The second meeting
For a long time I thought the first client meeting was where I decided whether to take an engagement. I'd walk out, write a short memo to myself, and most of the time I already knew the answer. I was proud of this.
I was mostly wrong about this.
First meetings are performances. On both sides. The client presents the problem in the shape they already decided it has. They've rehearsed the summary at least once in their head on the way to the call. I show up with my own performance — the practice described the way I want it to be perceived, the questions I know will land. We're both at our best, and our best is mostly packaging.
The second meeting is where that falls away.
By the second meeting the client has thought about the problem one more time, usually alone, and they're less certain. The crisp summary from the first call has grown wrinkles. The thing they said was the main issue turns out to be a symptom of something they didn't want to name yet. They bring a new person into the room — or they conspicuously don't bring the person they mentioned last time. All of this is signal. None of it was available before.
What I've learned to watch for, specifically:
Does the problem shift? Even slightly. If the stated problem on call two is noticeably different from call one, the real problem is being circled, not described. That's fine. It just means we're not ready to scope yet.
Who speaks that didn't before? The person who was quiet in the first meeting — the engineer, the ops lead, the number two — is often the person who actually understands the business. Their second-meeting contribution is more valuable than any slide I'd prepare.
What data appears or disappears? Numbers that get shared the second time but not the first are the ones the client wasn't sure they wanted me to see yet. Numbers that get hidden on the second call are the ones they realized, between meetings, were less flattering than they'd remembered. Both are telling.
The second meeting is where I now make the call. If the problem has sharpened, the right people are in the room, and the data is getting more honest rather than less — it's a yes. If any of those are drifting the wrong way, I slow down. Occasionally I say no then. Which, in hindsight, is almost always better than saying no later.
I still write the memo to myself after the first meeting. I just read it again after the second one, and the second reading is the one that matters.
— K