One of the advantages the outside expert brings is perspective. And one of the hallmarks of creativity is the ability to see problems differently, and thus find solutions others cannot see. To bring our perspective and problem-solving skills to bear we must be allowed time and freedom to diagnose the client’s challenges in our own manner. Design is not the solution—it is the process. We cannot be effective, responsible designers if we allow the client to impose his process, or truncate or otherwise marginalize ours.

But let us not place all the blame on the client. Doctors face self-diagnosed patients as often as we do, but we are far more likely to proceed with such a flawed approach than any medical practitioner. We let the client dictate and drive the diagnostic process, usually because we have not bothered to understand, formalize and explain our own. We have not taken control on this issue. We have not correlated our likelihood of high-quality outcomes to working from a defined and meaningful diagnostic process. We have not made this case in our own minds and we have not made it to the client. So the client intervenes and fills the void in our own working process by deciding how much information and access we will be allowed in the pitch. Lacking our own process, we have little means to push back and argue for a better way.

To reverse the trend and live up to our professional obligation to diagnose first, we must map out and formalize our own diagnostic process. Then, when we are next in a situation where the prospective client is dictating to us, we must make the case that the consistency of our outcomes is rooted in the strength of our process, therefore we must be allowed to employ it.

The Nature of Successful Clients

In Aesop’s fable “The Frog and the Scorpion,” the latter approaches the former at the riverbank and asks for a ride across on the frog’s back. But the frog is not so stupid as to readily agree to this favor, for surely once out in the river the scorpion will sting and kill him, as scorpions do. The scorpion protests that it would be silly for him to kill his carrier, as it would ensure his own death from drowning. The frog sees the scorpion’s logic and agrees to the engagement. Once in the middle of the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, who, with his last breath, asks the scorpion why he has just killed them both. The scorpion replies that he cannot help himself. He is a scorpion and it is in his nature to sting.

The lesson here is not that clients are stinging scorpions that cannot be trusted. The lesson is that the most successful clients, whether owners or executives, have achieved their success in part because of their ability to take control—their ability to rise above and orchestrate others. This is their strength; and even though it is not always in their best interest, it is in their nature.

We are liable. Like the frog, we are the guilty party when we let the client control the engagement and dictate to us how we will go about understanding his problem. Just because it is in the client’s nature to lead, does not mean he should be allowed to do so at all times. It only means that, like the scorpion, he will attempt to do what it is in his nature to do.