Category Archives: Commitment Based Management

In the Social Cloud Who Gets the Job Done?

Posted on June 1, 2011 by | Leave a comment

The power of social networks is all the rage.

The headlines promise to “harness the power of networks of people”.  One vendor offering “cutting edge social collaboration tools” promotes a next generation wiki in which an issue or problem is sent out to the larger group for everyone to contribute to and try to solve thereby attracting the collective intelligence and input from the larger group.

This is what “Social” solutions are all about – people connect, author, and post – large groups of people sharing ideas and resources in a common forum.

Broadcasting needs and gathering input from the large social group has value, but social networks do a poor job of coordinating work and actually taking (any) action.   At some point everyone has to get off the network and into the real world to accomplish something.

Groups, be they composed entirely of internal or mixed with internal and external personnel, can generate enormous power and innovative ideas, but groups can also diffuse responsibility and accountability for acting on those ideas; the larger the group, the more diffuse.  Information sharing is much different than taking responsibility or even accountability.  The real lever for taking action is not the one-to-many, but rather the one-to-one relationships.

Consider the oft-quoted, but anonymous story about the four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.

“There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it.  Everybody was sure Somebody would do it.  Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.  Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody’s job.  Everybody thought Anybody would do it but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it.  It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.”

Taking action comes down to two people – one person delivering an outcome and another receiving and acknowledging the outcome.  This one-to-one commitment-building process begins with either a request by a customer or an offer by a provider.  The leader makes a request of the team member, the CEO makes a request of a VP, the Marketing Director makes a request of the Engineering Director, a salesperson makes an offer to a client, etc.

It is this universal pattern that gets things done, and the next generation of productivity tools will focus on enhancing these one-on-one conversations for action so the vision of the group is made true by the actions of its members.

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Posted in Commitment Based Management, Execution, Managed Conversations

Trust Bestowed or Earned – Which Comes First?

Posted on March 3, 2011 by | 2 comments

In an earlier article I commented extensively on Stephen Covey’s book entitled “The Speed of Trust – The One Thing That Changes Everything”.  This article presumes the reader already has a strong appreciation for the importance of trust in improving work relations between people and its multiplicative effect on overall organization performance.  This article offers some insights into the actual practice, even the mechanics, of building trust.

When thinking about the trust-building process, I was immediately confronted with a chicken-and-egg problem: does one party earn the trust of another party first, or does one party start by bestowing trust on the other before it is earned.  I learned a lot about this dynamic from my dog, Zelda.

Zelda is black Labrador and, like most labs, she always wants to be where we are.  Wherever we are in the house she will lay down as near as possible.  In fact, most of the time she lays down exactly under foot, directly in your way, and then proceeds to fall happily asleep.  As I would get up to move past or around her I would have to step very close to her body.  Despite the very real risk of being stepped on accidentally, she would lie there completely still and serene.  It struck me that she was completely confident that I would not hurt her; she had bestowed a high degree of trust in me, and she had done so before I earned it.

We can debate about whether dogs are instinctively trained to trust humans or whether she was bestowing “blind trust”, but what was more interesting was seeing how I behaved in response to receiving this gift.  Seeing, and feeling, the trust she had placed in my behavior, I felt an extraordinary responsibility to be careful to not step on her.  It was very important that I not betray her trust.  I wanted to validate her trust and “earn” what was already given.  It struck me that this is the opposite of our common conception that trust needs to be earned first.

In addition to earning trust, one party can ask for trust, i.e. the performer saying, in effect, “trust me”.  This was the case the first time my son asked to borrow the car keys.  I notice, however, that while my teenager son is constantly pushing the boundaries of our established trust level, he does not ask me for a new level of trust that would be way beyond my comfort zone or the parameters of our existing trust level(s).  We are engaged in the process of building trust.

More precisely it is a reinforcing cycle – a cycle of action and reaction that either builds, maintains or diminishes trust.  The acts of bestowing and earning trust are present in virtually all human interactions.   The result of this cycle of behavior with Zelda is that she and I have an amazing degree of trust in each other.  The actual cycle mechanics are that each person implicitly attempts to match the level of trust either bestowed or asked by the other; i.e. one expects to be trusted to the level of what they have earned in previous interactions, and one bestows trust only up to the level of what they expect the other party can earn.  It goes without saying the cycle is not always smooth and forward.  The cycle with my son is not linear; he is granted more trust the older he gets, but, as with most teenagers, there are also setbacks where trust is damaged and requires rebuilding.

