In a previous post, I talked about the saying “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” In business, no matter how well you craft a solution, if it’s not what the end-user wants, they’re not going to be too keen on using it.

Now, having said that, imagine you’re on the other side of this equation. You’re the horse (sorry) and you’re being asked to drink the water so thoughtfully provided to you.

The programmer you’ve been working with invites you to come down to see the fruits of his labor. You’re excited, he’s excited … even his Dilbert poster looks excited. There’s a shiny, new icon on the desktop. You double-click and up pops the screen you’ve been waiting for …

Wait a sec. What the … ? This is *nothing* like you envisioned! Where’s the sort function and the bold-facing and the button to automatically create your report for you and the flowers and the little doggy and … OMG your life is over!!!

Take a breath, please. It’s not the end of the world, and this can be resolved without loss of life or limb.

Let’s think back to when you had the meeting with the programmer. You started talking about your project and he got a far-away look in his eyes? His face got flushed and he started using a bunch of acronyms you didn’t understand? He might have even started typing feverishly (coding) while you were still talking about the all-important report button. Yep. It was about that time when your project became his project (and seemingly took on a life of its own).

You’re furious (perhaps justifiably) because this … person … has just wasted 5 weeks of your time. Or has he? Let’s take another deep breath, suspend our thoughts of bodily injury, and actually look at what has been created for you.

Hmm. That’s kind of neat. I wouldn’t have thought of doing it that way, but OK … that’ll work. Oh, you can click over here to get to the sort. And you can actually sort on all fields? Cool, I’d only asked for those three. No flowers, but the bunnies are nice. I *have* to have that report button, though.

OK, now you can exhale. You kept an open mind and guess what? This is something you can build on. Now it’s time for phase 2. Let’s merge our two thought processes into a solution that works well for everyone.

That didn’t taste so bad, did it?