I remember beginning this article at least a week back and promising myself that, i shall finish it that day... that was expectation and here i am still trying to complete is reality. This gives a glimpse towards the gap between expectation (s) and reality. Many a times, we often find ourselves in a situation like this, though we do not admit immediately. Let me walk through you a few examples in my career to highlight this gap more often...
How often you walked into performance appraisal discussion in your compay on the assumption that you have done really great and you be rated as star performer. During the discussions you get the reality that your are an average performer. Then you start breaking your head on what did you do wrong. The fact is that, you have done nothing wrong, but there are others who have done things differently and better than you.
This is probably the same race you have been through from school days. I remember one of my friend stating that, till 10th she was very best and she did even get a rank at state level, then when she joined +12 in a large city where 90% + is common, she became a commoner. This happens more often with large corporations where only the best get an entry into the organization and when the very best are compared.. you know the story.
This is probably the same race you have been through from school days. I remember one of my friend stating that, till 10th she was very best and she did even get a rank at state level, then when she joined +12 in a large city where 90% + is common, she became a commoner. This happens more often with large corporations where only the best get an entry into the organization and when the very best are compared.. you know the story.
Let me give another perspective, in a recent conversation with a customer (we almost finished implementing the solution), the customer was mentioning that, during initial discussions with the implementation partner, the partner mentioned that everything is possible. I was mentioning to them that if a there is a generic question, most likely i would have given the same answer. Only when we start understanding real expectations of the customer during implementation phase, reality strikes in. Again a gap between expectation and reality. In this situation, both the parties have to work a way towards solution and probably evaluation process should be more aligned to reality than high level queries.
In another case, we demonstrated a template to customer stating that, template covers best practices and processes. The customer expectation was that, the template is up to date with latest releases and processes. The reality is, it covers only important processes, and not all the new processes. Here again, now we start managing the gap in a painful way.
In one of the outsourcing engagements i was engaged in (2003), the expectation from the customer was that we bring in the right set of people and in three months transition of the knowledge happens and then a simple switch on and off (from resource perspective). The reality was, it took more than 6 months to stabilize and in one of the process areas it took close 12 months. Half of my time was spent on managing this gap than actual any productive work.
Long back in one of the SAP implementations, there was an expectation that the employee cost data to be moved to projects to do actual tracking. While during the proposal phase this looked simple, there will be data at employee level and this can be moved as standard feature. At the time of implementation, we realized the expectation was to do actual cost to the penny level. The customer is not implementing payroll, however we promised during the proposal, and for the rest of the project we were building semi payroll module to get to the actual cost as much as possible.
In all the above incidents, common thread is that the stakeholders are not aligned or they talk two different (business) languages. Unless both the parties work towards bridging this gap early in the cycle, this gap between expectation and reality will not go away. Many a times, this may become a show stopper along the way.
In many ways, expectations are like assumptions, the other party does not even have the opportunity to validate. It is like a perception in people mind that comes out only when reality strikes in. One or probably the only way we can minimize this gap is by being transparent and straight in our interactions with people.
On parting note, many occasions we are left to manage with the expectations set by others. If we are transparent and handle issues directly with honesty and integrity, we might be able to succeed more often than you can imagine.
In another case, we demonstrated a template to customer stating that, template covers best practices and processes. The customer expectation was that, the template is up to date with latest releases and processes. The reality is, it covers only important processes, and not all the new processes. Here again, now we start managing the gap in a painful way.
In one of the outsourcing engagements i was engaged in (2003), the expectation from the customer was that we bring in the right set of people and in three months transition of the knowledge happens and then a simple switch on and off (from resource perspective). The reality was, it took more than 6 months to stabilize and in one of the process areas it took close 12 months. Half of my time was spent on managing this gap than actual any productive work.
Long back in one of the SAP implementations, there was an expectation that the employee cost data to be moved to projects to do actual tracking. While during the proposal phase this looked simple, there will be data at employee level and this can be moved as standard feature. At the time of implementation, we realized the expectation was to do actual cost to the penny level. The customer is not implementing payroll, however we promised during the proposal, and for the rest of the project we were building semi payroll module to get to the actual cost as much as possible.
In all the above incidents, common thread is that the stakeholders are not aligned or they talk two different (business) languages. Unless both the parties work towards bridging this gap early in the cycle, this gap between expectation and reality will not go away. Many a times, this may become a show stopper along the way.
In many ways, expectations are like assumptions, the other party does not even have the opportunity to validate. It is like a perception in people mind that comes out only when reality strikes in. One or probably the only way we can minimize this gap is by being transparent and straight in our interactions with people.
On parting note, many occasions we are left to manage with the expectations set by others. If we are transparent and handle issues directly with honesty and integrity, we might be able to succeed more often than you can imagine.
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