We do not typically bestow trust way beyond what we think is justified based on our expectations of the other person’s response, and, conversely, we do not expect to be granted trust way beyond what we think the other person can accept.  The one who initiates the trust-building cycle limits the strength and dynamism of the cycle by trying to anticipate and match the expected response from the other (i.e. they limit their level of trust based on pre-judgments of the other).

Imagine if this were not the case.  Imagine if the cycle started from within without regard for pre-judgments about in-kind responses, such as Zelda bestowing way more trust in me before I had earned it.  I propose that people who bestow more trust than is “warranted”, or who ask for more trust than they have previously “earned”, build higher levels of trust very much faster.

This is not the same as blind trust.  It would be naïve to overlook the risk associated with such behavior.  In fact, risk is the special ingredient that propels and energizes the whole cycle.  Trust need not be blind.  Having bestowed a great trust does not mean you can not follow up and stay deeply involved in the execution by the other party.  Asking for frequent progress reports may still be appropriate, but the quality and mood of the dialog is entirely different.  Conversely, asking for more trust does not mean you perform in isolation from the stakeholder.  Having taken on more trust, you are obliged to be even more communicative about progress and concerns.

This discussion would not be complete without mentioning the preeminent importance of outcomes.  The trust cycle ultimately depends on whether the performer earned the trust they were given or asked for.  As Stephen Covey says, the performer’s pattern of meeting commitments is the “Big Kahuna” for building trust.  The point of this article is to suggest that managers who bestow trust on performers before it is earned can accelerate the cycle.

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Posted in Commitment Based Management, Performance Management, Trust

Performance Management Does Not Equal Performance Improvement – Improving Systems Requires More Than Paving The Cow Path

Posted on December 6, 2010 by | 1 comment

Performance management systems have been around for over three decades.  As an HR manager at a high tech company in 1984, I was responsible for administering the annual “performance review period”.  The annual review was supposed to be a time for setting goals and providing developmental feedback.  It also insured that every manager had at least one performance-related conversation with each employee each year.  It was also seen as a way to either justify the planned salary increase or, in cases where there were problems, to begin a documentation trail to move an employee out of the company without legal ramifications.  The real action regarding evaluating each employee’s performance took place in the rating and ranking session that all the managers participated in during which compensation increases were decided.  Once this two-day meeting was completed, HR had to hound the managers to get all their reviews written.  Since the salary increase was already determined in the rating/ranking meeting, the performance review document was often written so as to support the proposed salary increase.  Performance strengths and developmental goals for the next period were included in the document that went into the employee file.  Managers understood that this annual process was “necessary”, but no one, not even the HR folks, really believed that the annual performance review actually led to improved employee or departmental performance.

The basic process has evolved very little since then with the exception of two changes: there is a somewhat greater emphasis on setting goals, and the tools for actually writing the review document have changed.  Enhancements have been directed primarily at speeding up the process, not improving it.

Whereas in 1984 the manager would be expected to compose a one or two page personal appraisal report using a word processor (the newer programs at the time had spell checking), today managers can “write” the review with a few clicks of their mouse.  Today’s performance management software lets managers click to select the characteristic (e.g. “exhibits teamwork”) they want to include from a predefined list (sometimes called “coaching tips”), click to decide how strongly or weakly worded they want to make the point, and voila, a politically correct, legally correct, and spell-checked paragraph has been “written”.  Several more clicks and in less than 10 minutes the reviewing manager is done with the (too often dreaded) annual review process for that employee.

I recently viewed the product tour for an industry-leading performance management system.  In touting its system application sophistication the vendor boasted… “With the click of a button…the document can be automatically personalized…”  Does anyone else see the oxymoron here….”automatically personalized”?

This is the same old practice packaged with enhanced electronic aids.  The increasing speed and automation of this approach actually serves to reduce the value of the employee performance review process.  We’ve just paved the cow path and upped the speed limit!  Is this really the direction we want to be going?

I will mention here three initial concerns I have with this development:

(1)  Speeding up the writing process reduces the effectiveness of the intended communication to the employee. The process of writing is actually a process of thinking.  Managers who take the time to compose their own original paragraphs are likely to be much more specific and grounded in their feedback than any generalized “coaching tip”.  Additionally, the act of the writing is also indirectly helping the manager to prepare his/her script for the upcoming meeting with the employee. [Note: Some performance management systems enable sending the document to the employee and obtaining their electronic signature, thus allowing the manager to actually skip the meeting or personal communication altogether.]

