Any work that we are doing, even if it’s done by individual efforts, will affect others in some way. The affected other side is the end customer who is concerned about benefits and results from this work. The end customer can be a consumer, a citizen, an organization with complex teams, or even a collection of all.
I believe that working individually or within a team(s) needs a different mindset shift that can have more understanding, empathy, active listening, collaboration, and appreciation.
This kind of relationship should be from both sides, not only you as who is doing the work but you as who is receiving the end results of this work. We are always facing challenges while delivering and observing teams that are complaining about the customers and how tough they are, how the customers provide vague and unclear requirements, how the customers want to change their needs without paying costs, how the customers are not appreciating the efforts.
Many complaints, sometimes I actually feel the same, and I become very frustrated. In these situations, you need to pause, rethink again, emphasize, and see what is the outcome of this tension, what are the trade-offs we should take, and what are the implications of our actions in the long term relationship with that customer.
It is not always on the customer side, it is also inside the team who is carrying out the implementation, and this team’s understanding and how the team is showing empathy.
Many times, I see individual members of the team who are seeing the customer as ignorant, they do not understand, they are seeing themselves as the experts in the situation and the customer is outdated. Sometimes, team members quit the project, or a company does not want to work again with that customer because of how tough was the process and the relationship between the teams.
Changing the mindset is not something easy, it may need changing our way of analyzing, engaging, implementing, negotiating, contracting, and many aspects that can support the healthy relationship on both sides between the implementers and the customer for better end delivery.
So, I wanted to list different mindset shift factors that can affect the way we think from both sides to deliver better usable solutions. I am using the client to indicate the end-user(s) who will be involved to provide their needs and requirements, impacted by the change introduced by the solution, and concerned by the outcomes of this solution. The implementers who present the teams that are responsible for the implementation and delivery of the solution. These two sides can be in the same organization or two different organizations, below is the summary of these factors:
The factors
| Shift factors | Client(From) | Client(To) | Implementers(From) | Implementers(To) |
| Relationship | Client-Vendor relationship mindset | Partnership mindset | The expert mindset | The learner mindset |
| Listening | My way or the highway mindset | Listening to act, and take the right action | Execution Mindset | Understanding and empathy mindset |
| Needs | Everything is important mindset | Priorities Mindset | Solution boundaries mindset | limitless alternatives mindset |
| Scope | Unbounded scope mindset | Realistic and focused scope mindset | Rigid scope mindset | Adaptive & dynamic scope mindset |
| Management Framework | Project Management mindset | Product Management mindset | Scope management mindset | Expectations and Value management mindset |
| The Adoption Journey | Business needs as destination mindset | Operation needs and the journey mindset | Develop for test and deliver mindset | Develop for usage and operation mindset |
| Practices | Fixed mindset | Innovative mindset | Solution defensive mindset | Resourcefulness mindset |
In the next paragraphs, I will discuss each shift factor in detail.
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