Managing Expectations

"When the deadline arrives the stakeholder will be at your door, at that time you will have a choice of handing over either a Result or a Reason. You choose."

When you first joined the company, when you didn't know much about business, at that time the task or project you got was your first in company. Did anyone expect you to grasp it, complete it, turn it in record time as if you have been doing that for 5 years? Now imagine you have been doing that for 5 years, and to turn it in you take same amount of time as you did when you joined. Would the stakeholder be alright with it? What happened here, same task, but reaction you get will be different, right? Why?

Expectation changed.

In my career I have seen people's career tanking and other people's career rising doing the exact same work. It used to baffle me initially but then I realized why those who fail are termed as failed. It's the perception of the stakeholders. But others who succeed doing the same thing, are termed as success because of different perception they ended up creating.

They managed the expectation of stakeholder as they were managing their work.

As an Architect, nobody is saying that I should write, review, test all the code, deploy, report, integrate, backup, setup infrastructure and then write all documentations. But when somebody talks to me about it, they will talk as if you are the one doing it all. Why?

I am a black box to them.

Now, who has expectations from you. You would say everyone you work with. Well, whom do you work with? Who are they? Rank point of view, they are your seniors, juniors and equals. Importance point of view, its the Stakeholders. Overall picture of doing what you do point of view, its You. All these people have different types of expectations from the same type of work that you do. Why?

Point of perception.

Stakeholders

Now, who are stakeholders?

They are the people whose work is directly affected by yours. Your work is a matter of concern to them. They are the ones who have some kind of expectation from you provided they are not wrong in having that expectation.

So what are their expectations?

"People in general are milestone, process or goal oriented entities who are supposed to manage, perform & complete their own work well with understanding & knowledge from past experiences, total ownership & control of ones domain in present and a planned roadmap for future."

That's the general definition of you...from stakeholder point of view. Most probably, you do not fully fit into this definition. And now that you know how you are perceived, and you know that you possibly cannot fulfill all that is mentioned 100%, what are you going to do about it?

You are going to manage his expectations from you.

The act of balancing what is needed of you by someone and you providing a Result or a Reason at the "Right Time" is called "Managing Expectations".