As people working in church media and production we are, in a way, trained to say “yes.” We tend to be put into a position where we are “yes men.” Our job, to some extent, is to be the person who people come to with an idea and we make it work. It’s our job to make it happen no matter what the cost or time investment. We too often are put in a position to fail because we don’t have enough time, money, or personal to make what they want happen.
You might be reading this and think: “sweet, he’s gonna touch on how to fix this.” You may be sad to find out that I am not going to be talking about that. The fact is, this will never change and will always be the case. We should be ok with the fact that we will always be asked to try to accomplish things that seem impossible. We should pride ourselves in our willingness to try new things and overcome the obstacles that get in our way. The one thing that we can control is how high we set others’ expectations.
I believe it was my dad that taught me the value of OVER PROMISE AND UNDER DELIVER. The idea is that you lower the bar of what people can expect from you. It’s a kind of safety net. If you know you can have a project done by Wednesday, tell the client that you will have it to them by Friday. That way, if you have unexpected troubles you can get it to them by Friday and it is on time, but if everything goes as planned, they get their project completed by Wednesday and you have exceeded their expectations. It not only makes things easier on you but it also makes your client feel important and puts/keeps you in good standing with them.
This is the opposite of what we usually do. When something comes up, we tend to complain at first and then eventually say “we’ll make it happen.” We tend to over promise followed by a major case of under delivering. We must get out of this habit. We see the fact that we got it done at all as a win, but others see it as not meeting the goals that we set for ourselves. We must learn to give caveats.
We need to learn to voice our opinions and then let our clients, or those who are coming to us for help, know what is reasonable for us to accomplish given the resources that we have available to us. It may not change their mind about what they want us to do, but at least when time or resources run out, we have proof that we warned them earlier in the process that we wouldn’t be able to give them what they asked for. This is a safety for us and a way to teach people that we aren’t just blowing smoke when we say we don’t have the resources that we need for a given project. It hurts us when we complain and then in the same project over promise and under deliver. But if we learn to follow through with what we promise we can do, even when it’s not the full project that the client wanted, we put ourselves in a position to gain trust and the understanding that when we say we need certain resources we truly mean it.