(2) Automating the document sets the wrong mood for the actual meeting with the employee to discuss their performance. Automating the document implicitly suggests that the review process is “automatic”, mechanistic, and mostly quantitative.  Automated writing suggests that template writing is better.  The quicker the manager and employee get through this annual process the quicker they can get back to the “real work”—as if employee development were not part of the job.

(3)  This performance management system is often confused with a performance improvement system. Traditional performance management systems have the right lever for improving performance: the one-to-one communication between manager and employee.  Conversely, they have a totally inadequate and warped implementation of the practice in terms of frequency of occurrence and quality of this conversation.  Performance improvement conversations do benefit from periodic goal setting and review, but the real driver is at the more granular level of making and keeping commitments on a week-by-week, month-after-month basis.  Every task request a manager makes is an opportunity to forge an effective agreement for a specific and defined performance level.  Each request begins a dialog that should have an explicit delivery and assessment at the end.  Each dialog is an opportunity to enhance performance and build trust.

A new breed of software tools is coming to the market based on the concept of performance improvement.  The annual employee review document will persist, but the new tools will focus on the frequency and quality of the one-to-one ongoing dialog between managers and their staff.  The real lever for boosting personal and enterprise-wide performance is elevating and illuminating these closed-loop conversations.  These new software applications will offer the first fundamental advancement in performance management practice in over three decades.

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Posted in Commitment Based Management, HR Systems/Technology, Organization Development, Performance Management

“Who Will Do What By When” – a Book Review

Posted on October 19, 2010 by | Leave a comment

The title of this book says it all.  Getting work done with others requires the response to this simple question.  Obvious, right?  But as this entertaining book points out, in the real work world it’s not at all that simple.

Tom and Birgit Hanson wrote this book in 2005 with the subtitle “How to Improve Performance, Accountability and Trust with Integrity”.  Rendered in a personal parable about very believable characters in familiar work settings, the authors lay out a system of practices that are at the heart of really answering the question – Who will do what by when.

The authors remind us that our common work norms are not reliable in squarely addressing the WWDWBW question.  First of all, judgments and interpretations about other people’s motives and abilities often create some blindness on the part of managers.  Secondly, the discipline of clearly defining a task and obtaining an agreement and commitment from the intended performer is often glossed over.  And third, even though most would agree that making and keeping promises is key to your reputation and the success of your organization, the practice of really making “promises” is rare.

The system they outline is at once common sense and familiar, but also rare in actual business practice.  It involves the manager making a clear request and obtaining a clear response from the performer of agreement or a counter offer along with a promise to perform by a certain date.  Clarity up front is key.  Closing the loop is equally important.  If the promise is not going to be fulfilled the performer is obliged to re-negotiate a new deadline before the due date.  As the authors note “No one fulfills all their promises, but you can honor all your promises.”  After a delivery has been made, the manager is obliged to provide a clear acknowledgement (e.g. a simple thank you) or a well-considered “complaint”.  The authors also provide several helpful suggestions on how to structure and deliver complaints so that outcomes are improved and relationships are enhanced going forward.

One of the aspects of the book that I most appreciated was bringing the word “integrity” into our every-day work lexicon.  Integrity in business is not always about the big decisions, big deals, and fraud.  It’s also important to notice the smaller behaviors that help to either build or erode one’s personal integrity.  The authors hold up a mirror to self-evaluate and disclose our own lapses of integrity in our business dealings.  Integrity (doing what you say you are going to do) is a personal “tool” that helps you get things done.  Even “small things”, like habitually coming late to meetings, are noticed by your colleagues and erode your integrity which does translate into real dollar costs of doing business.

Conversely, the authors provide a road map for building up and maintaining one’s integrity, and they provide a glimpse of the substantial positive, bottom line effects.  They offer a specific list of “Integrity Tools”.  It’s a simple idea they call “operating with integrity” which is a “system [that relies on] a series of familiar actions, such as request, promise, and acknowledgement, applied in a more rigorous, clearly defined way.  We call the actions Integrity Tools because they help build, maintain and restore integrity to any interpersonal situation … Integrity is the foundation of interpersonal excellence [that] determines the reliability, speed, and bandwidth of your team’s performance.”

The practices promoted by their system improve work norms and behaviors, but sustaining the changes only comes with practice.  Doing it repeatedly is different than speaking about it.  Software systems (e.g. 4 Spires) can reinforce and instantiate the “integrity operating system”.

