There’s a word, a notion, a feeling, a goal that has a place in your life as it has in mine. And in many other lives. Expect to discover it on this page, and to understand its importance better because of my drawing your attention to it.
There is a reason why I am suggesting to you at the outset that a) you should have an expectation from this page, b) what kind/manner of expectation to have regarding it. Also, this very reason for a) and b) will also get revealed.
“Satisfaction”. Now that’s not a word I used to pay much attention to.
Peace, dignity, conscience, liberal… yes, these are words that have seemed very important. I have thought about those, off and on. I also seem to have spent more time mulling over what we mean by rock and roll, equality, and illusion. But this song by Simon and Garfunkel with a very unlikely title, “Got to keep the Customer satisfied” drew my curiosity. It sounds akin in spirit to a Bob Dylan song ( yes, I know that S & G’s “A Simple Desultory Philippic” is a musical snub to Bob ) called “You Gotta Serve Somebody”.
Towards what good and in whose benefit is an action undertaken ? Somewhere all of this holds the key to the question “Why?” Why do something or anything? Will the result please someone I want to please and/or will it please me?
And if I want to do something in order to please someone, how do I believe that doing this will lead up to something that will in turn please me? How can we as individuals and organizations work out “satisfaction structures” or “satisfaction models” which will clarify the parties who must get satisfied, and their levels of satisfaction? Sure, by now, everyone knows about SLAs (Service Level Agreement) wherein we exactly specify our expectations to the provider of a service.
But if cribbing, moping, lamentation, tirades, rants and complaints have become more frequently heard and welcomed these days – whether about the weather, city life, airline food, the elderly, school authorities or whatever, it’s also led us to understand satisfaction even less. Thus placing it beyond hope.
Am I here dissatisfied with the extent to which everyone understands or even thinks about satisfaction? Am I now satisfied that I have decided to focus on bringing about some general good by examining the concept of satisfaction closely? Yes, and Yes. ( It also gives me satisfaction to be able to use the affirmative Yes now and then!)
To have a clear sense of satisfaction/dissatisfaction, I need to detail out what I wish from something – that something being a restaurant, a relationship or a visit to the family doctor. Now most of us think about evaluations only post-facto. That’s to say I had no idea what I expected from a restaurant, but somehow I am able to say afterwards how much I liked it and also explain why it was better or worse than an earlier experience.
Now this is much like performing an experiment without a hypothesis. After you’ve proceeded thus, you describe the experiment in detail. And while doing this, you might perhaps uncover a hypothesis to it!! If you think ( like I used to) that satisfaction is something that might happen subsequent to an action… I believe you will discover that it’s more likely to happen if you had formed a definite guess about what to expect from the action (initiating a relationship, visiting a doctor, trying out a restaurant).
For now, I am satisfied with what I have managed to say on the subject. I would like that you should hold the expectation of more. And it will be satisfying to me to fulfill your expectation.
Do tell me here if the expectation I suggested that you should have at the beginning of this post has been met entirely, partially, or not at all…. has it gone a step towards more satisfaction for you?
Cy Z fus on Skis
1 comment:
The satisfaction of understanding how conditions apply!
It's all about more or less, more or less! Satisfaction seems like a desirable state that is achieved at a particular "right level". When there is neither a feeling of shortfall nor of excess. Okay, maybe a slight amount of excess helps to double-confirm that satisfaction has been reached :-)
Somewhere along, the forming of estimates or expectations will help. The use of gradations/markings. Only then can we keep track of how much - whether time, quantity, volume, frequency etc.
For instance, let's say, one picks up a novel that promises to be interesting, and there is some time in hand, let's say at least a few hours. Typically, we start browsing and if it is at all readable, and there isn't any major interruption, one would just carry on. How would it be to form an estimate of how many pages one expects to do, and how much time one expects to give it at the first sitting? Not as a restrictive measure but purely to form an estimate?
The basic idea is that a sense of adequacy will come into being only either a natural limit is reached or there is a sufficiency estimate. Which means that it is significant and useful to develop sufficiency estimates.
This will help in two ways : a timely setting of estimates will help in guiding the activity because there is better planning of inputs and process time. So the activity is conducted in a satisfactory manner. Thus, satisfaction is an end-state, and it is usually achieved when an activity or process takes place in a satisfactory way i.e. satisfies a set of conditions.
Now, as to the conditions, these are sometimes external constraints in a situation, or of one's body or stamina, or they are a set of parameters known to produce a certain desired outcome. ( Experiments are a different matter, and must be gone into separately). We are mindful of the adherence/conformity to ensure the conditions are satisfied because this will maximise the prospect of succeeding in the activity's goal.
Thus, the necessity for defining and describing satisfaction can be readily appreciated.
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