Promises in the Workplace
“Promises are meant to be broken.” – Ancient Hindu Proverb (well, not really)
We all make promises at work
We make promises to our supervisors, colleagues, or clients.
We don’t necessarily keep them, but we make them anyway.
When we break promises we look like jerks (or incompetent, or both). When we keep them, people expect it and they just think you’re doing your job.
How do you keep promises and still get that wow factor?
- Under-promise.
- Over-deliver.
- Quantify everything.
To under-promise is to make a public commitment to do something, but this something is actually much less than what you have planned.
- If you think you can finish a job in 2 days, tell your boss you can finish it in 4.
- If you’re planning to raise monthly sales by 40%, tell everyone you’ll try to raise it by 10%.
Of course, when you eventually deliver the promise, you would’ve either met their expectations or exceeded them – since you set their expectations lower than what you could achieve. In either case, you get a positive reaction.
Which is infinitely better than the embarrassment you’ll face if you don’t deliver what you promised.
Most business people make the mistake of promising big, and the delivery rarely lives up to the promise. If it does, you’re lucky – but this is rare.
Another important thing to remember is to quantify. From the steps you need to take to fulfill your promise, to listing the measurable, concrete data that will qualify whether you’ve fulfilled your promise or not.Why is this important?
- You can actually measure whether you’ve accomplished what you set out to do, or whether you fell short of it or exceeded it.
- There will be a specific definition of what your goals are. Instead of saying an abstract sentence like “I’ll work harder.” say “I’ll always arrive early and turn in my reports the day before the deadline.”A vague and subjective promise such as “work harder” means different things to different people. Quantifying avoids miscommunication.
How good are you at keeping your promises? I currently rate myself 6.5 out of 10. How would you evaluate yourself? What was the last professional promise you made? How did you fare in keeping it?
Image by Tomas Inny from sxc.hu
There actually is software that’s now being tested to manage promises in working groups (or even just between two people.)
I have had the benefit of trialling it for myself over the past few months and will write a review of it soon on my website.
It takes away all the mystery about who is keeping and not keeping their promises, as it tracks each person’s ability to keep promises, and also gives users chance to rate each other in their ability to meet each promise.
Needless to say, it changes the culture of companies that use it! The name for it at the moment is Promisystem, but it’s hard to find any reference to it on the internet at the moment.
Thanks for the tip :) I’ll look out for that app and hopefully review it in the future.