Managing Expectations

The missing process

Originally published July 1, 2007 Revised and updated September 22, 2011

By Albert J. Cacace MBA, PMP, CSM Will this article meet your expectations? Life is largely a matter of expectation.
- Horace (65 8BC)

I can set your expectations about this articles content early, or I can pull you along gradually building up your expectations setting and meeting them in a rolling wave fashion. Any other approach will likely disappoint you. From our earliest years as a child to our final days, life will serve up

disappointments. This is a simple inescapable fact of life. Who sets our expectations? Advertisers, coworkers, employers, politicians, television shows, movie stars, family and religion to name a few. And, of course, we cant ignore expectations dashing sidekick disappointment. Do you know someone, perhaps a fellow coworker, a relative, from whom you avoid seeking advice? Perhaps someone you do not trust? Are you too quick to dismiss their arguments? Is your job or business relationship-based and are you wondering where the repeat customers are? A likely culprit in all of the above is rooted in ineffective management of expectations. At the center of every influential person and organization is the effective management of expectations. We test or employ our persuasive powers to various ends. Josef Stalin came to power by exploiting the passions and fears of the proletariat. He filled a niche by setting (promising), and delivering for a time, on the expectations of those who would elevate him to power. Abraham Lincoln set and delivered on promises for a disillusioned and divided nation. An odd comparison perhaps, but the stark contrast illustrates how management of expectations is integral to influence and requisite to a rise in prominence. Some other notable managers (arguably manipulators) of expectations were Sun Tzu author of The Art of War (c. 400320 B.C.), and Niccolo of Machiavelli The Prince (1469-1527) (1513). author

Oft expectation fails, and most oft there Where most it promises; and oft it hits Where hope is coldest, and despair most fits.
- William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), 'All's Well That Ends Well'

Remember, managing expectations is so much more than good intentions and making promises. It must include effective setting, resetting, meeting and closing of expectations to help ensure that your promises are fulfilled and if necessary, ensure the outcome whether or not you are around to
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see things through to completion, giving you the clout you need to set and meet bigger and better expectations.

What are expectations?

Expectations are where the bar is set. Thats the simple answer. The bar is different for everyone. Sadly, expectations for a child in a blighted community are set lower than that in more affluent environments (contributing to the vicious loop that makes it so difficult to escape from poverty).

Managing expectations means setting, resetting, meeting and closing on promises

Lets be clear, in the eyes of the expecter, expectations may not be synonymous or in sync with

requirements or objectives. Requirements and objectives are set by your expectersthe persons doing the asking. Requirements may begin with the requesters expectations, however, the agreements you make become the new expectations (your promise to deliver). In this vein, it is imperative that you effectively align, and realign, expectations and requirements until they are understood and agreed-to by key stakeholders.

Who are the parties to expectations?

There are two equal parties to expectations. I call them responders and expecters. Responders include those reacting to a demand and those acting proactively to a perceived need. In this article, you are the Responder. Expecters are those whose expectations are set by you, by others, or by life experienceand in any manner of ways explicitly and implicitly.

How is the bar set?

From the expecters eyes, lifes experiences raise and lower the bar of expectation. Behind each bar is a hidden treasure where you (the responder) may attempt to meet expecters needs. As an insightful responder you recognize a need and attempt to meet or exceed (raise) the bar of expectations. If you effectively manage and close this expectation, the bar moves accordingly. If expectations are not met, promises are broken, and your chance to engage again may be damaged.

Why hitch your wagon to someone elses expectations?

Lifes most satisfying and life-changing efforts will meet needs against all odds and amidst great chaos. Little progress is made without overcoming some kind of opposing forceand where there is chaos there is risk. Your rationale for sticking your neck out to meet an expectation is a personal choiceas wide and varied as life itself. However, at the center of progress are people and their organizations committed to filling a need against the odds.

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Making a promise that you are not prepared to keep is a risk of another kindthe foolish kind. The consequences include diminished opportunities for another shot at delivering on a promise. Furthermore, do not confuse intentions with expectations. When your intentions are not in perfect alignment with expectations, and expectations are not in sync with requirements and objectives, you are putting too much faith in luck and relinquishing control to chaos. Intentions reside in your mind as ideas, hopes, desires, etc. In other words, once you communicate your intention it becomes someones expectation! Successful delivery of expectations has great rewards. The payoff can be simply a bridge to bigger and better opportunities with greater payoffs. On the other hand, broken promises burn bridges.

Achievement is largely the product of steadily raising one's levels of aspiration and expectation.
Jack Nicklaus (1940 - ), 'My Story'

The common denominator for a positive reputation is effective management of expectations. And the utility in a positive reputation includes trust, loyalty, admiration, opportunity and influence. Opportunity doesnt knock! If you are an alert and savvy opportunist, youll recognize that dashed hopes (theres that dashing friend again), unmet needs, broken promises, and lost opportunity are hidden treasures. With effective management of expectations you can transform others mistakes into positive results. However, to parlay reputation from opportunities you need sustainable stackable results. In other words, sustainable stackable results build integrity (positivereputation) better yielding bigger and and ever opportunities

increasing influence.

