Before Jumping to Conclusions with Clients, Consider the Possibilities
At a meeting I attended, Tim, a software developer, described coming up with a way to give his customers a much better solution than they had asked for. Pleased with himself for his insight and initiative, he proceeded to develop the solution. Just one problem: He didn't let his customers know he was doing this. When they found out, they rejected it as not being what they had asked for.
To Tim, their reaction was indefensible. “Why even bother to please them?” he told the meeting attendees. “You go above and beyond, and they're still not happy.”
The thing is that there are often numerous possible explanations for someone's reaction. In this case, Tim’s colleagues were quick to come up with several possible explanations for the customers’ rejection of Tim’s solution. Many were eye-openers for Tim.
One possibility, for example, concerns surprises. Apparently, our brains like surprises, but at a conscious level, many people don't. When confronted with something other than what they expected, their tendency is to reject it or find fault with it.
A related possibility is that these customers would have preferred to be involved in the decision. Sometimes, it's not the solution or idea that customers reject, but rather that they had no say in its formulation.
Other possibilities? The customers may have been acting on a mandate issued by their management. Even if Tim's solution appealed to his customers, it may not have been worth it to them to try to coax their management into considering alternatives. Or, perhaps these customers had been trying to recover from falling short in past projects, and this was their last chance to show they could get a project done right—“right” meaning “exactly as specified.”
It may have been that Tim's fancy solution focused on certain capabilities to the exclusion of other functionality that was a higher priority. Perhaps if Tim had done a better job of evaluating priorities, he would have won his customers over even if his solution diverged from their requirements.
One other possibility: Tim may have done a mediocre job of presenting his solution to his customers. Like many people, he may have lacked persuasion skills, so maybe he omitted relevant details or neglected to cite benefits, or mumbled and stumbled his way through his explanation. He admitted to giving much less thought to how he would describe his grand solution than he did to creating it in the first place.
The lesson? When customers react in a way that's other than you expect, don't jump to conclusions about the reason. As this clever illusion demonstrates, we strive to make sense of things by grabbing at what's observable. Instead, do what Tim didn't do until guided by his colleagues: Consider the possibilities. There may be much to learn in doing so.
