I have my own share of successes and failures while setting up expectations in real life at work or personal life, I wanted to share some of my observations that worked best setting upfront expectation and some that lead to failures due to lack of outlined expectations.
In a work life scenarios, we deal with colleagues, reports, supervisors, customers, vendors and so many others are directly or indirectly linked to your business life, everyone one of us have certain expectations on each other and it is more prevalent if you share a same group in the organization. Most of the times, we fail to set expectations that lead to wide room for guessing, every attempt should me made to set the expetation as what we are trying to acheive by taking up a task or activity or discussion before we get ourselves into an uncomfortable situation.
Often customers expect more, quite often you are in defensive mode trying to convince the customer to make it beleive that your's is the best deal. But in most scenarios, you come to the defensive mode after the work has began. No matter, how hard you do, you will not win the customer's mind and sometimes it may end the relation. But at the same time, if you had outlined the clear goals and objectives with defined SLAs, for the exact same effort, you would measure your performance against to the baseline that was agreed with the customer, if you are meeting or exceeding the baseline, you are a winner and you have a happy customer. The only difference here is, you had set the exepctation upfront, the difference is winning business.
Once I began started a new engagement with one of the customer in San Francisco (it was a brand-new relation), the deal was to manage transition all Visual Basic applications web enabled Domino platform. But the contract was loosely worded and it was perecived by the client that the deal was to complete the transition and do the support. It came to a total surprise to all of us, finally it wasn't a great experience to the client and relation was ended after the transition work was done. It was a great and expensive lesson learned by our team.
Most of it applies to the families and kids, families saved or divorced depends on how clear the exepctations were before their marraige and after kinds, it all the matter of sitting and talking and agreeing to certain things.
My piece of advise: Do not assume, set expectation, and set a road to successful path
Often customers expect more, quite often you are in defensive mode trying to convince the customer to make it beleive that your's is the best deal. But in most scenarios, you come to the defensive mode after the work has began. No matter, how hard you do, you will not win the customer's mind and sometimes it may end the relation. But at the same time, if you had outlined the clear goals and objectives with defined SLAs, for the exact same effort, you would measure your performance against to the baseline that was agreed with the customer, if you are meeting or exceeding the baseline, you are a winner and you have a happy customer. The only difference here is, you had set the exepctation upfront, the difference is winning business.
Once I began started a new engagement with one of the customer in San Francisco (it was a brand-new relation), the deal was to manage transition all Visual Basic applications web enabled Domino platform. But the contract was loosely worded and it was perecived by the client that the deal was to complete the transition and do the support. It came to a total surprise to all of us, finally it wasn't a great experience to the client and relation was ended after the transition work was done. It was a great and expensive lesson learned by our team.
Most of it applies to the families and kids, families saved or divorced depends on how clear the exepctations were before their marraige and after kinds, it all the matter of sitting and talking and agreeing to certain things.
My piece of advise: Do not assume, set expectation, and set a road to successful path
Here is another useful article on the very same subject:
http://randaclay.com/how-to/want-to-be-successful-learn-to-manage-expectations/
Looking forward to know your views, ideas, and experiences..
Cheers
Sameer
Looking forward to know your views, ideas, and experiences..
Cheers
Sameer
3 comments:
Good One !
Most of the failures happen due to our misconceptions. The word "Assumption" itself is a negative trait and unprofessional. In the real professional world there should not be phrases like "I assume" or "I thought" when expectations and Goals are already set. A well defined process is another key that is directly propotional to goals and expectations. Expectation should be set upfront is definitely a key to sucess.
Sameer, Well thought out blog, and nice to read and comprehend in simple terms.
Its good to meet expectation and very good to exceed the expectations! With the current market scenario we should try and exceed our set expectations or innovatively meet the expectations which is key to our growth, Very good topic! Thanks
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