My friend Jane wants to make a distinction between an ‘excuse’ and an ‘explanation’. She argues that leaders and supervisors should be more tolerant to ‘explanations’ than to ’excuses’. I have differed on this and have argued that a ‘deliverable’ is just a ‘deliverable’. It is categorical. You have either delivered as expected or you have not. The rest are just stories-excuses or explanations regardless. The truth is that we have perfected the art of crafting excuses to ‘explain’ away our failures or shortcomings. The verbs, adverbs, adjectives we use in the explanations for failing to deliver to expectations could make the author of the Webster dictionary look like a kindergarten entrant.    It was during one of our office retreats that we defined who our client was and what we delivered to the client. We came up with different clients— supervisors, team members, individual staff members, development partners, implementing partners etc. They were internal and external clients. Regardless of who the clients were there were expectations we had to meet in form of deliverable to satisfy the client.

Excuses reflect negatively on you as a worker whether they are carefully crafted as explanations or not.  They are a failure in accountability!  

If your client perception of what you delivered is lower than their expectation-the delivery they had “in mind”-, negative satisfaction results regardless of the excuse or explanation you give.  If, however, your client perception of the value you delivered exceeds their expectation, you have created a positive level of satisfaction. The more the client perception is above their expectation; the happier they are even if there could have been good reasons or explanations for you not to have delivered so well!   Therefore, it is essential for employees or workers to effectively manage client satisfaction if they are to have a smooth upward progression in their careers. The explanations may be plausible but they are merely excuses if expectations are not met.

The bottom line is: excuses reflect negatively on you as a worker whether they are carefully crafted as explanations or not.  They are a failure in accountability!  In today’s competitive marketplace where people compete for job placements, client satisfaction is seen as a key differentiator in career progression EE