Last week, I was traveling back from vacation and looking for a quick lunch. There are two options near the house. The best choice had a line that was backing up into the main street while the lesser choice had only 6 cars. Choosing speed over value, I jumped into the short line. Everyone reading this knows what happens next. I wouldn’t be writing if the line I selected moved quickly. I can confirm, I sat…..and sat…..and sat…..
The expectation at a fast food drive-thru is speed. Your typical customer isn’t necessarily influenced by a friendly greeting. Even the quality of food may be a lesser decision point than speed. So when you are slow, your customer is going to be pissed. Even if you are friendly while being slow.
If you deliver an amazing result that doesn’t meet your customers’ expectations, you still fail. Expectations are the first step to good project management and coordination. If you don’t know what people want, you cannot hope to deliver them what they want. This is especially true if they don’t know what they want. In that case, they will simply say “I don’t know what I want, but that isn’t it.”