You Get What You Inspect
We are creaturers of habit. Our education and life experiences teach us to expect certain outcomes for certain inputs. You do this and you get that. We learn what to expect. In science, that’s good. It’s all about prediction and knowing what to expect.
It doesn’t always work for people. In fact, people are pretty unpredictable.
A good management tool – and it’s simple – is this; you get what you inspect, not what you expect. Anytime you assign a task to someone, no matter how trivial, you should go inspect to make sure the task is going according to your expectations. It’s not rude or condescending to inspect and it usually doesn’t cost you anything.
If you just wait for the results, you may get something other than what you expected. After all, people do funny things. You may expect “x” and get “y”.