Expectations

I'm a huge fan of the dry erase board. I've got one right next to my desk. Whenever my kids come to the office to visit, they love to scribble on it. I do too. Every week I use it for one purpose. I like to write down the things that went wrong during the week. This week, I had a long list. When I finally got close to leaving this Friday evening I stepped back, looked at it and realized that so many of the issues revolved around managing people's expectations. In construction especially, you can let people down if you over promise and under deliver. It can be a promise about anything really; timelines, money, meetings, commitments or whatever. I thought to myself tonight that I am going to try to do a better job of managing people's expectations in the future better by reviewing our processes on delivery and using historical data to help lessen that probability in the future. I was quick to apologize in those instances this week, but after a while people grow tired of that and want you to do what you say you are going to do. If we want to have a business that is going to be consistent, scaleable, service and relationship-oriented, and priced fairly- we have to manage expectations accordingly.