Customer Reviews

Managing Expectations

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The key message of this book is that you must listen carefully to your customers and co-workers, hearing every word, but also the broad message. Many of the primary problems in the business-customer relationship are due to different definitions of commonly understood words, such as "regular", "extended", "timely" and even "month." Whole phrases are subject to different interpretations, and the author recites an instance from a trip to her physician. After examination, the physician pronounced her condition as "unremarkable." At first she was angry, and yet having the sense to think before making a fist, she realized that was the doctor's way of saying she was fine.
Which also points out what is the most critical condition for success dealing with anyone, whether they are in the group described by the book title or not. As e-mail use has shown us, it is almost impossible to avoid saying something that can be taken in an offensive manner. Business is about getting things done, and you don't complete complex tasks by making small talk about the weather. You do things by communicating the current situation as it is, even if it is not what the receiver wants to hear and it is necessary to take people to task. Therefore, your best policy is to avoid getting angry quickly, developing a thick skin and concentrating on completing the tasks at hand.
Naomi Karten puts forward advice that is simply not heard often enough. Forget about all of the sensitivity nonsense and concentrate on forms of communication that can be used to explain frustrations, demands, concerns, and all of the other things that go wrong between people trying to work together. Understand that ambiguity is the natural state of affairs, so look for the real meanings rather than the individual words. Whenever you hear something, put your feelings aside for a short time until you clearly understand what the message really was.
The phrase "People who want more, better, faster, sooner, NOW!" is just a long way of describing "customers", so anyone in business must be prepared to deal with such people. In this book, you will learn how to approach customers with your feelings placed in the background and all of your information receivers on high-band. With business growing more competitive every day, this may be the only way to remain a viable economic entity.

Managing Expectations is a book for everyone who deals with customers or other people with expectations. Using a customer service model, Ms. Karten describes the ways in which people successfully and unsuccessfully manage what people expect. She advises on how to create better working relationships by fostering clearer understandings of the circumstances and limitations which exist in any situation.

Failure to manage expectations often has catestrophic consequences to projects and relationships. Those who want to build long-term relationships and successful projects will consider the cautions and advice presented here.

Ms. Karten uses gentle humor and warmth to tell us the lessons that we need in order to better communicate what we know to our clients.

People who are clients can also use this book to better understand the process of working collaboratively.

It's a fine book for evoking new insights and inspiring better communication.

This book is an essential read for anyone wishing to improve his relationship with clients. However, it also applies to teamwork and employee-manager relationships (even husband-wife relationships). Everybody has expectations and you shall not assume what their expectations because there are big chances that you are wrong.
In this book, you will find how to communicate better, listen better, be skeptic and establish policies and pratices that should make your life easier. All of this discussed with her life's experiences.
Most of the advices will appear as common sense, but it really takes a book to realize what common sense is.

"Managing Expectations" written by Naomi Karten is about dealing with clients or users and improving your relationship by managing their (and your) expectations. Its a short 200 page book and reads easy. Its in similar style as books from Gerald Weinberg (a good friend of the author)... many personal short stories which stressed the points she tries to make.

The book consists of an introduction, then 12 chapters organized around the 12 guidelines of this book. The chapters are grouped into 3 categories: Communication, Information gathering, and policies and practices. The book ends with the "change chapter" which is called "action plan" which discusses how to take the guidelines and actually implement them.

The first part (communications) consists of four guidelines: Guard against conflicting messages, Use Jargon with Care, Identify communication practices, and listen persuasively. Personally I enjoyed this part of the book most, however, if you are interested in this part then I'd recommend to pick up Naomi's other book Communication Gaps and How to Close Them which covers sort-of the same but in more detail.

The second part (information gathering) consists of four guidelines: Help customers describe their needs, Become an information-gathering skeptic, Understand your customers' context, and Try the solution on for size. This part was more about requirements gathering and understanding what your customer actually wants. I enjoyed the focus on building prototypes and getting early interaction with the customers.

The last part (policies and practices) consists of: Clarify the customer perceptions, create service agreements, say Whoa, and build win-win relationships. These chapters seemed to focus more on IT support and creating formal service level agreements. I personally didn't like these chapters much, they focused a little too much on formalizing relationships.

The last chapter is the action plan chapter, which I didn't find interesting at all, but perhaps helps some readers adopting some of the (good) ideas from this book.

All in all, Managing Expectations is a decent book contains good advice. Most of it (as Naomi also points out) is common sense. When I read it, there were very little AHA! moments, neither did I end up with much notes from the book. Yet, I liked most of it and it contained interesting stories and examples. Because of that, I decided to rate it 3 stars. The book does what it should be doing, but it isn't a book that I'll be picking up frequently or will be commonly referring to people. A decent book, though I liked Naomi's later book (on communication gaps) more.

Managing Expectations is a book for everyone who deals with customers or other people with expectations. Using a customer service model, Ms. Karten describes the ways in which people successfully and unsuccessfully manage what people expect. She advises on how to create better working relationships by fostering clearer understandings of the circumstances and limitations which exist in any situation.

Failure to manage expectations often has catestrophic consequences to projects and relationships. Those who want to build long-term relationships and successful projects will consider the cautions and advice presented here.

Ms. Karten uses gentle humor and warmth to tell us the lessons that we need in order to better communicate what we know to our clients.

People who are clients can also use this book to better understand the process of working collaboratively.

It's a fine book for evoking new insights and inspiring better communication.