A Lesson In Client Communications…From The Car Wash

It turns out you can learn a lot from a car wash about communicating to stakeholders about the status of your project.

There are two kinds of car wash set-ups — one where you stay in your car all the way through and the other kind where you get out of your car and it goes through on its own.

The first kind has solid block walls on both sides. But the second kind — where you get out of your car — has a glass wall on one side so you can watch every step of the way.  Why the difference? Nobody wants to give up control of their car, letting it go for a ride on its own through a dark tunnel, without your being able to watch what’s going on!

People feel the same about the work you’re doing for them. Whatever the subject matter and whether you’re doing it for a client or customer, or even your boss or some oversight body in your company, people don’t want to wait for your regular formal status reports to see how it’s going. That’s communicating on your time-frame. They want a way to “look in the window” as and when they want to.  

So, here’s what you’ll need: 1.  A summary of the progress of the project that’s kept up-to-date daily, the more graphic the better. 2. Some type of groupware – like Google Docs — where you can publish it so people can log on anytime to see your summary.

How to do it:  Every time you start a project and create a project plan, at the same time create a simple highlighted, two-sentence info block that shows the progress of your project.  All you really need is: Last action, by whom, date completed and next action, person responsible, expected date.  Update it every time a milestone is met. The result… Everyone is kept in the loop.  Everyone can “look in the window.” No one has to ask you how it’s going.  No one has to wait for a status report!