Running With A Sharp Stick, Exceeding Expectation

I was at a conference the other day where I was able to hear Andy Andrews speak. I had never really heard of this man before and did not know what to expect. When I heard this man resume I felt a little ashamed that I only now was getting to know who he was. Without getting into his amazing qualifications I wanted to get to one of the memorable points he mad during his talk. I have said this before but it might be worth saying again. I am amazed that some of these really smart successful lecturers and authors make a living pointing out what should be obvious to us.

The point that Mr. Andrews made was that when we visit a business we have a predetermined expectation of that business. If we walk into a restaurant that has a reputation of excellence we would expect nothing less than that excellence. The reality is that when we experience a business or clinic etc. that simply meets our expectations we don’t necessarily feel the need to say much more about it to anyone, as it was exactly what we thought we would encounter. We certainly do feel compelled to tell others when we encounter businesses that have poor service or fall well short of our expectation, we might even put a nasty note on Yelp or similar websites to warn others. On the flip side of that we do tell others when a business exceeds our expectations in a significant way. We tell others when we encounter the extraordinary. When a business does the unexpected or treats me in an unexpected way that is positive I want to tell others about my experience. I can think of personal encounters where this was my reaction to exceptionality. I once went on a tour where the tour guide was amazing beyond my expectation more informative than I expected, more personally interactive than I expected and as a result I did something that I do not often feel compelled to do, I gave that company a very positive review on Trip advisor.

We have been talking amongst our staff as of late about this very subject and have been reviewing what we do and how we do it, considering what people expect of our clinic and what we can do to exceed their expectations at every point of contact. It is a world in which so much seems the same from business to business from clinic to clinic. It is sometimes hard to see what makes one place different from another. Andy Andrews went on to say ”to exceed average you have to take extraordinary measures”. “To be different than your competition you have to go in a different direction than your competition in a big way”.  Mr. Andrews went on to say that “having a satisfied customer allows you to stay in business but having an ecstatic customer allows businesses to flourish.

While I have considered what this all means in the context of my business I have also had to consider what this means in my personal life. What do people expect in their interactions with me as a person and do I strive to exceed those expectations. Do people expect a lot of me or do they expect very little?  Am I one of those people that says hey this is the way I am, like it or lump it or am I someone that strives to affect the lives of those I come in contact with in a positive way.

Mr. Andrews made me take a look at my world in a different way than I had before as a matter of fact he proposed that his greatest gift in life was seeing the world differently than others, for example when his mother told him don’t run with that sharp stick as you might poke your eye out, in his mind he was thinking that this outcome was improbable as you might poke it in but probably would not poke it out. Mr. Andrews also told the story of his encounter with his father as a young boy where his father was lecturing him about what Abraham Lincoln was doing at his age proposing that he should strive to achieve such heights. In Andy’s mind he recalls thinking but not being stupid enough to say out loud, “well dad at your age Abraham Lincoln was President of the United States of America (insert smile).