JC Quintana

You cannot start with number one and stay in number one, and you cannot start with number seven unless you address the other six.

So the awareness is the most important aspect of my work and what I try to do.

And by that, I mean that if I sit down with you, I want to be aware of

that I understand expectations for our relationship based on those seven things.

Ideally, I would love to walk in the door saying, okay, I know the value this person expects and the cost it's going to take from a perspective of communication, engagement, culture, accountability, knowledge, transparency.

And then based on that, I'm going to stage or design an experience that allows them to get what they need without those other things costing them too much.

So awareness is number one.

But in my work, it has taken a lot of different shapes.

Most of the time, and it's kind of funny because when I wrote the book, I thought, oh my gosh, this book is going to sell thousands of copies by HR people and, you know, like chief people officers are going to buy the books for everybody.

And it turns out that that's not really who started buying my book.

The highest sale on my book

at any given event or company was for professional services companies because they themselves did not know how to manage expectations with their peers, with their company, and with the client, right?

Yeah.

Like project managers would come in and say, well, my expectation is that we get this done on time and on budget.

Well, what are the expectations of your peers to make that get to time and budget?

What are the expectations of your clients?

Yeah, a lot of professional services team, what they'll do is they know that they only have one.

You know, because time and materials, right?

You're building for your time.

So they know they only have maybe five, 15 minutes with a customer.