The Perils of Experience I: Introduction

As you spend a lot of time performing the same services for many different clients -- writing content, designing training, identifying problems and solutions, developing and spreading best practices, whatever you do as a freelancer -- you may learn from experience (some people don't). And as you learn, you start to see where your client projects are going way before your clients do.

You may have had this experience in another field. For example, if you're a teacher (or a business trainer), you find that you can size up a new group of students very quickly. After your first few hours with them, you're already expecting resistance from this one, confusion from that one, enthusiasm from another.

It is a matter of quicker perception. Master chess players are said to perceive a "situation" on a chess board, not independent positions of many pieces. That's why they can do the trick of playing 20 amateurs at once. They don't remember all the games individually. They come back to each board almost as if it were the first time seeing it. But they directly perceive the game situation, and what is likely to happen next, almost at a glance.

So it is that I've often sat down with a client do discuss their need to change employee behavior in some way, to lead them to new practices that will help the company, and immediately had a pretty good idea of what needed to be done, and how it would all play out. For the client, it was a new situation, perhaps the first time they got so frustrated they decided to call in outside help.

But for me, it was a variation on a theme I'd played many times before. And while the client was groping with what to do and how to do it, I could pretty much sit down after the first meeting and sketch out what was going to happen.

Now, most of the time I'd be right, and my experience and insight were just what the client needed. But over time I realized there are several hazards associated with all this experience, and that's what I want to talk about in the next few entries.

These hazards affect both the client and the freelancer. And the most important issues are:

• Undervaluing the need for the client to learn from experience. You can't just hand them the solution and expect it to work.
• Leaping to the typical conclusions, while investing less effort in finding new solutions.
• Pricing: giving away revenue you deserve, because of your experience and knowledge, by failing to balance efficiency and value in your pricing scheme.

I'll take up the first one in my next entry.