Why you don’t define desired outcome

During multiple meetings this week (online, obviously), the same challenge came up: companies and their customers are extremely poor at precisely defining what the desired outcome is that they’re looking to accomplish. At first blush, every person that I meet claims to know exactly what he or she is looking to achieve, but when push comes to shove and the individual is asked to define this more precisely, the lack of specificity rapidly starts to become apparent.

This is, of course, far from the first time that I’m exposed to this and the interesting thing is that there’s a variety of words that companies will use to cover up the lack of specificity. Words like customer value, quality, speed, reliable and robust are often used as generic terms used to look good but that prove to be void of any real meaning when investigated in more depth.