“We need to under promise and over deliver.”

I didn’t realise how much pain would come from that one little statement.

Significant effort had gone into winning this contract so we were super keen to get going.

It started with an internal meeting that focused on the expectations set and how we were going to now deliver.

That’s when it happened. I blurted those horrible words out.

“We need to under promise and over deliver.”

Perfect! By giving the client more than they expect, we guarantee success! Right?!

Reflecting on this, I wonder what was wrong with me.

How did I not see what would happen?!

A week later we had the kick off. It was fairly standard with the client asking if we could deliver ahead of schedule. Ensuring I set realistic expectations I suggested we deliver as planned.

The project moved along and thanks to some long days we actually managed to deliver functionality ahead of schedule.

At this point I was very pleased with myself, we were under promising and over delivering!

Just like planned, the client is going to be overjoyed!

We continued our iterations, tuning functionality and consistently over delivering when the team started to become disgruntled and exhausted.

To continue to over deliver, the team had been working very long hours, weekends and some had missed important family appointments.

The over delivery had taken its toll. It was not sustainable and I was convinced that the next deliverables would be done in a more realistic manner.

The next day we presented to the client, they were surprised at what we’d achieve in such a short time and were happy that we were ahead of schedule.

The discussion turned to the next set of deliverables, the effort and the expected delivery dates.

This is where it all started to fall apart.

Regardless of the time we said it would take, the client kept demanding it to be shorter.

To hit their new dates we would have to continue to work double and sometimes triple time.

I pushed back, the team couldn’t be under this amount of pressure again.

Regardless of highlighting the teams overtime efforts, the client would not accept fewer deliverables.

We had some verbal, professional jousting with it ending when the client stated:

“Why can’t you do it? We’re not asking for anything more, it’s actually less than what you delivered before.”

The wheels were coming off..

My grand plan to under promise and over deliver had led to a disaster!

The delivery team was exhausted, the client was annoyed and I was screwed.

It was time to stop and breathe, anxiety was quickly building and sinking into misery was not going to fix this.

I had to rectify this, but how?! I felt buried with no way out.

That’s when it hit me. By consistently over delivering I had actually set the expectation that it will become the norm and it was only through stressful days, long nights and large amounts of caffeine that it could be maintained. That was not sustainable.

Over the next few meetings, with significant effort, the discussions started to turn around. I had been reborn and now realised:

It’s not about the effort, it’s about the outcome

The client did not care how much effort we’d put in. My attempts to highlight this were pointless. Do I care how long it takes a mechanic to fix my car? No, I just care that its fixed. By focusing on the outcome we regained traction.

We needed to become a partner

It’s quite likely that the client is under a massive amount of internal pressure to deliver this project. By recognising this, the discussion turned around, it was no longer about what the team was delivering it now focused on how we were progressing towards their business goals.

The expectations had to be reset

Building a happy client cannot be done through incorrect expectations. Over delivering set the expectation that we’d continue to deliver massive amounts of work however this was causing the team to burn out. This had to be rectified to reflect the reality of consistent delivery.

As painful as this was, it did teach me a lot.

Get on top of this before it blows out.

Under promising and over delivering is for suckers.