VA and Elance

[final_id]

For me the usual cultural divide, when dealing with "new" business countries and cultures, is the following:

Originally Posted by what I'm familiar with

do what you said for the price you said or else I'm unhappy

versus

Originally Posted by what others might be familiar with

do some, all, or none, sometime or somehow, and maybe up the price and maybe not, in order to "feel out" our ongoing relationship with the person, and apply emotional assuagement techniques AFTER failure in order to deal with some kind of familial relationship in which we are all buddies and cut each other slack all the time

Heh.

I think the best way to deal with these things is to prevent them from ever happening. A simple, direct statement, at the top, that is often repeated, which says essentially the first quote, is not inappropriate:

Originally Posted by letter to VA

Dear Sir: We now have an agreement that the deadline is Wednesday. That means I cannot accept work which arrives after Wednesday, nor can I pay for it. Should you wish to change that date, you must inform me before it arrives and you must accept a reduction in payment. In addition, we now have an agreement that the work to be performed will be the following specifics ...

I don't mind doing that quite regularly until a relationship is established. Dealing with assistants (real or virtual) is all about being clear with expectations and with the work-to-reward ratio. If the reader of that message is uncomfortable with the "tone" or the "implication" that they're somehow not already capable and would need to be told this stuff, then perhaps that reader isn't the right person to hire in the first place.

Just my suggestions. I have supervised a LOT of "less than capable" people in the real world (often just college kids, or people who had a good heart but a lack of "business culture" experience). You learn early on to lose your own need to "seem nice." People can like you or hate you, but they can never misunderstand you, so says Tim. He says it about products, but it applies equally well to supervision.