“As soon as possible.”

It’s fair to characterize my working relationship with our Client Relations Lead as generally pretty good. He advocates for the designers when clients attempt to rip out our soul, Temple of Doom style and he’s not afraid to ride herd on us when necessary. All in all, it’s a good situation with an individual that I have a lot of faith in. 

Having said that, a conversation that he and I had for the fiftieth time a few weeks ago inspired this post. The conversation went something like this, and please bear in mind that I’m paraphrasing:

CRL: “Hey. I need you to do [design task] for [major client]. Can you get it done?”

Me: “Probably. When do they need it?”

CRL: “As soon as possible.”

(We stare at each other).

Unfortunately, “as soon as possible” tells your designer little to nothing about when the project actually has to be done. Does ASAP in this context mean “Drop what you’re doing, this has to make a deadline in twenty minutes?” Does it mean “today?” “This week?” Designers tend to view projects within the parameters of time and budget, and a few hours means one sort of solution whereas a few days can mean a totally different approach. That’s why it helps to have specifics on deadlines.

So what’s the solution? Surprisingly…it’s not up to the CRL, it’s up to the designer. The CRL, more then likely, doesn’t want to disturb me, and more over it’s not his responsibility to prioritize my tasks because he doesn’t know what I’m working on, for whom, or where his project ranks in importance with those other projects.

No…it’s up to the designer to set some time constraints on the request in order to move this interaction forward. Instead of “Probably, When do you need it?” the far more helpful thing for me to say would be “Sure…I can get it done by the end of the hour/day/week/etc.”

Instead of asking “When do you need it?” try telling your CRL or client “Here’s when I think I can reasonably get it done.”

Now you’ve got a starting point.