Your Expectations are Wrong
When I walk into a client’s office, my intentions are pretty clear. I am going to sit down with the client, figure out what their root problem is (which, more often than not is a superset of the problem they initially asked us to solve) then explain to them how S3 will solve that problem. Since I am able to articulate the problem and our solution so well, I expect that they will agree with me about their root problem, and, in a short time, we’ll have an agreement to perform the actions I described. I am going to completely change their expectations of software delivery.
Except, once again, it turns out I’m sometimes wrong. I’m right about the me part – I do exactly what I say I will. But the problem comes in the “them” part. They don’t always agree with me that our solution solves their problem better than another option. Or worse, they do agree with me, but do not want to use S3 to do the work.
Both of these occurrences have happened to me over the past couple of weeks. In one of them, we were sitting at a client site, listening to what their problem was, and what they were asking us to do. And, as we usually do, we listened, heard what their real problem was, and walked them through a solution where they could not only get what they were looking for, but we could help reduce a lot of the work they were currently doing manually. It sounded like a great solution on all fronts – they liked the idea, it would save them time and money, and help optimize a money making opportunity, and it would be a good deal for us – more valuable than solving the initial request they had shown us. We left the meeting thinking it was a great success. it had gone exactly as I expected. But you know what’s coming… they said no (which, admittedly is a good start). But why? Well, because it turns out the solution included information they didn’t want a third party to manage. As it happens, this system included information of a proprietary nature. So, rather than upselling the deal, we lost ground by having this conversation. Even though they agreed that our solution would be helpful.
In the second one, we similarly listened to their current work, and, while there wasn’t a single clear cut problem, there were several areas where we could assist. We walked them through these areas. We actually had a very good meeting, and there were definite opportunities where we could help. But in the end, it was clear that they didn’t really agree that our solutions to these problems were the best ones. They had come into the meeting with a totally different set of expectations.
The boy scouts tell you to “Be Prepared” for the worst case. Mel Brooks told us to “hope for the best, expect the worst”. So what did I do wrong here? Simple, I expected a certain outcome. I had a set of expectations of the meeting, ironically, one of those expectations was to challenge their expectations. But I foolishly did not challenge my own expectations.
So – here’s my advice to you, and indeed to myself: erase your expectations. Don’t expect anything. Plan for failure and the worst case, hope for best case, but don’t expect anything – because that expectation slows you down, no matter what your expectation is – you can’t adapt quickly when you’re planning for and expecting one thing, but another thing happens.
