Yippee!

The Steganos story so far: problems, issues, silence from "customer service" (sic), emailed then spoke to CEO...

After another couple of weeks of silence - surprising in that the CEO seemed to appreciate my position - I sent him another email (pointing out it had been a while since I heard from him and months since I had anything useful from "customer service") and a short while later the UK Sales Manager called me.

All hail Victoria Satterly! She listened, she had read the previous emails, she took notes (and she managed my telephonic windbagging very nicely) and she promised to get back to me within 2 working days.

And she did - she even had some answers directly from the Development Team! OK, so some of the problems aren't fixed - but some may be very soon (August?) - and some had no answers yet, but at least I know what the situation is - which, in the case of the failure to write >2GB Portable Safes to DVD means it's worth developing a work-around.

Information! Dontcha love it?

Steganos is slowly dragging itself out of the stone-age - which on the other hand fortunately means that they haven't even heard of such things as "Expectation Management". What does "Expecation Management" mean? For the benefit of the uninitiated /non-consultant /non-business breed it means simply "giving the customer bad news - late".

"Expectation Management" is worse than a euphemism: it is prima facie evidence of a breakdown in communication - if you have good relations and communication with your customer or client you simply don't need to "manage" their expectations (i.e. tell them the job is going to be late, go over-budget, fail to meet the specification, etc. or all of the foregoing).

"Expectation Management" is, in my opinion symptomatic of a dysfunctional organisational, of a culture of acceptable self-delusion. I think I could even make an argument that it is worse than lying as it smacks of incompetence and cowardice, whereas a liar has to be brave and competent - even if they are relaxed about ethics. I have always told people in business that I hate surprises: if you screw up or something goes wrong, tell me - and tell me immediately! - and I will support you for your honesty; if on the other hand I find out that you screwed up - and know it - and concealed it, then I will... be very unpleasant in a harsh but caringly businesslike way... I might read you some of my poetry for instance.

If - when? - I build a business empire I will make "Expectation Management" taboo...

along with a few other things about which more some other time.

Live Long and Grow Radishes!