Chidi’s company in Abuja had bought a new tracking system for its fleet. Every truck would carry a device. Routes would be planned by software, deliveries confirmed on a screen, and customers told automatically where their goods were. The managing director gave Chidi, the operations manager, ninety days to make it work.
Chidi was excited. He had seen the system run in a demonstration and knew it could save the company a great deal of money. On a Monday morning he gathered the dispatchers and drivers in the yard and announced the plan. He spoke for fifteen minutes about efficiency, fuel savings and customer satisfaction. Then he asked if there were any questions.
There were none. There was only silence, and folded arms.
By Wednesday, a rumour had gone round that half the dispatchers would be sacked. By Friday, two drivers had “lost” their devices. The following week the senior dispatcher, a man named Bello who had worked at the company for nineteen years, stopped answering Chidi’s calls about the training schedule.
That weekend Amaka found her husband at the dining table at midnight, staring at a spreadsheet. “The system works,” he said. “Why won’t they let it work?”
She sat down beside him. “Did you ask them what they are afraid of?”
He had not. He had counted the cost of the software, the devices and the fuel. He had not counted the cost to the people. And he had spoken to them, not with them.
Two elements that work as one
Thoroughness and tact are two of the most important elements in setting, meeting and exceeding expectations. They are different, and they need each other. These two must work in harmony for an expectation to be birthed and fulfilled.
Thoroughness is a commitment to excellence that refuses to be sloppy. It considers every aspect of a task before acting. It sticks to the smallest detail surrounding the delivery of an expectation, and it follows through to the end.
Tact is a keen sense of what to do and say in difficult or delicate situations. It produces an insightful, strategic plan for the people side of an expectation. Tact sees all the stages, from the first idea to the final result, and knows how each one will land on the people involved. Its expression changes with time. What worked yesterday may not work today.
Thoroughness without tact can be correct and still fail, because people resist what is done to them. Tact without thoroughness can be pleasant and still fail, because kind words do not finish towers. Chidi had a thorough plan for the machines and no plan at all for the people.
Count the cost
Jesus asked a question every builder should hear. “For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?” (Luke 14:28). He went on to describe what happens to the builder who did not: “Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish” (Luke 14:29–30).
Follow through to the end
Thoroughness is not only about planning. It is about finishing. Many expectations die not at the beginning, where enthusiasm is high, but in the long middle, where the work is dull and the results are slow.
Paul compared himself to an athlete who is “temperate in all things” and who runs “not as uncertainly.” He fought “not as one that beateth the air.” A thorough person does not swing wildly. Every effort is aimed. Every loose end is tied. They check whether the delivery actually arrived, not only whether the truck left.
The work of tact
Tact is sometimes expressed as diplomacy: a sense of what to do to avoid unnecessary error, defuse tension and prevent conflict. Jesus gave a striking instruction about this. “Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison” (Matthew 5:25).
One language
The story of Babel is usually told as a warning, and it is one. But hidden inside it is a remarkable statement about the power of a united group. “And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do” (Genesis 11:6).
What has changed since the first edition
The last ten years have brought a wave of new technology into ordinary workplaces. Tracking systems, digital payments, online forms, and now artificial intelligence tools that write, summarise and answer questions. Every one of these changes carries an expectation: that the work will be faster, cheaper or better.
Many of those expectations fail for the reason Chidi’s nearly did. The technology is counted thoroughly. The people are not. Workers who fear being replaced will quietly resist, and a tool that people resist will not deliver what it promised. In this season, tact is not a soft skill. It is often the difference between an expensive failure and a real result.
Dig this week
- Sit down and count the full cost of one expectation. Write at least ten items, including the time, the energy, the relationships it will touch and the fears it may raise in others.
- Write one rule: If I feel tension with someone about this, then I will talk to them within forty-eight hours, in person or by call, before I say anything about it to anyone else.
- Make room as if it is coming. Prepare the follow-through now: write down how you will check, after the expectation is met, that it actually stayed met.
Questions to ponder
- Think of a project that failed or stalled. Did it fail for lack of thoroughness, lack of tact, or both?
- How patient are you with people, especially those who do not understand as quickly as you do?
- Who is the “Bello” in your current expectation, the person whose fear or experience you have not yet asked about?
- Is there an adversary you need to agree with quickly? What is true in their complaint?
- What is one hard conversation you have been having by text that should be had face to face?
More questions for small groups are in the book.
Lord, give me the patience to count the cost before I build, the grace to speak with people and not at them, and the endurance to follow through to the end.
How ready are you for what you are expecting?
Score yourself on all eleven elements in about two minutes. You will see where to dig first.