Adam@Home by Rob Harrell for May 19, 2015

Friend of mine used to work in graphic arts/advertising/etc. He was working on a rather large project for a rather large company when he went to a meeting with the client’s marketroids and found an unknown individual in the mix. He was informed by the chief marketroid that they had hired a consultant to review my friend’s work and the consultant was recommending changes. “Now, wait a minute,” my friend said. “You hired me because I’m an expert. Now you bring in another expert to critique my work. Whose opinion are you taking?” “Well,” said the client, “this guy’s, I guess.” My friend replied, “Well, now, that makes you an expert, because you are able to discriminate between experts and make an expert decision. I don’t work that way.” And, leaving a huge chunk of change on the table, he walked out. The client’s boss found my friend in the parking lot leaning on his vehicle in obvious distress. “What’s wrong?” asked the boss; so my friend told him what had just happened. Taking my friend in hand, he said, “Come with me,” and led him back to the chief marketroid. With the other “expert” still in the conference room, the boss told the marketroid, “We don’t do business this way. You hired this firm to do a job for you. You don’t hire another firm to second-guess his work. This stops now.” The project on which my friend was working, in a field where a 4% rate of return was considered successful, achieved a 10% rate of return, 2.5 times the norm for success. The customer is not always right.