MANAGING EXPECTATIONS

MANAGING EXPECTATIONS. Yesterday’s Wall St. Journal had a column by Jared Sandberg about the importance in the business world of managing expectations. The lawyers I worked with used to chuckle at a colleague who was always moaning about how an easy case was a sure loser until the inevitable triumphant success. I learned from salesmen that you never sold too much in a year so that you left room to beat the next year’s target. There should be a course available that teaches you how to practice bureaucratic and academic and office politics. I could have used automatic parries to the question, “When can you have it done?” Sandberg quotes somebody who said, “I’ll have to think about it,” which might have been useful. I never tried the truth: “It depends on whether something more important comes up.” Of course, maybe some political skills are part of nature, not nurture. I knew a little boy who was promoted in the middle of the year from kindergarten to first grade. His new teacher soon told his parents that the boy wasn’t making any effort in class. His parents asked him about this, and he said, “If I do what I’m supposed to, they’ll just promote me to second grade.”