“That’s a hard problem and I solve hard problems” — Robert Palmer, Jr
The bane of any project is the schedule. Marketing has already sold it, Sales wants it yesterday, Engineering says it’s impossible. This is the age old stereotype about product development.
As a design services company and a consultant, my job is to give my customers confidence (realistic) that their problem actually CAN be solved and appropriately set their expectations for how long it will take, translating directly into how much it will cost.
I’m a problem solver, I always have been. I thrive on challenges, learning new things, creating new products, new solutions. I often approach a problem with the confident internal affirmation “It won’t be that hard!” This is my way of telling myself “I know I can do this… another problem for me to tackle and solve and I won’t back down.” I have used some variation of that statement during customer discussions.
There is hidden danger in those words: “It won’t be that hard.” It does portray the reality that I can and will create a solution. However, I can mislead myself when it comes to estimating how long it will take. The downside of that statement is that It implies “it’s easy”, “it will be quick.” Which can, in turn, lead to unrealistic expectations from my customers and unrealistic timeline estimates from me.
To me, that phrase, on the surface, is a confident “I KNOW I can solve this problem.” To a customer, it can set an expectation of “Oh, it’s not that hard, you’ll be able to get that done quickly”. On a deeper level, that is also how I have interpreted the statement when planning. The reality is often that I don’t know exactly how long it will take. It might actually be very easy. Conversely, there are times that, once I get into the problem, it is more complex than originally expected. The additional complexity translates to additional project duration. By the way, this is the time when communication with my customers is key, communicating and adjusting expectations.
For the past couple of years I’ve been working on reframing*, acknowledging the importance and the impact of the words I use. This is an excellent example.
I have shifted from saying (to myself and to others) “It won’t be that hard” to “That’s a hard problem, and I solve hard problems.” This focuses on the truth of the situation; the problem is hard, and I will solve it.
Restating in this way sets better expectations, both for myself and for my customers. It lets my customers know that their investment in my services is worth the expense. It lets them know it may not be a quick solution. Even better, it helps me plan more realistically. I acknowledge that there may be difficult steps, or steps I don’t even know about yet. I build that in to my planning and I communicate that to my customers.
Being an expert on a topic, being confident in my abilities has aided in my successes. Sometimes my success has been in spite of the misaligned expectations (often unknowingly) between me and my customers. Changing the words I use with myself and my customers enhances the communication and helps set better expectations.
“That’s a hard problem and I solve hard problems” — Robert Palmer, Jr
*Much of my growth has been created through the collaborative work with my Executive Coach – Stacey Busby
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