Why set expectations for others?

Your expecters are your customers, friends and relativesall of whom have expectations of you. Customers come with expectations of your products and services. The bar for customer expectations can be set for you (by others), or you can set it for yourself and for others. You can allow your competition to set your customers expectations, or you can set the bar for your competition.

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Your competitors may set expectations, but few manage them well. This is an opportunity! The successful organization has masterful and effective managers of expectations on their team. It is not enough to simply recognize a need and make promises. You (the responder) must manage expectations effectively to achieve your requisite sustainable and stackable rewards. This affords you and your organization the opportunity to do it again.

Caution!
Do not set expectations if you do not intend to follow through or you do not fully appreciate the effort required to fulfill requirements. Effective management of expectations is a real contribution to building on opportunities through trust and integrity. Each contribution to your trust-account raises your Ethos of influence; an account you may need to draw from at some juncture. Weakened integrity requires more time and effort to repair than to prevent.

The common denominator for a positive reputation is effective management of expectations

Successful people manage expectations every moment of every day, in the office and in their personal life. Managing expectations is not an output; nor delivered at some milestone; it is an ongoing process! Processes for selecting employees, vendors, and contractors for example must include assessments of effective Expectations Management. Do you instill these principles in yourself and your organization? Do you do this as a matter of course and habit? If so, your personal and professional life will reap great rewards!

How are expectations met?

The questions are getting tougher! Management of expectations is as-much art as it is science. Best practices do exist for managing expectations however, knowing which tools to use, the most effective sequence to use them, and to what extent, is a soft skilllearned through years of personal trial and error; youve noted your own mistakes, the mistakes of others, and if

The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise, and cultivate the delightfully vague.
- Bill Cosby (1937 - )

you are fortunate youve benefited from the assistance and guidance of a knowledgeable and experienced mentor.

The basic formula for managing expectations is to set, reset, meet, and close on promises. To accomplish this, the following eleven (11) items should be on your checklist:

1. Do I understand my expecters perceptions, their needs, requirements and objectives?

2. Have I clearly aligned requirements with expectations? 3. Do I understand how others failed or succeeded in their attempts to meet this need, and why? 4. Have I planned my approach, do I know who my stakeholders are; who my allies are, who can trip me up? 5. Do I have a communication plan and strategy for when things go well and for when they do not?
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6. Do I have a risk management plan and strategy for when things go well and when they do not; a plan B? 7. How will I reset expectations when necessary? Admit mistakes; explain what you have done and will-do to
ensure results. Keep your words short, truthful, and achievable. 8. Do I show genuine concern for expecters interests? Demonstrate that your interests are aligned with theirs and that you have a real and tangible stake in their success. 9. Have I made delivering on expectations a habit? Am I organized? 10. Is my team trained in these skills? 11. Have I recorded my lessons-learned and recognized those who helped? Is a little fanfare in order?

How does this apply to Project Management?

The lifecycle of managing expectations is setting, resetting, meeting, and closingall are crucial for successful project and program management. If managing expectations were a component of the Project Management Institutes standard; The Project Management Body of Knowledge, it would be a process unto its owncomplete with inputs, outputs, tools and techniques. Inputs would include gathering of requirements, prevailing perceptions, political climate, historical information, and stakeholder (esp. expecter) feedback. Outputs include what youve promised to do or deliver, what you actually did, deliverables, and closing reports and activities. Methods would include just about every tool & technique found in the PMBOK and more. Wow! Sounds like an entire Knowledge Area! While your team should be trained to understand and execute the concepts and principles of meeting expectations, you are ultimately accountable for results. You, the project manager, are the prime responder, the person who makes the promise to deliver, sets the bar, and manages for sustainable and stackable results.

Why is it so difficult to meet expectations?

The level of effort you put into visibility, the bureaucracy managing each of expectation should be proportional to its complexity, its involved, number stakeholders, the risks of failure, and many other considerations (not the least of which include family commitment). At the base of the pyramid of skills for managing expectations is communications. Atop this is time management. Atop that is the PMBOKs nine Knowledge Areas. Your skill in applying the nine (9) knowledge areas (Procurement,
Quality, Resource, Scope, Time, Integration, Cost, Communication, Risk)

