The art of setting expectations

March 1, 2008 · Filed Under Movies, Ranting 

Setting people’s expectations is something that I think we all do all the time. At work I basically do it all day long. I set my boss’s expectations for how long a project is going to take and how much it’s going to earn. I set developers expectations for the workload I’m going to be handing off to them. I set advertisers expectations for the amount of traffic they are going to see for an offer. So on and so on. I set my wife’s expectations for when I plan to be home each night so that she can have a sense of when to start making dinner. Without setting expectations, well, nobody would know what to expect.

So what happens if you set expectations that are way off? Well, usually people end up getting upset at you. Tell your boss a project will be done on Tuesday and it’s not done until Friday… he’s upset. Tell your boss a project will earn $2500 a week and it ends up earning $300 a week, yep, upset again. Tell your wife you’ll be home for dinner at 5:00 and don’t show up until 8:00, you guessed it, upset.

I constantly try to set peoples expectations in ways that will always leave them satisfied. It goes right along with the saying, “under promise and over deliver”. If you tell your boss a project is going to be done on Thursday and it’s actually done on Tuesday, he’s going to be pleased. Tell your boss a project is going to earn $900 a week and it ends up earning $2500 a week, he’s pleased again. Tell your wife you aren’t going to be home until 7:30 for dinner but call her at 5:30 to say you got out early and are heading home, well, unless she’s shagging the pool boy and was counting on you being late, she’s probably going to be pleased as well.

This past Tuesday we got passes to see a sneak preview of the new Will Ferrell movie Semi-Pro. I’m a big fan of his movies, but I’ll be the first to admit that they can be hit or miss. Anchorman is one of my favorite movies, but Blades of Glory isn’t exactly a laugh a minute. When we went to see Blades of Glory in the theater, my expectations were pretty high and we walked away fairly disappointed in the movie. With Semi-Pro, however, my expectations were pretty low. I had seen several previews for it and my biggest fear was that I had already seen all the funny parts and the rest of the movie would just be filler. I can not stress enough how happy I am to be wrong on this one. First off, Will is so great at playing over-the-top characters. Even in Blades of Glory, I loved his character, the rest of the movie just wasn’t that good. But, in Semi-Pro, there are a bunch of great characters, funny scenes and a ton of quotable lines that I’m sure we’ll all be repeating for months and years to come. I’d have to rank the movie just under Anchorman as my second favorite Will Ferrell movie.

I’m a little concerned by the fact that one of Will’s next movie projects is Land of the Lost. But hopefully I’ll be pleasantly surprised at that one, too.

Tags:

Comments

Viewing 1 Comment

Trackbacks

close Reblog this comment
Powered by Disqus · Learn more
blog comments powered by Disqus