Set expectations straight

Whether it is to your family or to your most important customer, it is important to "set expectations straight". We are surrounded by people who expect something or the other out of us. Love, money, emotional support, social acceptance, service and what not...But over a period of time, inadvertently, the level of expectation rises proportional to the fulfillment of the expectations of the past...Some time in your professional or personal life, you experience that the bar is too high to fulfill.  Dealing with circumstances in today's fast new world  with unrealistic expectations requires a reality check on expectations. Its better not to give unrealistic promises- set expectations straight.

The  right strategy to set expectation straight is

1. Assess what can go wrong and why

2. Provide feedback to your stakeholders on a frequent basis so that they are aware of the fallacy of their expectations

3.

The PAISE approach

Writing is more of an art than a methodology. There is no cook book recipe for good writing.  My experiments with writing scientific papers has led me to ask questions like -  When should one start writing? What are the basic steps involved in writing? What needs to really happen before writing at a sub-conscious or conscious level?  I seek to explore some of these questions in this blog.

In my personal and professional life, there have been occasions where I have felt- "perhaps I could have explained it in a better way". I guess most of us are encountered with such situations whether you are a lawyer, journalist, engineer, researcher, student or a politician. Words do have a power to change. Sometimes, a few right words can explain more than a lecture.

Even before you start explaining a concept/ hypothesis, a set of steps need to be followed which can be summarized as the PAISE approach. The PAISE stands for Perceive Analyze Interpret Structure and Explain.

Perceive - Who is your target audience? What interests them? In a business scenario, the question would be - What does your customer/ manager want?

Analyze- How reliable is my perception? What is my concept? Is it based on intuition or do i have supporting data? Does the data fit with my concept? What would my target audience understand out of my data? To what extent can I analyze the data provided?

Interpret - What is the outcome of my analysis? Many a times, the data from experiments or surveys really don't provide conclusive evidence. Hence this phase is extremely critical for researchers.

Structure- Now that I have a perception of my target audience, analyzed the data available and interpreted the same, the structure of the argument needs to be formulated.Generally, some people might argue that the structure should be in place first. But that is for the author to decide if they would like to fix the result before analyzing them. Structuring your argument at a later stage avoids incoherence with the previous stages. Do not overdrive your claims without a possibility to substantiate.

Explain- How can I communicate my results? What does my approach solve? What are the limitations of my approach?

Although written from a context of scientific publication, this approach is applicable for technical writing, product marketing, technical/sales presentations or for improving your dissertation. Apply the same and let me know the results.