A client told me to be more strategic. I made the mistake of asking what that meant.
Sit with that for a second. I get paid to give an honest read on what their system needs. The feedback is that my honest read is insufficiently expensive. Nothing says strategic thinking like arriving, through careful analysis, at the conclusion that what you really need is more of me.
I did not handle this gracefully in the moment. The word had meant something to me for most of my career and it took one meeting to find out it now means quota.
The part that actually bothers me: this is the incentive that produces every org I get called in to fix. Somebody was strategic five years ago. Sold three products nobody scoped, built automation nobody documented, and left. Now I am in there cleaning it up, being told the problem is that I am not doing enough of what caused it.
Anyone else had a client define strategic for you? Curious whether I got a unique version or the standard one.