Finally, as the authors advise…”if you only remember to say the title of this book several minutes before the end of your meetings, the book will have been a great investment!”

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Posted in Commitment Based Management, Execution, Performance Management, Workplace norms

Performance Management – A Conversation Not an Event (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on September 17, 2010 by | Leave a comment

This is the third in a series of articles dealing with Performance Management (and more precisely, Performance Improvement).  This is the second of 2 parts to Performance Management: A Conversation Not an Event.

In the prior posting I focused on the first three of the following six characteristics of an effective performance-related conversation, the result of which was the forging of a clear agreement to deliver.

  1. Openness and candor between the manager and the performer
  2. Opportunity for the performer to negotiate and agree upon the terms of delivery
  3. Clear commitment by the performer for achieving the desired outcomes
  4. Continuity of the dialog; each party stays engaged and provides regular updates
  5. Ongoing assessment and updates by the performer regarding the status of their commitment
  6. Immediate acknowledgement and assessment by the manager of the delivered outcome

This article discusses the final three characteristics of the conversation that deal with what transpires during delivery, acknowledgement, and closing the loop of the conversation.

The fourth characteristic is continuity.  Continuity is similar to, though not the same as, follow up.  Effective performance management is an ongoing conversation; the conversation is active and two-sided. This includes regular one-on-one face-to-face meetings and conversations as well as the thread of e-mails that pertain to the achievement of the agreed upon outcomes.  There is a shared memory, along with some documentation, of how the conversation was initiated, what goals and concerns were expressed, what agreements were made, what challenges were encountered along the way, and what outcomes have been achieved.  Managers need to become better “customers” by providing clear delivery and output requirements, making better detailed and informative requests and staying engaged throughout the entire process.  The manager does not delegate and then simply ask: “Did you do it?” The delegation of a task is not the end of a performance conversation, but rather the beginning of a genuine collaboration.

A fifth characteristic is the ongoing assessment and updates by the performer as to the status or “health” of their agreement.  Goals are not always met or immediately achievable, tasks encounter problems, and performers need to be forthcoming as they become aware of possible shortfalls in delivery or complexity of the deliverable.  Because the manager is now “counting on” the employee to deliver, there is a heightened responsibility on the part of the performer to report progress, particularly if they sense the target date might be missed.  As soon as there is any doubt that they may not make the delivery as planned, instead of “putting their head in the sand” and permitting the manager to rely on hope alone, the performer updates and re-engages with their manager about renegotiating the commitment. Early warning of possible problems is a hallmark of these conversations, as is renegotiation in light of new information. Commitments that can no longer be met are identified early when remedial action and adjustments are most often less costly and more easily corrected. Similarly, if the manager’s original concerns change or there is a change of direction, the manager is obliged to immediately inform the employee and negotiate new deliveries.

Of course, having to report delays or (potentially) missed deadlines are the most challenging portions of the conversation, and, if performers have agreed to stretch for really superior results, there will be more of these “negative” reports. It is precisely in these moments when the manager’s behavior is critical. If the manager responds to “bad news” with a sense of shared commitment and partnership they will join in the performer’s concern and help solve it.  Recriminations, if any, will be minimal. It is not about extracting a commitment from the employee and then beating them up if it is not done. There is just as much responsibility about being a good customer as there is being a good performer.  Partner-like behavior builds trust and makes it easier for the performer to report problems.  We all know that issues or problems caught early are much easier to resolve.  Prompting early notice of breakdowns is a key factor for improving overall organization performance.

The sixth characteristic is honest and immediate acknowledgement and assessment of the deliverable(s) by the manager.  Managers should not wait until the end of the year having built up a library of good news and developmental areas to finally share.  Managers are engaged throughout the delivery and provide clear and candid assessments about whether and how their concerns were addressed.  These mini-reviews and assessments are at the heart of an organization’s continuous learning cycle.

Conversation outcomes are different too

The outcomes from a dialog with these six characteristics are also very different. The manager leaves the first “meeting of minds” conversation with a confident feeling that the performer is committed to achieving the goal/project according to the negotiated agreement. He can count on the performer’s commitment, though this is not to say that they have blind confidence in the outcome. Having had a candid discussion about the performer’s concerns and risks entailed, the manager may even have a less confident feeling than before. Rather than “simply” assigning a task with little or no discussion and assuming it will get done, i.e., a “false” confidence, the manager in these conversations is much more engaged with all the possibilities and the pitfalls associated with the task. Being confident in the employee’s commitment, however, provides the manager with a solid sense that accountability for delivery has been taken on, and is now “owned” by the employee.  A subtle, but critical shift has thus occurred.

