Book Review of Managing Expectations

Happened to read a book called Managing Expectations recently. Talks abt client facing skills and stuff. A very good book.
Was invited to review the book in my organization. Here it goes...

Do you wish that you had a tool/tested approach/cookbook/detailed guide(or all of these) to tackle the ever changing expectations of the client without sacrificing your peace of mind?
If yes…then read on…

Let’s understand one thing that we all deal with clients daily in our workplace.
The clients may be:
1. External(dealt by people like consultants)
2. Internal(like Testing team dealing with developres and vice-versa).
When the interaction happens(like a meeting, conference, telecon, email, etc.), both the parties have some stated and unstated goals which they want to achieve via this interaction. But this may be hampered by their expectations and which often results in disputes, escalations, broken hearts and bleeding bruises(ok…not this)

What are Expectations: To look forward to the probable occurrence of something / To hope for something.
Now these expectations are born in client’s mind because:
1. of their lifelong beliefs
2. past experience
3. you promised them something (which may/may not be part of stated SLA)
4. of their work culture
5. of their goals, vision and priorities
6. Innumerable other factors

Words like hope, look-forward-to and innumerable-other-factors should be enough for you to hit the panic button because they would include complex human behavior and psychology.

BUT I’ve a solution….Managing Expectations – the book.

This book tells us how to tackle expectations from client which may be fair and even unfair sometimes. The author not only helps the readers to understand the client’s psyche but also offers solutions (in form of dialogs). These dialogs can be treated as hints to the solution or even can be molded to one’s needs for practical use. This book is particularly relevant to IT Services industry. It would take you through the thought process of the clients and vendors with the help of funny(yet impactful) incidents.

Time to learn through other’s mistakes :)

Few of the goodies are:
- Avoiding conflicting messages. Avoiding false promises
- What you say/write/promise vs. what you do
- Using jargon with care
- becoming active listener
- Information gathering
- Help customer’s to describe their needs, do some proactive research on them
- involve the client from first phase to the last of project
- step into client’s shoes and understand their context
- propose them many solutions and then work it out with them to find the best one
- build rapport with them.
- How to say no, etc.

I’ve felt some improvements in me after reading this book. This book doesn’t come with a tag like “become an expert before you blink” or it is not a silver bullet. We need to understand that mastering this art is a gradual process which will ripe only when we’ll invest some time and conscious efforts into it.

Happy Reading…