Bruce's Classic - How to Build a Promises Based Company and Culture

    How often have you heard someone say, or even a business promise, that we "do what we say we will do."  Nary once have I ever heard say, "we don't keep our commitments."  Working with business leaders lead me to the observation that far fewer promises were being kept than made. Indeed there may even be a bit of a charade going on that the promisor and promisee (sorry terminology left over from my lawyer days creeps in periodically) never had clarity in the first place about what the promise was.

    Several years ago I was facilitating a management team meeting for a small company. A question came up regarding the delivery of the final version of a critical software program. The Vice President of IT was asked when the version was to be delivered. The dialogue went something like this:

“What day next week?  Wednesday

What time of day?  5:00

When you say delivered do you mean fully functional, operational and tested for use by all users?  Yes

Can you remind us all of the key deliverables so that we all have the same understanding? Yes, they are.....!”

    What are the consequences to your fellow team members and the clients of the firm of either fulfilling delivery or not as described on next Wed. 5:00?

    After exploring with the team the consequences I turned to the other team members and asked.

"Is there anyone here that believes that Joe (VP IT) will deliver as promised?”

Not one single team member believed that he would.

I then asked, “Why didn't anyone say anything? Why was it up to an outsider to raise the issue? “

Turning to Joe: "You’re not going to deliver as promised next Wed. @5:00, are you? Sheepishly,No!”

“Why did you promise?  I didn't want to let CEO down" Not very logical but nevertheless the answer.

Directing my attention to the other team members, "If none of you believed that Joe was going to deliver, why didn't any of you say something?"

    After telling a version of this real life story to CEO and Executive Groups, I received several answers, observations, and perhaps even a few conclusions.   But before we get to that, let's revisit the work of Jerry Harvey. Harvey was the architect of the series of articles that lead to the book "Abilene Paradox." In his immensely humorous and entertaining style, Harvey reminds us that most often "it's not what we disagree on that gets us into trouble but rather what we agree on."  To my way of thinking the management team in my story took a mini trip to Abilene that Jerry Harvey would have found worthy (hot and dusty as well.)

    Put aside for the moment the root causes and Harvey's analysis of the cure to the taking of the trip.

and return to the theme of this post.  The management team in my story clearly had a "culture" of not keeping promises.  If they couldn't keep promises (commitments) to each other, how likely is it they will keep them to clients/customers?

    If this is true, how could that culture be changed? My simple answer was "One Promise at a Time".

Borrowing and building on the adage that what gets measured gets done, this leads to the tracking

or measuring of promises made and promises kept.

    Since I don't like to suggest to others that which I would not do myself, about six months ago I launched my own non-scientific experiment of keeping score of the number  of "promises made and kept".

    Please think about it for a minute. If you truly tracked or kept score, what would be the consequences?   A few are perhaps, obvious:

1. More promise are kept

2. Fewer promises are made

3. More clarity about the actual promise

4. We would require more clarity about promises made to us

5. We would hold other's accountable for the promise made to us

    Well, the six months results are in. The good news is I've made progress in many respects. The less than good news is that I have a ways to go to keeping all promises made. The other good news is, I "score" better in my personal life’s promises than the work related promises I make.

    What would happen to you, to your family, team or organization if you kept score of "promises made and promises kept?  Give it a try and let us know the results!

Comments

[Bruce Peters]

Lisa,
Thanks for your comments. If you were to keep score what would be a good one?
B

[Lisa Jackson]

Bruce – great post. You just hit THE crux of the problems we are having with engagement, ownership, and accountability.

I resonated with 3 elements in particular:

1)Keeping agreements with oneself is a powerful practice in modeling accountability – people will do what you do, not what you say. Every one of us can get better at this - it's a truly lifelong “aspirational” value. Kudos to you for transparency and bold action.

2)A culture that has learning as its central value will ask questions like “What CAN I agree to?” “What will I do?” "What does make sense to commit to?" Brilliant to boil that down to "one promise at a time."

3)The #1 desperately needed skill in every part of our society - business, government, non-profit, education - is the ability to tell the truth without blame or judgment – and create valuable conversations out of disagreement.

Here's to more leadership - onward!

[Dale Goldstein]

things i've learned about commitments:

1. commitments need to be specific in action, time and place. otherwise, it's easy to slip out the back or side door

2. better to undercommit than overcommit. if you overcommit and don't honor your commitment, you may get down on yourself, not trust yourself, and feed a negative self-concept, which will perpetuate your breaking commitments in the future

3. make sure you can honor your commitment before you make it. if people can't trust you, you can't have intimacy in relationship

4. commitments aren't chiseled in granite. people change over time (hopefully). if you can no longer honor your commitment because it is no longer right for you, make sure you tell the person you made the commitment to exactly why you can no longer honor it...

dale goldstein

[twitter.com/Tom_Collins]

Hey, Bruce, do you have any specific Robert Quinn references (maybe online resources) we could check out on this topic?

You prompt us to think deeper about keeping our word in the difficult situations when the "right" thing to do may not be obvious.

Perhaps Ellen's suggestion that we "practice" when it ought to be easy - despite daily evidence to the contrary - so that it becomes a habit. But will keeping our word by habit ensure that it will be "right" in the tough situations?

Or is that a form of "foolish consistency"?

Tom

[Bruce Peters]

Thank you Ram and Ellen for your thoughtful and insightful comments. Question came up the other day. Is it possible that living up to you "promise" could be harmful to others?
If so, what to do?
I like the work of Robert Quinn about the possibility of eliminating hypocritical actions in our lives. He challenges that it is the major step in people and organizations to living and working with congruity.

[Ellen Weber]

What an interesting discussion on promises kept - thanks. Yes I agree, the examples here clearly speak to a separation between one's integrity and one's leadership responsibility.

How sad that we as a business culture, have at times lost the value of keeping a simple promise as if "life itself was secondary to keeping one's word."

Thanks to you both - Bruce and Ram - for the way you each have modeled that promise keeping value to inspire so many of us.

Flip side of this discussion is a real brainpower builder I've found, in that we can distinguish our deeper character and mark our higher call - simply by how we keep our word to those around us! How so?

Return a call we offered to do; respond to a reminder another makes; reward a person we promised to reward; keep a meeting date even when we have to change our schedule to do so - and so on. The discussion here is compelling enough to emphasize the value of keeping one's word daily - so that we remember to do so in vital situations.