This shift enables the manager to reduce the need to micromanage. This alone frees up organizational “waste” in the form of managers’ time and systems spent on checking up, e.g., picture the wasted time a project manager spends each week polling everyone on the team and updating an MS Project Plan to see if each performer is on target with their deliveries.

The performer, for their part, leaves the conversation with a feeling of real commitment to achieving the outcome: Just “working hard at it” and “doing my best” or “giving my best effort” is no longer adequate.  The performer has made an agreement that they do not want to break.  There is no room for cynicism regarding the delivery.  Under this scenario the performer is being treated like a full partner.  They have not just been assigned a new task that can be put on the top on the pile of other tasks.  The performer has engaged in a frank and careful conversation laying out their capabilities and constraints.  The performer and manager have negotiated a delivery that can be met.

Performance-related conversations that exhibit the six characteristics mentioned above achieve an entirely different quality than typical task assignments.  Both the requester and performer are upfront with each other, striving together for something more than average outcomes, and with increasing trust.  The soft core of improving performance lies exactly here.

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Posted in Commitment Based Management, Managed Conversations, Performance Management

Performance Management – A Conversation not an Event (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on September 10, 2010 by | Leave a comment

This is the third in a series of articles dealing with Performance Management (and more precisely, Performance Improvement).

First, some context and my angle.  Performance management means different things to different people.  I am not speaking here about systems that record employee ratings and rankings, that train employees, that capture 360 degree feedback, that build success plans, nor that help managers write the annual performance review document.  I am less interested in measuring and managing current performance, than I am in how management can actually lift measurable performance metrics for the organization as a whole by improving the performance of individual employees through the use of a new generation of practices and behaviors.  My angle is the belief that easy to use and understand software applications can instantiate and perpetuate these new practices.

The title of this article sets the stage: Performance Management is not an event.  Do we really think that a once-per-year “performance review” meeting followed by a two-page performance appraisal document (signed by manager and employee) has a significant effect on improving performance throughout the year? Do we really think that the goal-setting that goes on in these meetings is the motivation for excelling?

Performance improvement is a process – a set of consistent behaviors and practices, carried out by and between managers and employees, that are designed to stimulate, motivate, and evaluate personal performance. The regular one-on-one meeting with your boss, for example, has significantly more impact and effect on individual performance than the yearly review meeting.  What is even more important than the regularity of these encounters is the quality of the conversation that goes on in them.

The Nature and Quality of the Performance Conversation

So how can we begin to talk about the quality of a conversation?  What are its characteristics?  Would we know one if we heard it?  And, if we could begin to describe a quality performance-related conversation in some repeatable terms, is there really any way to inculcate and socialize the organization so all managers follow the same pattern and general approaches?  These are the questions I will address in the remaining portion of this article and the one to follow.

The use of the term “conversation” does not necessarily imply or require a face-to-face meeting.  The conversation referred to is an explicit, two-sided, back and forth interchange of comments and concerns regarding the requested results.  The dialog can happen in-person or remotely, synchronously or asynchronously.

I propose that an effective performance-related conversation will exhibit the following 6 observable characteristics:

  1. Openness and candor between the manager and the performer
  2. Opportunity for the performer to negotiate and agree upon the terms of delivery
  3. Clear commitment by the performer for achieving the desired outcomes
  4. Continuity of the dialog; each party stays engaged and provides regular updates
  5. Ongoing assessment by the performer regarding the status of their commitment
  6. Immediate acknowledgement and assessment by the manager of the delivered outcome

The first three characteristics will be discussed in this posting and the fourth through sixth characteristic will be discussed in a future posting.

The first characteristic of an effective performance-related conversation is openness and candor. The manager and the employee must first identify and agree upon what level of performance the employee is capable of or is being asked to perform.  Even at this stage there can be difficulties.  It is a rare employee who readily admits what their full capabilities really are.  Due to the penalty of failure atmosphere within most companies, employees profer modest goals and then “exceed” them. This common sense approach generally guides employee behavior. We all want to impress and not disappoint so we imply a level of performance that is well within our comfort zone. It would be a rare manager who could coax a straight answer to the question “what do you really think you could accomplish?” Such straight talk only occurs when there is a genuine sense of partnership between the manager and employee; a sense that the manager is not just the order-giver, but is rather the employee’s true supporter and ally.  Underlying this is a shared sense of how possible failure to deliver will be tolerated.  How organizations handle failure is a primary driver of employee behavior.

