Avoid the Expectations Gap!
by: Michael Wilkinson, CMF, Managing Director, Leadership Strategies, Inc.
The expectations gap is a painful experience that most consultants have encountered at some point in their career. You know how it works. The project starts out a little slow at first. But then, you hit the point on the growth curve where the project accelerates and you are creating work products and producing deliverables at a steady pace. Then, the deliverable production slows down as you approach project completion with finishing touches on those final deliverables.
Suddenly, and without any prior warning, your client asks, "So, when are you going to get to…?" or "Your team is going to produce…isn't it?" But your team never had the intention of "getting to…" or "producing…" You're thinking, Surely you couldn't have expected us to be able to do all that, given your budget and time constraints. Any reasonable person would see that what you are expecting is simply unreasonable.
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