Your brain needs to see specific details of what you want and only at that point do you have a chance of getting it. Think of it as projecting the image you have in mind onto a screen in the back of your mind. It’s that easy. Add color and you’ll see beyond black and white silhouettes. Throw in shapes and parameters to push you your ideas into products. Weave your abstracts into concretes and clarity comes to targets you chase.
The reason so few folks find quality results, is because they don’t 
know what these results look like. Have you noticed that? When we know exactly what we’re after, and when we expect specific results, the brain finds unique pathways to take us there.
How often have you met people who have no idea what they want… and yet they seem to bemoan the fact they can’t get ahead? A frustrated manager approached me after a talk I gave about highlighting specific expectations so our brains know what to go after. “I give him what he asks for and it’s never the right thing,” she complained. Yet when I asked him to list what he wanted he seemed unclear. So did fellow workers who rallied to her side. “I doubt if he knows himself what he wants!” one man shot back, when I suggested they ask him. “And what he expects changes from day to day,” they complained.
Lack of specific expectations frustrates people, from employees to college students. And we’ve all paid the price. One university professor laughed this fact off, “I don’t know what I want myself till I see it in students’ projects,” she laughed. Her students seemed less amused however, as they struggled to complete foggy assignments, never knowing if they achieved their prof’s hidden and shifting agendas.
Without clear expectations we risk sloppy performances, and that leads often to stagnation. How does your workplace rate? Give people too few expectations and they give you back mediocrity… or less.
In brain based organizations … managers provide clear expectations in the form of checklists … which highlight details expected in any project. Furthermore… the expectations are collaborated with people who will carry out the work … so that creativity is emphasized.
Have you ever offered too few expectations and then had folks come up with, sloppy results … far different from the masterpiece you had in mind?
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