The second characteristic is a genuine sense of negotiation. Where the employee is being asked to make a firm commitment they are taking on risk.  Where there is risk, there must be negotiation. The manager can make a request that the employee feels is risky. But, then, the employee has to be able to say: “No – I can not fully commit to the requested delivery date and/or expected final output.” For the employee to make a valid commitment, an honest negotiation option must be an acceptable response, e.g., “No, I can not commit to this level of achievement, but I will commit to this delivery date and provide this output.” Each of the parties needs to recognize and agree when risks are being borne and how each will behave if performance or output falls short. The employee can say: “This is what I think I can deliver, but if this happens then I think I can deliver a different level”.  The manager is then able to respond: “If I take care of this concern for you, then what more could you do?” There is a sense of real partnership and trust where both parties make explicit commitments to each other that involve mutual dependencies and obligations.

This is more like a peer-to-peer conversation – it is definitely not a traditional top-down conversation.  Moreover, this type of negotiation is actually quite rare today in corporate America.  Few employees have the courage or ability to negotiate; yet all feel that the “pocket veto” (i.e. allowing the request to go unchallenged at first while knowing it will not actually get done) is just fine.  Perhaps they sense that an up-front confrontation is difficult and the probability is high that the manager will forget the request over time.  For the manager who seeks to gain real and continual commitment they must allow for and present real room for negotiation when a request is made.

The third characteristic is a shared commitment for the outcome. People excel when they are committed to achieving outcomes, not just working down a list of assignments they have been tasked to complete or perform.  Just “showing up” and “doing your best effort” will achieve the acceptable outcomes a portion of the time.  Excelling, however, requires real commitment.  Having publicly committed oneself – having, in effect, made a promise to achieve a resolution to a shared concern by a certain date – has at least three positive effects.

  • First, the conversation gets much more precise as each of the parties share expectations and concerns.
  • Second, the performer is more likely to push themselves to do that “little” extra to keep their public promise.
  • Third, as concerns arise that jeopardize delivery, the employee is motivated to immediately renegotiate terms with the manager / customer thus incenting an early warning of possible breakdowns in terms of due date or deliverables.

The first three characteristics described above are devoted to the initial stage of an effective performance-related conversation – the meeting of the minds and the proper formation of a clear agreement to deliver.  A follow-on posting will discuss the desirable characteristics in the follow on stages of the conversation – delivery and acknowledgement.

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Posted in Commitment Based Management, Managed Conversations, Performance Management

Best Efforts and the “Pocket Veto”

Posted on August 27, 2010 by | Leave a comment

Have you ever sent a request to a colleague or a staff person and then lost track of it wondering “Where does that stand?  Did he ever get back to me on that?”   Have you ever delegated a task and wondered if the performer was really committed to fully doing it?  Ever made a task request of someone who never responded?  Ever come out of a meeting with some good ideas tossed around and heads nodding that we should do “X” only to realize afterwards that no one actually took ownership and nothing is going to get done?

We all have had these too common experiences in our modern work world.  These are just the extreme examples.  Some of the more usual ways we all respond to work requests are captured in the following phrases:  “I’ll see what I can do about that”, “I’ll get back to you later”, “OK, I’ll add it to my list of tasks”, “I’m really busy right now, but I’ll do my best”, etc.  As I discussed in my last article, we work in a “best efforts” paradigm.  Throughout all business sectors and across all company sizes these are the work norms that have been created and perpetuated.

It is easy to understand why.  Employees and companies really do want to satisfy their internal and external customers.  We are culturally programmed to say “Yes” to requests; saying “No” is uncomfortable and may squelch future requests or business opportunities.  As requesters, we resist coming across as domineering or too serious while as performers, we never want to deliver late, so deadlines are often kept soft or vague.  Making firm promises to do something is reserved for private matters rather than business.

These norms have worked for a long time.  So what’s the problem?

The problem is that they also do not work most of the time.  Or viewed another way, these norms have hidden inefficiencies and costs that keep people and organizations from performing at peak levels.  Because we all know and understand the realities of these norms, requests require a large amount of follow-up (even nagging some times).  We do not really trust people to get things done.  Systems, corporate practices, and individual behaviors are established to check up and report back.  The rate of failed projects is very high, not because the planning was poor, but because the communication was poor.  There are real costs associated with these work norms and behaviors.