is essential

to effective management of expectations. At the highest level, supported by all below, is the deep and wide-wide world of Best Practices. You must choose the right tools for the job. This is where your skills and experience come in. Remember, these are building blocks; lower levels must be firmly in place before adding applying one above.
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Communicating and documenting the what, when, where and how of what you are promising to do or deliver, and what YOU expect from others, is paramount to successful management of expectations. In addition, there is no escaping the fact that personal and work-life can and do affect one another. Skillful management of time and communication with all stakeholders on all planes; family, friends, coworkers, bosses, etc, will help keep the peace and reduce the impact from asynchronous interrupts and emergencies. The what-to-do diagram illustrates that lifes emergencies are inevitable but manageable with the adoption of proven methods of Time Management. If you are at the top of your game, you are a master of Time Management. At the far right, emergencies arrive without prejudice, affecting whatever you have plannedno matter where you are. There is no convenient time for a natural disaster for example. Moving to the left on the continuum are general interruptions and family obligations. Relative to emergencies, family obligations and general interruptions are manageable. Again, if you are skilled at this, you compartmentalize and manage these areas effectively. Balancing work and non-work activities is one of the most penned selfhelp topics on bookshelves. At the other end of this spectrum are our economic and business commitments. If you are a master at this game, you are in control of your work environment and all of the expectations you manage there. At any given moment you are balancing and managing multiple expectations at home and office. Although these expectations are discrete, all are commitments that tug at your time. If you learn to account for inevitable emergencies, fend-off asynchronous interrupts (esp. the ones that detract from your goals), allow time for family, and plan your work accordingly you will be a master of expectations management!

"Clarifying interdependent expectations up-front does a great deal to contribute to quality of life"
- Stephan Covey in First Things First (1994)

Explain resetting and realigning expectations

You should be testing progress against expectations all along the way. Realignment of expectations is in response to a change in expecter objectives and requirements. In this case it may be necessary
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to reevaluate the feasibility of continuing, and revisit the 11-item checklist. However, resetting of expectations is done when you (the responder) recognize a problem with meeting a promise. The root causes of resets include unknowable emergencies, unplanned risks, or poor time management on your part. Some reasons for resetting expectations are more acceptable than others. The most palatable reset is the forecasted reset. Forecasting a reset shows respect for the affected stakeholders, demonstrates that you are not entirely out of control, and offers you the opportunity to rescue the promise. In contrast, resetting after-the-fact begs the question of what you knew and when you knew it, why you didnt tell anyone earlier, suggests that you are not monitoring and controlling the execution of your promise, and requires added bandwidth for damage control. Resetting expectations because you failed to plan effectively, failed to communicate or manage time are examples of red flags and showstoppers. In other words, there best-be a good reason. The backlash you receive for each reset will likely be proportional to the volume and/or frequency of the setback. What are the size and number of red flags in your resets? The size of a single reset to your obligations and expectations is proportional to the severity of impact to your efforts and reputation. Well call this volume of reset. The number of times you reset expectations, well call frequency of reset. Resetting too frequently, regardless of volume, can be as lethal as one big reset. Whatever the reason or occasion to reset or realign, do it early, do it honestly, ethically, fix the root cause, and communicate, communicate, communicate!

Why close expectations after theyve been met?

Some folks are natural closers; they do it effortlessly and do it well. Your closing can be as simple as saying happy birthday again as you are leaving the party. The closing of an expectation should be proportional to the effort undertaken to fulfill expectations. If youre doing more than celebrating a birthday, you want to do some closure planning and put some conscious thought into it. For example, if expectations were fulfilled in a project (e.g. via resets), it is still appropriate to capture, document and communicate lessons learned. This is covered in detail in the Project Management Institutes standard: The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). A meeting and/or celebration may also be in order to recognize everyone who helped bring expectations to a successful conclusion.

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In Conclusion:
Are you an effective manager of expectations? Test Yourself

Do you understand expecter perceptions? Do you know where the bar is set? Do you effectively set, reset, meet, and close on promises? Do you align intentions, expectations, objectives and requirements? Are you sensitive and respectful of stakeholders time and resources? Do you communicate effectively (both good and bad news)? Do you manage time, resources, and conflicting demands? Do you set realistic achievable goals? Are you closing proportionately and appropriately Are you achieving sustainable stackable results?

The common denominator for a positive reputation is effective management of expectations. The benefits of managing expectations are immeasurably valuable, for all involved; however the consequences of poorly managed expectations are far more spectacular and difficult to reverse. Has this article met your expectations?

Further reading:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Order from Chaos: A 6-step plan for organizing yourself, your office, and your life. (2001) Liz Davenport Managing Expectations: Working with people who want more, better, faster, sooner, now! (1994) Naomi Karten First Things First (1994) Stephan Covey How to Communicate (1995) Matthew McKay, Ph.D, et. al The Project Management Body of Knowledge (aka PMBOK) The Project Management Institute. http://www.pmi.org The Prince (1513) Niccolo Machiavelli http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/machiavelli-prince.html Rhetoric (350 B.C.E) Aristotle http://www.rpi.edu/dept/llc/webclass/web/project1/group4/ http://courses.durhamtech.edu/perkins/aris.html http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.1.i.html

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About the Author:

Albert John Cacace is co-founder and Chairman of Ten Woods Institute, serves on the Board of Directors for the South Florida Project Management Institute Chapter, and owner of the Multimedia Republic. He has over 30 years of project and program management experience. Mr. Cacace earned his MBA in 2005 and his PMP in January 2007. He enjoys reading, biking, hiking, and the occasional chess match. He can be followed on Twitter with @Caseyee.

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