He had spent a substantial amount on a promotional campaign. The suppliers had done the minimum. A number of things that seemed obvious to him had not been done, but they had not been included in the agreement either.
I did not know those suppliers. What interested me was the assumption underneath the complaint.
Whenever we explain work to a supplier or a colleague, we bring a collection of things that seem normal to us. We may not even think of mentioning them.
They are not necessarily normal to the other person.
This is why the delegation process I teach goes into an almost obsessive exploration of the different parts of a job. What needs to happen, from angles that may seem obvious until somebody else has to do it.
The answer cannot be to stop working with other people. You still need to hand work over. You need a better way to do it, accepting that a human system will not produce perfection every time.
Around the same time, I sent my team a message congratulating them on their work. What mattered to me was creating a way of working that let us execute and get things done.
Marketing campaigns are never perfect. Some work. Others do not.
If we become faster, we can identify the bad ideas without putting too much time and money into them. We can also find more of the good ideas that help the company grow.
That is the point I was making to the team. I want the work to move, and I want us to get better at doing it.