Don't take their word for it
A few weeks ago, we needed some hardware fast. After some back and forth with the vendor, they promised “expedited delivery”. That sounded like a good thing, but it meant nothing.
To us, expedited delivery meant overnight delivery. That’s what we had in our head. Our experiences elsewhere equated expedited as overnight, but expedited isn’t overnight – it just means faster, prioritized, enhanced, sooner. But it doesn’t mean overnight. Expedited is relative, not absolute.
Of course the stuff we thought would come overnight didn’t come overnight. A harsh call the next day to the vendor ultimately got us the hardware overnight the next day, but we lost a day in the exchange.
What we had in front of us was an illusion of agreement. We thought a word meant one thing, the other side thought it meant something else, and neither of us assumed mismatched alignment on the definition. Of course we agreed on what expeditedmeant, because it was so obvious to each of us. Obviously wrong.
This happens all the time in product development. Someone explains something, you think it means one thing, the other person thinks it means something else, but the disagreement isn’t caught – or even suspected – so all goes as planned. Until it goes wrong and both sides look at each other unable to understand how the other side didn’t get it. “But I thought you…” “Oh? I thought you…” “No I meant this…” “Oh, I thought you meant that…”. That’s an illusion of agreement. We covered the topic in the “There’s Nothing Functional about a Functional Spec” essay in Getting Real.
We knew better, but we didn’t do better.
Next time you’re discussing something with someone — inside or outside your organization — and you find the outcome contingent upon a relative term or phrase, be sure to clarify it. If they say expedited, you say “we need it tomorrow morning, October 3”. Expedited is relative, and overnight can be too depending on where someone’s shipping something from, what time zone they’re in, etc. Get concrete, get it in writing, and get complete clarity. Slam the door shut on interpretation, and open the door to assuredness.
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VP of Professional Services at MindFire. I help direct mail marketers boost campaign performance by integrating mail with digital channels.
4 年“Morning” can be relative, too. Learned it the hard way. So, if you want to be more specific say something like “we need it before noon Eastern tomorrow October 3rd”
Engineering Manager | Tech Transformation Leader | AI-ML Engineer | Data Scientist | FinTech - Risk, AML, Fraud, Data
4 年Knowing how to understand the customer need is key to creating a successful customer experience. This is possible only when the whole organization is focused on a Customer-centric Culture. If parts of the organization focuses on customer while the others don't, then the expectations do not match commitments. I guess that's what happened here.
In an Obvious Resume Gap | St. Louis Evangelist | Substitute Teaching Hero | Boutique Gym Enthusiast | Veteranish
4 年Yes! I love this. Clarity is undervalued in many career fields as it is seen as being too abrupt or uncharitable somehow. I want to see this culture change. I am also reminded of this phrase from Brene Brown's Dare to Lead: Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.
Senior Backend Developer
4 年Reminds me of Ubiquitous language principal from Domain Driven Design
Product Leader - AI/Autonomous Systems for Sales, Marketing, & RevOps
4 年A good reminder and a way of thinking I wish was automatic for me. I'm in a dispute with my neighbor currently over not defining "it's fine" the same way they did. I wish I could go back a few months and double check that we meant the same thing!