Approach the Client

The beginning of chapter three has been great help when it comes to advising students. Beginning in the fall of 2007, The University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College instated an academic policy in which students must be meeting a 70% completion rate and must maintain a 2.0 Grade Point Average. This new policy has crated enormous havoc for students that had one or two “bad” semesters at the beginning of their university experience. This is where Euripides comes into play; I’ve been telling students that “A bad beginning makes a bad ending.” This is true for everything in life; every action an individual takes has a reaction. The meeting between consultant and client reminds me of job interviews I’ve had in the past. Everyone is evaluating everyone, the last and toughest interview I have ever experienced happened June 2006. I was interviewed for an FBI position. The minute I entered the room I was evaluating the individuals in the room and I could feel they were doing the same. This same concept is repeated by the author as he states that “the client and the consultant are also evaluating one another.” As corny as this may sound its true, the first impression says a great deal about the person one is meeting. In my profession I have met thousands of students; in the first meeting I know what type of student I am dealing with. This is the same with an IT and a client, first impressions are everything. I have never seen anyone go to a job interview in shorts, t-shit and flip flops (chanclas). Of course not, people are normally dressed in professional attire; the power of observations is tremendously strong. A good tip that I picked up out of this chapter when advising my students is not to prescribe before diagnosing. Let your client, or in my case, my students express their concerns and then comment on what I think could be done. An excellent tool used by the author is to integrate a Case Study into the chapter. This gives the reader an excellent scenario of how things work in an IT and client environment. After reading the beginning of the case study, much of the first three chapters made more sense.