Managing expectations

Managing expectations is terminology in consulting for not letting the client get ahead of themselves. For instance you can’t let them assume that work will magically get done and that deadlines will make themselves. Instead you have to get them to recognize that they will have to commit resources and management leverage to make things happen according to plan. The term is also used internally in dealing with different events in peoples careers. Mostly this concerns promotions and raises, but also internal competitions for different internal leadership roles. Many times people in the firm become disenfranchised because they had expectation that were way out of line with reality. This especially true of the newest generation the millennials, who expect to get promoted with in a year and get 20% raises, while not having to pay their dues. However the high performing and hardworking can easily fall into this trap as well. So can your’s truly.

Last year I started my first year with the firm hoping I could keep up with all of the 4.0 over achieving students that started with me, and for some reason ended the year expecting a high rating of one of the best performers. Why did this change. Well basically it was because I felt I had filled in all of the check boxes and all of engagement reviews were stellar. Little did I know how much your overall rating was also based on something you have little control over: Staffing. While I had high ratings and did all the extra things required I still had a low staffing number because I had 2 months of training and another month on the beach that year. So I came in average. I was a bit upset. If someone had “managed my expectations” better I would have know how much this number meant.

The second thing that happened last year was raises. The firm has been experiencing record growth for a couple of years now. All of last year at every meeting we heard how much the firm was beating its numbers quarter after quarter. So naturally we all assumed (and remember what happens when you ASSume) that this would have a trickle down effect and our raises would be stellar. In fact the raises the year before had been so good and other parts of the firm were giving out such high raises that we (most of the people that started with me) thought we were defiantly going to see a big number. In retrospect looking back the raises were pretty good, but we expected so much that we upset by what we got. In fact for a month or more that was all anybody talked about. We reached out to all the other analyst that had started in different cities and the bad feelings just grew and spread, surprisingly though no one left. Again if we had good realistic data on what to expect we would not have been so shocked.

Well that was last year and this is this year. So of course I am personally managing my own expectations and that of all the new analysts I am guiding. They had similar ideas as we had last year and I spent a lot of time trying to get them to start thinking in a different way. Hopefully I helped, who knows. In the process I had lower expectations for myself. I still got the great reviews on my assignment and filled in all the check boxes but figured, you know they’ll find an excuse to keep my review down. One big thing did change though I had over 10% higher staffing than my target, and as my target is quite high this is a big deal at the junior level. So this year I got the higher rating, along with the promotion (though if I didn’t get promoted it is a not so subtle statement that you might look elsewhere for employment). But as my expectations were lower this came as a great surprise and really good news.

I am still not holding my breath when it comes to raises though. However with the good rating and the promotion, even with lower expectations, I can hope in a certain range. Who knows though, maybe I just had my expectations off and should have had last years changed around with this years. We shall see.