No surprises

I see that Jack Welch just body-slammed his hand-picked successor at GE, Jeff Immelt, in the media- Immelt broke sacred trust- he predicted he would hit earnings for the quarter and then surprised his investors by missing the projection.

Whales really don't like surprises- not that any one else does. But the stock markets have become ruthless about it- even if the news is better than what was projected to be. It comes down to this- no surprises, period. We see this get fouled up alot through these approaches-

1. Delay and hope for the best - people put off telling the client hoping that they can fix the problem and the client will never know, or that they can take steps that will mitigate the damages before the client finds out.
2. Spin doctor - create a story or a scenario where the problem looks like it is the client's fault and that we are actually the heroes.
3. As little as possible - this minimalist approach gives the client barely the basics of the problem and leaves them with a "trust me, I'll handle this" answer.

In the spirit of full-disclosure, I want to admit I have done all of these- and they have worked some of the time. The problem is that when they didn't, the blast-zone was so big that I have gone another way:

Full-disclosure with a chosen solution as early as possible.

I'm not preaching. It has just been my experience that going to the client with the real information along with the approach we are taking is best. Then following up with high-frequency and regularity as we are fixing the problem.

I had a utility company who did this along time ago- We had a power outage and they called back every hour on the hour to tell us what was being done and how much longer it would take, (this was back when phones were simple and came out of separate lines in your house to corded contraptions). Lot's of peace of mind, customer satisfaction and confidence.