I recently examined and tuned up our qualification process, big words that mean we have some standards by which we decide whether to venture into an extended engagement with a client. Context is important, so this checklist is specifically for a Responsibility Redefined culture-building project in an IT department. Here’s what I put in writing for the prospective client to see.

Mutual Qualification

We submit a track record of deep partnering with courageous executive leaders and business owners—a few at a time—to generate fundamental performance improvement through systemic, practical, and sustainable approaches. We bring world-class abilities in leadership and team development, organizational change, and in the technical elements of project management. We offer our endorsements, publications, and references as support.

In turn, our client partners:

1. Pursue business purposes, environments, leadership styles, and personal aspirations that we can believe in and to which we can add significant value
2. Demonstrate a consistent preference to first look within oneself for the change; they value excellence in all aspects of their lives.
3. Commit to producing lasting change and measurable improvement in their business.
4. Aspire to collaboratively leading environments of personal and shared responsibility thus promoting opportunity, prosperity, and new value creation as opposed to scarcity, dominance, and the need to be right.
5. Treat us as full partners rather than either “exalted experts” or a “pair of hands.”
6. Value investing in an internal / external change-agent partnership with us to share responsibility for an effective and successful engagement
7. Support win-win relationships in all their business dealings, seeking beneficial relationship exchange as well as beneficial economic exchange.

I know what you are thinking…

Won’t this limit our chances with this prospect? If it does then it’s served its purpose well and has kept both the prospect and us from spending a lot time courting toward a dead end. But it might do the opposite. It might intrigue the prospect. After all, who doesn’t want to qualify? Remember your first rental or mortgage application?

Can we really demand all of this? Sure, why not? We know what arenas we can be most successful in and what arenas we can’t be. This helps the people we really do want to work with see that we mean business. It helps them qualify us.