved on to a new account that suits her ‘lifestyle’ (i.e. having any sort of life outside her workplace), she will be marked as ‘not really a team player’ and ‘not committed’. Then she is on the list when the next round of cost related redundancies come round. I’ve seen this first hand in probably every agency I’ve worked at. I’ve even participated.
Meantime, the client knows that they are big enough to get work for a massive discount. This is why we have to do more work for less.
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Ultimately, we CREATE our own clients.
The client from hell may have been potentially an angel if we hadn’t done something to lower their confidence in us.
VERY often the client imposes a deadline capriciously which we take on board as gospel.
Very often a deadline is designed to allow a bigwig to see work before they go off on the golf weekend or onto the boat or fly off somewhere. Not related to the actual job deadlines but the social life or travel plans of some biggie.
Nothing wrong with these occasionally, but to drive suppliers hard just so Biggie Bigwig can leave before the traffic every time is unreasonable.
Sometimes production companies suffer shortened schedules so the Account Junior can play Producer before presenting to client. Again, all good, but overworked Assistants often can’t turn their attention to the task in a timely way, so another delay enters the chain.
On the other hand, production can send off unfinished work without adequate explanation and the trust lowers. The result is a detailed, micro-managing pedantic client who sends detailed notes.
Video briefs should be “more exciting” or “less frantic” rather than “at 14 seconds, mix music down, pan SFx to left channel…” That level of detail just doesn’t work (unless the writer of it is extraordinarily talented and experienced) and pisses off the recipient. But more importantly, it reveals the client is not trusting for the work to be done without close supervision. It should serve as a flag to us.
As for 9pm finishes. Two thoughts: one is “Pfffft!”. The other is to suggest more dialogue, asking if it is crucial to have whatever tonight or first thing in the morning. maybe that dialogue can shake some fruit free.
BUT!!!! The time to really suck it up is when the resources available or utilised are less than paid/charged. “Duck serenity” (you know, paddling underwater…). Never admit to the client it is hard to meet reasonable deadlines because it just makes them want to look elsewhere.
A crazy thing is that many of us (well, US) hold off supply to make the job look harder or more complicated. Like, we COULD ship this afternoon or tonight but we choose to say we’ll ship “mid-morning tomorrow”. makes it seem we’re spending more time on the job.
We all need to take a little from bin 1 and a little from bin 2.
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