As the CEO of 4 Spires, Inc, a leading provider of internet-based solutions that help to establish, make, and keep person-to-person commitments I will be using this blog to stimulate conversations that examine how work gets done in our modern world. As you read further, you will see that I have some strong feelings about doing my small part to change that world by improving the way we communicate with each other about taking collaborative action.
A few years ago, I was introduced to a relatively new work management concept called “commitment-based management“. The theory underlying this concept has been around for over 2 decades, but it has only recently begun to enter the mainstream of modern management practice.
The core idea is simple – people accomplish more of those tasks to which they are committed. Mounting case study evidence shows organizations that adopt commitment-based management practices achieve astounding and rapid improvements in virtually all measures of performance including reduced cycle times, reduced costs, increased sales, improved project success rates, as well as improved morale and employee engagement.
The rigorous use of a simple conversation-based-commitment model clarifies ownership, makes it clear who owns the next act, and enables tracking the agreements that have been made from the perspective of both the requestor and the performer. The idea is generic and universal with applications across virtually all business sectors and sizes. Though the idea and concept is simple, in practice it has profound implications which I will be trying to illuminate in this series of articles.
The name for this blog was carefully chosen – reversing the word order imparts a key message. Commitments are about conversations. All collaborative action is fundamentally based on a conversation between a requester and a performer. The structure, the quality, and the mood of the parties engaged have a lot to do with crafting effective commitments.
The practice is simple – the two parties engage in an explicit conversation in which a clear commitment to deliver is negotiated, agreed, and completed. The idea is, in fact, obvious, but careful observation shows that this rarely occurs. Our common work norms do not support making real commitments and most task-related conversations are fractured and incomplete. Requests are poorly formed, tasks are assigned without obtaining real agreements from performers, deliveries are made haphazardly, and there is rarely a clear statement of satisfaction by the requester. The result is missed deadlines, wasted effort, and low trust.
Beyond the evidence, the idea immediately resonated with me, and having spent now 25 years developing workflow management software applications, I began thinking about how software could support the practices and behaviors of making and keeping commitments. The result of 3 years of ruminations is 4 Spires, Inc. which was founded in 2007 with a vision to create business software applications that change the way work gets done through collaborative efforts. We are interested in promoting new practices where two people engage in a closed-loop conversation about their commitments to each other.
In future articles I will attempt to engage with readers in related topics on accountability, trust, collaboration, execution, workforce analytics, organization development, the new workforce, and performance management. I look forward to your participation in these conversations.