the bare minimum is insufficient.

No one is ever going to appreciate a person who just does exactly what they are supposed to do.

I don’t mean to suggest that completing tasks on-time, and competently is inherently insufficient.  I’m just saying that good enough doesn’t really warrant praise.  Praise is for exceeding expectations.

Some people, and many companies, deal with this fact by habitually under-promising, so they can guarantee over-delivering.  This works fine, but has the effect of underwhelming clients during a crucial phase, when you’re still trying to hook them.

The solution I aim for is to use the approach, and the creativity and strategy behind it, as a way of creating the interest, hooking the people I work with, and over-promising without committing to results that aren’t reasonable.

Of course, I will still under-sell the potential results.  The last thing anyone wants is a client expecting a best case scenario, and not getting it.  But if I’m going to impress someone with my pitch, it’s bad strategy to attempt to impress them preemptively with the results, rather than with the ambition and beauty of the strategy.

The more important part, though, is that a strategy or approach that impresses a client is more likely to bring intense work and dedication out of people on the implementation side - you don’t get people to work harder than they intend to by telling them they need to achieve impossible results.  You do it by giving them a process that is interesting enough to care about.

Alternately, you can under-promise, get people to do nothing more than what is expected, and then complain about your reputation, or lack thereof as ‘okay’.