Many requests, in fact, are made which are never completed due to what can be called “the Pocket Veto”.

Bill is asked to do seven tasks by three different people.  He has told all three requesters that he will “do his best”.  He then goes about choosing how many and which of the tasks he will actually do and by when.  Two of Mary’s requests will never get done; Bill may have even known this at the time the requests were made, but he allowed Mary to expect he would complete her requests.

The performer is actually declining some of the requests, but the requesters never really find out which ones.  Think for a minute about the inefficiencies Bill creates in Mary’s world by this behavior.  The Pocket Veto leads to surprises, usually very late in the game.

Virtually all organizations today are afflicted to some degree with the costs and inefficiencies of these work norms.  A growing number of case studies show that changing these norms has a direct and nearly immediate impact on improving an organization’s performance.  This paradigm shift is called “Commitment or Promise-based Management”.  The practices associated with this relatively new management theory lead to clearer accountability, better visibility into execution, increased employee engagement, and more trust.  These ideas are starting to gain a foothold in today’s management circles, and we here at 4 Spires are doing our part to advance the conversation.

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Posted in Commitment Based Management, Workplace norms

“I’ll Do My Best” is Twaddle

Posted on August 20, 2010 by | Leave a comment

We have all made a request of someone and received the response: “I’ll do my best”.

Probably the first time you received this reply you were encouraged, believing you would get what you needed and when you needed it.  But in a large number of cases I am guessing you were disappointed with the timeliness and the end results.  In fact, this answer rarely gives you what you want by the time you need it.

There are three main reasons why “I’ll do my best” is one of the worst responses you can get to a request.  First and most importantly – it tends to end the discussion.  As the requester, you literally are unable to ask for more than someone’s best.  Secondly, you may think that you have a commitment that you can rely upon, but in reality, you have nothing.  Lastly, the performer has no strong incentive to make sure that the work is done by a particular date – after all, there is no “date” and s/he can always say “well, I tried”.  Let’s take a look at each of these in a little more detail.

The response of “I’ll do my best” functions as a negotiation stopper.  Consider the situation where you ask your coworker or employee to “complete the report by the 1st” of next month.  If the response is “how about the 6th” and the two of you negotiate an agreement of “the 4th”, you can be reasonably assured that you are likely to have something on the 4th.  On the other hand, if the response is “I’ll do my best”, or its friend “I’ll try my best”, not only do you not have an agreement; you most often do not even have a counter response.

You may be thinking that you have the performer’s commitment to “do their best” in terms of quality of work effort, output, as well as the delivery schedule.  But isn’t that implicit – after all, how many people will respond to a request with “Well, I’ll give it a half-hearted attempt” or “Perhaps I will try to get that done for you – perhaps not”.  The “I’ll do my best” does not give you any specific date by which you can reasonably count on the work being done.  This approach leaves you as the requester with “managing by hope” – where you are in the unsatisfying position of “hoping” that the work will get done as expected.

Shifting to the performer’s viewpoint, the “I’ll do my best” response does not imbue much incentive to track the work effort or even get the work completed.  This response does not create the focus, concentration, and energy to get the job done in today’s overly busy world. It is far too easy to let the assignment slip or not fully complete the assignment – after all, the performer never really agreed to do it; they only agreed to “do their best”.  By contrast, when a performer has negotiated an explicit delivery agreement, they have a much higher stake in the situation – their promise is on the line in a public way.  The performer will feel the stress of that commitment with its specified date and will stretch to make sure it gets accomplished – often by being creative and/or accomplishing something they were not sure they could do.  Conquering challenges is one of the primary engines of job satisfaction.

Below are three starter recommendations that can change the work norm of “I’ll do my best”:

