{"id":1193,"date":"2012-08-23T05:23:39","date_gmt":"2012-08-23T10:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/?p=1193"},"modified":"2012-08-23T05:23:39","modified_gmt":"2012-08-23T10:23:39","slug":"expecting-and-inspecting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/2012\/08\/expecting-and-inspecting\/","title":{"rendered":"Expecting and Inspecting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;You get what you inspect, not what you expect&#8221; (source forgotten, lesson relearned painfully too often)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Relearning can be painful. At least &#8220;learning&#8221; is in there somewhere, and I believe that learning is a fruitful use of time.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a recent conversation:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Manager: I can&#8217;t believe how bad the quality of work done by the people who work for me.<\/p>\n<p>Me: You sound disappointed.<\/p>\n<p>Manager: Yeah, I expected much better from them.<\/p>\n<p>Me: You told them what you expected as for as quality is concerned.<\/p>\n<p>Manager: Of course I did. Why I&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Me: Did their early work meet your expectations?<\/p>\n<p>Manager: No! I told you how bad their work is.<\/p>\n<p>Me: What was their reaction to your early discussions about the difference between your expectations and their work?<\/p>\n<p>Manager: Uh, what do you mean?<\/p>\n<p>Me:\u00a0 Well, you said their early work didn&#8217;t meet your expectations.<\/p>\n<p>Manager: Well, uh, yeah, I mean look at it.<\/p>\n<p>Me: When did you know that their early work didn&#8217;t meeting you expectations?<\/p>\n<p>Manager: When I looked at their work.<\/p>\n<p>Me: When was that.<\/p>\n<p>Manager: Yesterday<\/p>\n<p>Me: When did they start producing work?<\/p>\n<p>Manager: Six months ago.<\/p>\n<p>Me: So, you didn&#8217;t inspect or look at any of their work for six months.<\/p>\n<p>Manager: Look, these are adults. I shouldn&#8217;t have to look over their shoulder to make sure they are doing their job. I mean I do my job for my pay. They should do their job for their pay. Like I said, they are adults.<\/p>\n<p>Me: Were you sure you were doing their job? It doesn&#8217;t seem that you were managing the work.<\/p>\n<p>Manager: You just don&#8217;t understand.<\/p>\n<p>Me: I agree.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There are many possible reasons for not meeting expectations. Some are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The people didn&#8217;t know the expectations (expectations not expressed)<\/li>\n<li>The people heard the expectations, but misunderstood them (expectations expressed poorly)<\/li>\n<li>The people disagreed with the expectations (expectations incorrect in the opinion of some)<\/li>\n<li>The people ignored the expectations (expectations owned by someone whom no one respected)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We could go on.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the world would be wonderful if everyone met my expectations, i.e., if everyone worked like an adult and didn&#8217;t need me looking at their work. Perhaps not. Regardless, I get what I inspect, i.e., what I examine, what I discuss with people, what I care enough about to spend my time. Without that effort on my part, I rarely get what I expect.<\/p>\n<p>And I really wish I could remember the source of &#8220;you get what you inspect, not what you expect.&#8221; Reminders from readers are appreciated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips &#8220;You get what you inspect, not what you expect&#8221; (source forgotten, lesson relearned painfully too often) Relearning can be painful. At least &#8220;learning&#8221; is in there somewhere, and I believe that learning is a fruitful use of time. Here&#8217;s a recent conversation: Manager: I can&#8217;t believe how bad the quality of work [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,63,9],"tags":[154,96,132],"class_list":["post-1193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-expectations","category-management","tag-communication","tag-expecations","tag-management"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1194,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193\/revisions\/1194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}