While rock climbing this morning, I just couldn't get off the ground. The route, a 5.11- called something like "Slippery Nose of Death", started off with a smooth first-sized hold that resisted my varied attempts at sticking to the wall. That is, until I'd figured out a way to force my left foot onto a tiny toehold, prop my right foot against the faux rock face with a smear that could only keep me aloft for 3 sec -- whoops, there I am again: back where I started.
I'd like to try the route again, but I can't straighten my hands. Yet.
What do I love about rock climbing? It's physical problem solving. Pre-thinking each climb will only get you so far up the mountain. You need to fumble through climb after climb until you've internalized each move.
Over years of practice, muscle memory will guide you through a sort of flow that can feel (almost) effortless. Truly great climbers have an elegance and grace to their movements on the rock that belies thousands of hours spent staggering up different swaths of rock -- often in gnarly settings that would induce abject fear.
And then there are those who climb without ropes.
Call them daredevils or fools, but free climbers -- who are treated with awe in rock climbing magazines and equally fawned over and pilloried by the mainstream press -- are considered the true elites. Risking their lives with every ascent, they're pegging the tough routes at Yosemite while their lives literally hanging by a fingernail.
I can't imagine taking a risk of such magnitude. I need a harness and a rope securely fastened to an anchor, as well as a belay partner who is attentively watching and listening for any signs that I might need assistance. My belay partner is the guy or gal who's watching out for my well-being, making sure I don't "hit the deck," a.k.a. pancake out on the ground beneath our climb du jour. If I fall, they catch me through the system we've constructed to keep us safe.
Have you ever "hit the deck"? Maybe not as a rock climber. But you've experienced something similar -- like when a client tries to pull out of your signed contract after you've done the majority of the agreed-upon work.
When I think of designers and contracts, the metaphor in my head that of setting up and going through a "trad" climb. In this style of rock climbing, you insert protection (metal hexes and various other fancy tools) into cracks in the rock face. These points of protection serve as anchors that you clip into as you work your way up the rock face.
If the protection is placed properly, when you fall, the closest piece of protection will serve as a top anchor and you'll dangle in space while your belay partner below is supporting your body weight.
If the protection is poorly inserted and not tested along the way, when you fall, the protection will pop out and you'll continue falling until your weight hits the next piece of "pro." There's a major risk factor here, since you'll be moving downward another 8 to 10 feet and gaining a ton of extra momentum in the process. The next piece of pro will then take on a much higher load, and with that additional stress, that piece of pro may pop out too and/or your rope may snap. This much-dreaded process is known as "zippering". The protection keeps popping out as you fall... until you hit the deck.
If you're pretty far up the rock face, this can outright kill you. There are war stories floating out there of many top-flight climbers having fallen, their protection zippering out, and then having the luck of a piece of protection holding midway through their free fall. Their bodies would plummet towards the ground, catch, bounce, and dangle just a few inches off the ground.
Now, let's change the scenario around. Let's think of this like design businesspeople -- because I think there are some important parallels to draw. Replace each piece of protection with each design deliverable that you've spec'd out in your contract. Swap the climber with a designer. The rope that's holding you securely is the contract you've set with your client. And the belay partner is (hopefully) someone who's working with you, such as a project/account manager, that is ensuring that they've got you in case anything goes wrong.
With that system in place, the following rules apply:
If you design without a contract, you have no recourse if things beyond your control cause you to fail. You could be climbing up a mountain and be in complete control -- until a cougar leapt onto the ledge that you're standing on and knocked you over. Don't assume that you can control everything over the life of a project. As Scott Berkun says, we can control our attitude and have the skills necessary to get the job done, but there are things from outside our realm of control that we can't influence. These are the factors that cause even "experts" to fail. You shouldn't be held liable for those mishaps when working out the details of a contract. Know what you can own.
Your contract will only function properly when something goes wrong if the deliverables are clearly delineated within it. When you learn to "read" the rock face as a climber, you've done enough placement of protection to know what cracks are most likely to hold your weight should you fall. This is a skill that's learned from either failure or from watching experts place protection. Much in this same vein, your design contract needs to describe all the deliverables you'll put forth over the life of the project, in discrete detail. If you've "read" the design problem carefully and teased out the appropriate process, make it part of the contract and hinge payment upon that process. That way, if you skip a step and then fail due to things outside your control, you don't risk hurting yourself.
Your contract must ensure that you will get paid for time spent on the work -- as long as you fulfill the terms of the agreement. Be sure to specify approval of your work in writing through each round, and capture and respond to all client feedback. A contract can't always protect you when it comes to measures of client satisfaction, but if you have documented proof of approval, then your "protection" will hold both in a professional negotiation and, god forbid, in a legal setting.
Skipping steps in your process to make things easier for your client increases your risk exposure. You're high upon the rock face. You fall. If your client pulled out "protection" along the way by questioning older rounds of deliverables through the process, you're only going to accelerate towards an overall collapse of the client engagement. This is worth belaboring over and over again: in the pursuit of great client service, you still need to be professional about how you manage risk in your business process.
Not letting clients know that a chapter of your project process has closed puts you at risk. If a client brings up a major question about the information architecture of your Web site while you're in build, did you speak to their concerns at the right time? Those kinds of issues need to be secured and addressed immediately. And the protocol of how they're addressed need to be cued in your contract. Otherwise, you are risking something worse than scope creep. I'd just call it scope repeat -- redoing a massive amount of work due to uncaptured feedback or new input that completely changes the outline of your project. Each time you deal with scope repeat, you're exponentially increasing your risk of hitting the deck.
Your contract is only as strong as the work that you put forth over the life of it. Your contract must ensure that you will get paid for time spent on the work -- that is, if you fulfill the terms of the agreement. So clarify what success actually means. Don't let it be arbitrary. Let metrics be your guide, and be clear as to who needs to approve the work through the life of the project, so you don't end up doing rounds of rework because you didn't know the CEO needed to give input before the fancy press kit went to press.
Don't think that a boilerplate contract will solve all your problems. Depending on the climbing conditions you're going to take on, you might use a different kind of rope (or multiple ropes). Don't assume that one contract will solve all issues and fulfill all client needs. Depending on how your initial discussions go with a possible client, you may need to tweak your contract here and there to ensure that you'll be protected based on any red flags you might see glimmering on the horizon.
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I'd love to believe that, with 100% certainty, my climbing harness, shoes, carabiners, rope, and other climbing equipment will never fail. These are things that I can replace at any point if they're beginning to fray.
But the number one reason that people get injured when rock climbing, and by extension, that design contracts fail, is because of inattention. Even if your contract is completely solid, inattention to the details of actually fulfilling the work is what puts you in a difficult position with your clients.
So keep your hands on the rock and your eyes on moving securely those last few meters. There's no better feeling than seeing blue sky at the tippity-top of a great climb -- and knowing you didn't get there just because of your fancy shoes. You got there because of you.
Excellent advice as usual David. Great analogy too. Thanks!
Posted by: Jennifer | February 24, 2009 at 07:44 AM