Whadda ya expect?

We were enjoying an early dinner at a local restaurant recently (Takoda Tavern).  The owner came around to welcome us adding a nice, personal touch to our experience.  I told him I enjoyed his approach to setting customer expectations:

We’ve heard lots of cliches about expectations, true?  Perhaps the adage, “Under promise; over deliver” is most familiar.  I had my own experience with setting, or shall I say mis-setting, expectations my freshman year at college.  It actually started my senior year of high school.  One of my teammates, Gary Nottleman, thought it would be humorous if we wore jingle bells on our shoes during the Proviso West Holiday Tournament.  We exceeded expectations in that tournament and decided to wear bells for the rest of the season. 

Fast forward to the fall of that same year and my first day of basketball tryouts at Knox College.  By then, I had forgotten all about bells on my shoes.  I was so nervous that first day I didn’t pay attention to them when I took the floor.  Our coach Bill Foss, also an assistant coach on the football team, was a celebrated athlete himself.  Meeting him for the first time on that court I could tell Coach Foss had a tough-nosed, no nonsense approach.  That’s when I caught sight of him glancing at my shoes. 

Remaining expressionless, he went to the equipment locker and pulled out a linebacker blocking pad from the football gear.  He blew the whistle and we gathered around; he would run a rebounding drill and would obviously “make contact” as we went up for the ball.  Turning to look me straight in the eye he said, “You’re first”. 

That’s when I realized I had lowered the expectations-bar with those jingle bells.  Coach Foss was about to test my toughness.  As I stepped into position, I reached down and pulled a mouth-guard from my sock to protect my teeth.  I had actually knocked out my front tooth in the Proviso West tournament but played on.  Following the game, I had a false tooth installed and the dentist instructed me to wear a mouth-guard if I planned to continue playing ball. 

With mouth-guard in place, my new coach was surprised.  (It was an era before mouth-guards were common in basketball.)  He proceeded with his “full-contact” drill; I proved to be as the song said “tough enough”; and went on to collegiate success culminating with induction into the Knox Lombard Athletic Hall of Fame. 

Lowering the bar was one way to exceed expectations I suppose.  I did it myself, even if by accident.  But excellence is actually about raising the bar, true?  Here’s one example showing the power of setting high expectations: 

The Value of Publicity 

There are six peaks in Europe higher than the Matterhorn. 

Name One. 

Harry Beckwith 

Our meal at Takoda was delightful.  If you decide to visit, don’t let their sign set the wrong expectations. 

GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.