This is a great post. And great advice…. advice that perhaps I would have done well to take. The partner I used to work for at EY used to say it a different way: “Don’t call their baby ugly”.

It’s hard to accomplish this goal, however, when you are trying to change something.

When I was in consulting, it took me years to realize that clients did not want you to tell them what to do, or how to fix their problem. Instead, the best way to achieve change within an organization was to start a process to consider alternatives for new approaches. As consultants, we tried to make sure that the client made all decisions about which road to take at each key decision point. Our role was merely to facilitate the decision making. The result was people feeling happy about the direction chosen by the team.

The same applies to social computing. All you can really do is show large organizations the possibilities. They have to choose which approach works for them. End users who are expected to participate in these social computing systems will only really do so if they see that there is something in it for them.

Great post

- Rod

There’s mistrust in the marketplace – many companies were burned by interactive agencies that went under and took the source files with them, and their development experiences were painful. However, as with any field, if you can build and deepen those relationships with your client (and really get to know them and their business) you’ll do fine. In the end, I think everyone just wants to find someone they can trust to show them the way.