Client Meetings

Do you work in the corporate world? Imagine working in a firm like this:

Every day you have six hours of client meetings. You only get paid for those six hours. You spend the rest of the day preparing for tomorrow’s meetings.

You hold your client meetings with 30 clients in the same room. Each client has different abilities and different needs. However, each client is also required to achieve the exact same goals. In the span of 180 days, your clients must master over 120 goals.

Twice a year you have a week of meetings with 30 different corporate executives. You give each executive a status report on the client they have signed with the firm and whether they have achieved their goals. The basis of your success depends on the activities and cooperation of your clients, who do not always follow your recommendations.  The hours you spend meeting with these corporate executives are not billable--it's all off the clock.

When your clients don’t follow your recommendations and their portfolio underperforms, everyone blames you. Corporate blames you. The CEO blames you. And everyone in the country blames you, even though they have never met you or your client.

You may only go to the bathroom at 10:00 am and 12:30 pm.

If you need to miss work because you’re sick or have an urgent personal need, your client meeting with your 30 clients still goes on without you. You have to prepare detailed notes for the person who is handling your meeting. They must get your notes before the meeting begins at 8:00 am.

Instead of generating financial revenue, you are generating intellectual revenue. Your success determines the ability of the voting public to make rational and informed decisions.

The workplace I am describing is a school, and the job is a teacher. Your clients are the kids you teach, and the corporate executives who signed them with the firm are their parents.

I am always amazed at corporate people who are critical of teachers.

You see, for two years I worked in a high profile accounting firm. The corporate division measured success by acquisition of clients and billable hours. Every year they determined your compensation based on your worth to the company, i.e. the bottom line. How many clients did you bring in, and how many hours did you bill?

In our personal tax division with approximately 30 employees, the managers and assistants worked quietly in their cubicles attending to the needs of their clients and the firm at large. I remember whenever a manager had to prepare for a client meeting. They would be very focused and stressed for a couple of weeks, and working overtime. On the day of the meeting they would come prepared with their best business suits, handouts, and PowerPoint presentations. After the client meeting, they would breathe a sigh of relief that they could return to their “normal” work activities.

People of the corporate world, I walked a couple of miles in your shoes. Now it’s your turn to walk in ours. You know those stressful client meetings you had a few times a year? Imagine doing that every day you’re on the job. That’s what it’s like being a teacher.

You spend six hours of the day engaging and instructing your clients—who happen to be 30 ten-year-olds. They don't necessarily want to be there, and you must create a tool kit of tricks to maintain order in your boardroom (ahem, classroom).  Even though you give them recommendations for improvement, they don't always act on it. Sometimes they need bribes or coersion.

After six hours of these meetings, you spend 3-4 hours prepping for your next “client” meeting the next day. Go to bed, wake up, back to those same clients. Are you tired yet?

I guess the reason I’m ranting on this is because teaching is a high profile profession, always in the news, and something about which everyone has an opinion. People think they know what it’s like to be a teacher because they’ve been in school, or they have children in school. Well—just because you’ve been to a doctor, does that make you qualified to assess the medical profession?

“Fire the bad teachers,” some people say. Others remark, “Let’s give them merit pay and that will improve education.” To all of you I say, go ahead! Take my job! Spend six hours with 30 ten-year-olds and see what you can do. Oh—by the way, three of them have a parent or other close relative in jail, so they might be a little distracted. One of them is getting abused at home—I hope you can identify the kid with that problem. Oh yeah—four of them are pulled out every day for 45 minutes for targeted special education services, so don’t forget to get them up to speed on what they missed while they were gone. Three in your class have family members in a gang and are chock full of attitude. Twelve of them speak only Spanish at home, and parents of nine of those kids aren’t even literate in Spanish. Three of your kids are gifted, so that means they need to be meaningfully engaged while you’re trying to bring the rest of the class up to grade level standards.

And while this is going on, accountability, accountability, accountability. Our yearly test scores are made public on websites and are treated as the only evidence of our success. And then the finger-pointing starts, along with threats to the profession.

I’d like to rant some more, but it’s a school night and I have to prepare for my client meetings tomorrow.