IT contractors: Keep track of your real customer

Dear Bob …

In last week’s Keep the Joint Running, you advised IT employees to think of themselves as independent businesses, “selling” their services to their employers, who are now their customers (“Who’s a business and what isn’t,” March 8, 2010).

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I agree, but I’m curious. Do you think this also applies to situations like mine: government contractors? In this case, an agency is paying a large prime contractor to provide IT support services, so it does at least seem more like a customer service arrangement (which doesn’t make it any less annoying, mind you).

And here’s another wrinkle: I’m not actually an employee of the prime contractor. That company hired another firm (the one I work for) to bring in more help; I’m actually a subcontractor, which would imply, at least, that I’m giving customer service to someone else giving customer service.

I ask for several reasons: Being a subcontractor creates a lot of confusion as to whose orders I should be following (especially in poorly run places like the one I’m in now). Also, if the prime contractor’s employee I’m supposed to report to screws something up, do I treat him like my boss or like my customer?

Argh.

– Sub-sub

Dear Sub-sub …

When you’re a contractor, your customer is the person who holds your contract. Your customer defines value, and you deliver that value. Ideally, you’re also in a position to offer input on how the customer determines that value. (It’s determined by what you do, of course!)

Your customer’s goals may not be perfectly aligned with their customer’s goals, but that’s built into the nature of the buyer/seller relationship. No problem there, so long as there’s no actual malfeasance. For that matter, your goals aren’t perfectly aligned with those of your customer either. You want to earn more money for less work, and they want you to provide more work for less money. As I say, this dissonance is built into the buyer/seller relationship.

So yes, you are providing the best service you can to a company. In turn, that company is paid to provide the best service it can to a third company that’s paid to provide the best service it can. When all three are well aligned, it’s easy. When they aren’t and conflicts arise, your first loyalty is to yourself. If that weren’t the case, you wouldn’t be interested in other offers; this is also why, in the event of actual malfeasance, you blow the whistle anonymously and run like hell while documenting the daylights out of how it is that your hands are entirely clean.

Your second loyalty is to the company you’re contracting with.

For the most part, it all boils down to doing your job well every day. That’s a good general-purpose solution for those who prefer not to view the world as a complex multiplayer chess game they’re trying to win.

One other point: If you decide you’d like to be hired by either the prime contractor or the client organization, everything changes. Remember that customers are whoever makes the buying decision. If you decide you want to be hired by someone else, you’ve just defined a new customer or, more accurately, new prospect.

– Bob

This story, “IT contractors: Keep track of your real customer,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Bob Lewis’s Advice Line blog on InfoWorld.com.