You Fixed It, But Their Complaint Won't Go Away. Why?

You explained it. You fixed it. You rolled it out. And the other person still seems unhappy about something. Sound familiar?

Projects use the word “done” a lot.

Handled. Explained. Fixed. Rolled out.

But our side finishing its work and the other person’s problem going away are not the same thing.

Mix these two up, and the work quietly turns into self-satisfaction.

The fix we designed went in exactly as planned. But what the other person was originally struggling with is still there.

That happens more often than you’d think.

So the last thing to check isn’t only “did we do what we planned to do.”

It’s whether the state of the person who was struggling in the first place has actually changed.

This isn’t only about work with customers.

I think the same is true for internal improvements, system rollouts, and how a team is run.

We introduced it. We explained it. We wrote the rule.

Did the people using it end up with fewer problems, afterward?

Next time I’m about to report something as “done,” I want to ask myself one more question first: what’s the current state of the thing the other person was originally struggling with? If I can’t answer that, it isn’t done yet.

Watch the change, not the deliverable.

The same thing applies to work that’s mostly about passing information along.