If you have ever worked for another person, with another person, or around another person, you know they have expectations. Some are reasonable—others are unimaginable. So how can we manage those expectations?

Initiate this process

Do not wait. Get ahead of leadership and others before they can determine what you should do. Why? Because you will be trying to mine cheese on the moon if you let them control this. What do I mean? I mean that you will be given on task after another with good ideas interjected. This will grow and spiral into something much larger than it should be. Trying to put the expectation genie back in the bottle is next to impossible—I will post another article about this when I figure out how to fix this spiraling-genie-cheese mess.

What to do

Ask a series of questions of the guy with the checkbook or the gal with the approval stamp.

What should be the end result?

By the end of this training, what will the learner be able to do they could not do before?

What does success look like? How will it be measured?

What artifacts or training elements will get your learner to achieve this measurable outcome?

There are many other questions you can ask and develop beforehand, but make sure you go armed. Do not let someone else determine what you will be doing. You cannot read their mind. Since you lack this level of Detect Thoughts, they will likely assume you failed to do what you were supposed to do. You did not meet their expectation.

Decision makers often want to see results. If your work triggers the results, it does not matter how you get there. However, you must get there and if you have an agreed upon measure of success, you can achieve that level of success with your own skills.

Follow up

Keep referring to your desired outcomes and how they will be measured. Provide each stakeholder with the list of outcomes along with the expected components. These are the tangible things people want to know you created. This will save you such a headache if you get it done prior to even beginning your design process.

Note for all you ADDIE fans out there—this is part of the Analysis phase; however, it is never too soon to get this started. Ask those questions early.