HBR shares how to move your stalled projects forward promise-based management Harvard Business Review offers a great service that sends subscribers a daily management tip taken from an HBR article. The following tip was discovered earlier this week. This Management Tip was taken from the Harvard Business Review article “Promise Based Management: The Essence of Execution”, by Donald N. Sull, and Charles Spinosa. April 2007. Even the most well-run companies can lose momentum on critical initiatives. Important work is left unfinished. Emerging opportunities get ignored. What are the culprits? Poorly written promises — these personal pledges employees make to satisfy stakeholders within and outside your organization. Work will move forward if employees are taught to craft promises carefully. Onekey to a well-crafted promise is explicitness — especially when employees andstakeholders have different cultural backgrounds or a promise involves anabstract construct (“optimization,” “innovation”) subject to multipleinterpretations. To avoid confusion, parties should make clear requests from the beginning, provide progress reports and define success (or failure) at the time of delivery. What makes a promise clear? There are five elements, and five other characteristics that make a promise reliable. I use the term “elements” for essential parts. It is impossible to promise anything if any of these parts are missing. These elements are:

By GregaryOn August 19, 2022

Customer

This person is listening to the commitment. If the customer isn’t listening, there won’t be a commitment.

Performer

This is the person who makes the promise. This is usually done by speaking, but tokens of promise can also be used. I could, for example, nod my head “yes” in order to indicate, I will do this.

Conditions for Satisfaction

This is the what is available when the promise is fulfilled. The conditions are often described using nouns or adjectives. (Verbs, adverbs, and other ambiguous terms can make promises seem ambiguous. For example, “Big Mac” is a name for two all-beef patties with special sauce, lettuce and cheese, pickles, onions, and a sesame seed bun. Did you spot any verbs or adjectivs?

Completion Time

This is the time at which the performer says the conditions of satisfaction will be met. The term “due date” can be misleading in that it expresses the promised completion time. Due dates are often set without regard to when something will be made available.

Future Action

We can always do more to fulfill our promises.

We assess reliability. These are the five most commonly accepted characteristics.

Competence to Perform

You have the skills and the wherewithal to fulfill the promise.

Estimate of Effort

You have made a concentrated effort to achieve the conditions of satisfaction.

Allocation of Capacity

You have given yourself the time to concentrate your efforts.

Responsibilities

In spite of the fact that you don’t know what the future holds, you are willing to do whatever it takes to keep the promise. You must keep your promise and clean up the mess if you fail.

Sincerity

You are not having a private, unspoken conversation that is contrary to the promise you are making.

Sull and Spinosa seem to be right about their claims. They didn’t tell you what to pay attention in promising conversations. These 5 elements and 5 characteristics can help you bring reliability to your project situations.