The Art of Client Selection
signal and noise
‘People know what they do; they frequently know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what they do does.’
Michel Foucault.
Perhaps one of the most important differences between an artisan and a company is how they choose their clients.
Companies, by and large, choose them for their potential long-term profitability. They may dress it up in the language of partnerships, alignment, and any number of marketing “mots du jour”, but what matters, in the end, is predictable profit with minimal hassle to satisfy shareholders and collect bonuses.
Not so for the artisan. The customers who are manna from heaven for companies frustrate the artisan because there is so little to learn. The artisan is in search of constructive friction. Relationships that recognise the challenge of creating something worth creating for the sake of it.
It might be a piece of engineering, a strategy, or a succession plan that keeps a founder's dreams not just alive but growing. Whatever it is, it is something that the artisan learns from, that not only meets the immediate need, but which plants the seeds of ideas for solving challenges yet to appear.
Companies love replicable processes; artisans don’t. If it’s replicable, it’s been done before, and where’s the fun and learning in that?
Artisans not only know what they do does, they love the anticipation of what it might reveal.
Some clients are profitable noise, while others are magnificent signal that leads us to new learning and the sort of impact we long to make.
We need both. We need to experience noise to recognise signal.
We become the average of who we work with and must choose well.