Pleasing Two Mistresses

Nope, this is not going to be that kind of post. Rather, I'm referring to the awkward instance of trying to keep two clients on one project happy at the same time.

Here's the story. My primary client is a Fortune 500 company. My secondary client (who is paying my bill and then passing it on to the primary) is their vendor. This is an unusual, but not unheard of working situation for me. My job is to come up with a hiring system for the primary client. One part of my evaluation was to look at part of the hiring system that is proprietary of the secondary client, which is presumably one of their selling points for getting the gig in the first place. There's just one teensy problem...this part of their process isn't for shit. I presented the data supporting this conclusion to the secondary client today. They sputtered, made some lame attempts to excuse the validity of the data (they are going to send me a little more information, but the laws of mathematics and statistics are working against them), but in the end came around to the fact that they have this problem. And I'm presenting to the primary client on Tuesday.

The woman from the secondary client who is my key contact is accepting of the results. But, she doesn't want to look like an ass in front of the primary next week. I'm sympathetic towards her (though not her boss who sold the primary client this bill of goods). Ethically, I have no choice (or problem) presenting the data as it is. But, I need to do so in a way that keeps me in the good graces of the secondary client as there is potential for additional business. There's plenty of new business potential with the primary as well, so there's not benefit in bullshitting them.

What's funny is that in the initial conference call the president of the secondary client (my contact's jerk boss) ADMITTED that they had no data supporting the accuracy of their hiring process. In a follow-up e-mail, the VP of the primary client who brought me in basically said that he didn't think their process worked. So, there are no surprises here....I just get to be the guy who points out the 800lb gorilla. As Lola would say, that's why I make the big bucks.