Some meetings exist only to prove they happened.
I recognized the exact moment my meeting with the company’s chief technology officer shifted from possibility to performance.
His eyes glazed over at my proposal like I’d just started reading him the tax code. His thumb flicked up lazily on his phone. A barely contained sigh. A quick glance at the clock.
The universal signs of someone who had already made up his mind.
“This all sounds great,” he said, still scrolling. “When can you start?”
Ah. The decision had already been made. Not based on experience or proven results, but probably weeks ago, in a separate conversation where someone more senior told him to hire another firm, check a requirements box, and move on.
I wasn’t here to be evaluated — I was here so they could say they had explored their options.
The rest of this? Performance art.
I’d seen this show before.
The patterns of avoidance
Running my own consulting business for a decade taught me a different kind of pattern recognition. Not the algorithmic kind I learned as part of my engineering degree, but the behavioral kind.
The subtle, instinctual signs that tell me when someone has no actual intention of working with me.
Some companies know exactly who they’re going to hire before they even send out the first RFP. But to avoid accusations of bias — or worse, making a lazy decision — they go through the motions.
They bring in outside firms, sit through proposals, ask surface-level questions. They create the illusion of due diligence.
The CTO that day followed a well-worn script. He spoke about wanting transformation while his body language screamed let’s just get this over with.
His attention wandered whenever we got into technical details. When I mentioned concrete steps or budgets, he deflected.
New topic. New buzzword. Pivot.
It was like watching a magician try to distract the audience with a flourish while quietly palming the card.
Three months later, I checked my client tracker. They were still “evaluating their options.” Out of curiosity, I dug a little deeper. The firm they did hire? His brother-in-law’s.
But at least they could say they looked at other options.
Some organizations spend more energy proving they made a fair decision than making the right one.
Signs of commitment versus time-wasting
My sister, an HR executive, often talks about organizational psychology with me. She has theories about why companies love elaborate evaluation theater.
Sometimes it’s budget constraints disguised as due diligence. Other times it’s risk aversion dressed up as we’re just being thorough. Most often, though, it’s the gap between knowing what needs to be done and actually doing it.
After enough wasted hours, I developed my own internal diagnostic for spotting serious clients versus professional time-wasters. The patterns transcend industry and role.
And now, working as a technical architect at a large tech company, I still see them play out — just with more polished decks and higher salaries.
What started as a way to protect my consulting hours turned into a full-blown survival skill.
Missing engagement triggers
Real commitment shows up in the details.
A manufacturing CTO once walked into a meeting with system diagrams full of annotations — each scribbled note a specific technical question.
Their team had studied my previous implementations. They had prepared. Every conversation built on the last one instead of resetting back to square one.
Time-wasters, on the other hand, exist in a permanent state of amnesia.
One client asked me for the same security presentation three times, reacting each time like I was revealing the secrets of the universe. Either they were terrible actors, or I was trapped in some kind of corporate Groundhog Day.
The most successful engagement of my independent consulting career began with brutal honesty.
A retail CTO spread out architectural diagrams across the table, pointed to each system failure, technical debt disaster, and project graveyard, and said, “We need to fix this. Tell me where we start.”
That was the moment I knew they were serious.
Empty promises without action
Some clients love to talk about urgency. They’ll throw around words like critical and mission essential. But urgency, like commitment, is measured in actions, not adjectives.
A client once promised to connect me with their technical team “next week.” Next week became two. Then three. Then silence.
Another client I worked with, a financial services company took six months to start their cloud migration — but every week, there was progress. They pushed back on my recommendations, but with actual data.
They asked real questions, not just the ones that made them sound engaged.
A pharmaceutical client once apologized profusely for a three-day delay in reviewing a proposal, explaining their lead architect had pneumonia. Another company took six weeks to schedule a meeting they had labeled urgent.
I had no problem knowing which one was serious.
The cost of ignoring the signs
Early in my consulting career, I ignored these patterns. I believed — naively — that persistence could overcome organizational inertia.
I spent months crafting proposals that would never be read, offering detailed solutions to clients who had no intention of implementing them.
I thought if I just explained things more clearly, if I just followed up at the right intervals, I could nudge them into action.
A healthcare company extracted four months of expertise from me through this dance. They requested multiple technical demonstrations, demanded extensive documentation, and dangled the promise of an imminent contract.
Each week brought new questions. And no decisions. By the time they ghosted me completely, I had lost over 100 billable hours.
It wasn’t just lost revenue. It was the energy wasted on relationships built on organizational fiction. It was nights spent perfecting proposals for people who weren’t even listening.
Learning to walk away
My turning point came with a manufacturing company that approached change differently.
During a presentation, their CTO interrupted me mid-sentence — not to deflect, but to engage. She called in her entire technical team on the spot. They needed to hear this firsthand, she said, because work was starting next week.
That was the moment I stopped chasing potential clients and started filtering for committed ones.
Saying no to time-wasters felt counterintuitive at first. But every project I turned down made space for work that actually mattered.
My business thrived once I stopped accepting clients who just wanted the appearance of progress.
The power of pattern recognition
Now, working at a huge tech company, I see the same patterns emerge in new contexts. The indicators that once protected my consulting hours now help me navigate corporate initiatives and potential clients.
Some people want transformation. Others want to look like they’re considering it.
Knowing the difference doesn’t just protect my time — it protects the energy I need for meaningful work.
Organizations reveal their readiness for change in small, consistent ways. Those patterns tell a more honest story than any corporate mission statement.
And I’ve learned that the best use of my time isn’t convincing someone they’re ready. It’s finding the ones who already are.
