2 What would you suggest that subText do to tighten up their planning and control procedures? ‘C.K. One’ was clearly upset. Since he had founded subText in the fast growing South East Asian computer generated imaging (CGI) market, three years ago, this was the first time that he had needed to apologize to his clients.

In fact, it had been more than an apology; he had agreed to reduce his fee, though he knew that didn’t make up for the delay. He admitted that, up to that point, he hadn’t fully realized just how much risk there was, both reputational and financial, in failing to meet schedule dates. It wasn’t that either he or his team was unaware of the importance of reliability. On the contrary. ‘Imagination’, ‘expertise’ and

‘reliability’ all figured prominently in their promotional literature, mission statements, and so on. It was just that the

‘imagination’ and ‘expertise’ parts had seemed to be the things that had been responsible for their success so far. Of course, it had been bad luck that, after more than a year of perfect reliability (not one late job), the two that had been late in the first quarter of 2004 had been particularly critical.

‘They were both for new clients’, said CK, ‘and neither of them indicated just how important the agreed delivery date was to them. We should have known, or found out, I admit.

But it’s always more difficult with new clients, because without a track record with them, you don’t really like even to admit the possibility of being late.’