Speak No Evil

Brad Egeland is an IT/project management consultant and author with over 25 years of software development, management and project management experience leading initiatives in manufacturing, government contracting, gaming and hospitality, retail operations, aviation and airline, pharmaceutical, start-ups, healthcare, higher education, not-for-profit, high-tech, engineering and general IT.

  Communications Management   CRM   Stakeholder Management   Talent Management  

Let me start by saying I always believe in complete honesty with the customer on every project I run. If I don’t fully inform them of issues, then how can I get them to help me through them? Likewise, if I keep things from them and the issue grows, then the full blame is on me and my team--and the hole that has been dug is suddenly that much bigger. I believe in full disclosure to the customer, and as early as possible.

But there are certain things that should be investigated and planned before taking them to the customer. And there are definitely certain ways that you should break news or deliver information to the client professionally and diligently without creating utter chaos or driving a huge wedge between the customer and your team. From my experience--and from pure logic--there are three things you should never say to the customer. It doesn’t have to be in this exact format, but I think you’ll get the picture.

Let’s look at these three (and I welcome our readers to submit their own ideas):

"What you want won’t work.”
What the customer wants is always important to the customer--so shooting that down harshly is not a good start to the project team/customer relationship. Remember, not all customers see the value in project management--and specifically the project manager’s role--like we do. Therefore, be …

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