  • Convert Requests into Commitments. While obvious, this is more difficult than it might initially appear.  Here are two starter points to consider:
    • First of all, the requester has to establish an agreed upon specific delivery date and not accept the mushy “I’ll do my best” response.  “I’ll do my best” establishes a non-beneficial relationship between the requester and the performer.  Performers who are reluctant to make a firm commitment or who often make too many commitments undoubtedly believe they have very good reasons to reply with “I’ll do my best”.  Managers need to understand and draw out these reasons, understand and validate them, while at the same time emphasize the requirement and benefits of making a firm commitment.  This “pushing” for a commitment reflects a different management style and, it should be said, requires a measure of personal courage.
    • Secondly, requesters need to shift the dialog to a negotiation.  Saying, for example, “I know you will do your best, but it would be helpful to each of us if we could establish a firm completion date” provides the performer with some control and gets them used to the idea of negotiating specific commitments.  Over time, as trust is built between the parties, negotiations can evolve to true counter-offers as in “I hear that you can get it done by the 8th, but what would be necessary for you to get this done by the 6th”.  It bears noting that adopting a relationship with the performer that allows for, and encourages requester-performer negotiations may require a substantial cultural change in organizations bound in strict hierarchical norms (i.e. where the boss gives orders).
  • Accepting Failure. It is likely that commitment phobia is caused by excessive punishments for failure.  Organizations that treat failure as an excuse for punishment and not as an opportunity for learning and improving their processes are doomed to create people who are unwilling to take risks.  At its heart, making a commitment is taking a risk.  If you find widespread commitment phobia – take a look at your company’s behavior with respect to “failure”.
  • Tracking Commitments. Finally, having some type of system that tracks commitments is vital to making a commitment based organization work.  When performers know that commitments are tracked they will put in the necessary energy to keep their commitments.

Virtually all organizations today are afflicted to some degree with the costs and inefficiencies of the “I’ll do my best” culture.  A growing number of case studies, however, show that changing these norms has a direct and nearly immediate impact on improving the organization’s performance.  It is called “Commitment or Promise-based Management”.  The practices associated with this relatively new management theory lead to clearer accountability, better visibility into execution, increased employee engagement, and more trust.  These ideas are starting to gain a foothold in today’s management circles, and we here at 4 Spires are doing our part to advance the conversation.

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Posted in Commitment Based Management, Organization Development, Workplace norms

Trust – What’s It Worth? (Reflections on “The Speed of Trust” by Covey and Merrill)

Posted on August 16, 2010 by | 1 comment

In 2006, Stephen M.R. Covey and Rebecca Merrill authored the book “The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything”.  The authors make a compelling business case for the real and quantifiable effects of building trust in organizations.  They state “When trust goes up, speed will also go up and cost will go down.”  The inverse is also true.  “When trust goes down, speed will go down and cost will go up.”  High trust organizations demonstrate less bureaucracy, lower turnover, enhanced innovation, and better execution.   Our modern global, knowledge worker economy revolves around partnering and relationships.  Covey goes on to assert that the ability to establish, grow, extend and restore trust with all stakeholders is the key leadership competency of the new, global economy.

The book discusses how trust can be built, or rebuilt, by improving thirteen relationship trust building behaviors.  The following are my comments on four of them: keeping commitments, practicing accountability, confronting reality, and delivering results.

1.)  Keeping commitments is what Covey and Merrill call the “Big Kahuna” of all trust-building behaviors.  While that may be self-evident, what is less obvious, and more interesting, is how rarely real commitments are actually formed in most business relationships.  In place of real commitments most people substitute loose, mostly implicit statements of  “Well, I’ll do my best” or “I’ll try”.  The reasons for this behavior are also obvious – the person being asked to do something wants as much “wiggle room” as possible within which to make the delivery so they will not disappoint the customer; and the customer, knowing this, does not want to press for a firm commitment.  Each of the parties is complicit in the vagueness: the performer fears non-completion and the customer fears confrontation.  The truth is in our modern business culture we stink at making commitments.  Most of the time commitments are vague or never actually made in the first place.  This is not to say that performing “best efforts” does not build trust, but forming and delivering on real commitments builds trust a lot faster and a lot better.

2.)  Practicing accountability is much more than honoring due dates.  Yes, practicing accountability entails saying what you’re going to do and doing what you said, but underlying the obvious is the nature of the dialog that is going on between two people.  A complete conversation between a requester and a performer with the power to really build trust depends on factors such as:

  • how well the request was formed,
  • whether the intended performer was given the opportunity to negotiate the terms of the delivery,
  • whether an explicit agreement was made,
  • the degree to which the dialog continued throughout the delivery, and
  • whether the delivery was formally acknowledged.

The quality of the dialog between the two parties is even more important than recording the assigned due date.  (See other posts that expand the discussion on Accountability)

3.)  Confronting reality often means sharing “bad news”.  The performer has the burden for demonstrating this behavior right from the start of the conversation with the requester.  While the request is being formulated and an agreement to deliver is being crafted, the performer is bound to forthrightly relay their concerns, problems, and contingencies so the requester has a clear sense of the expectations of the performer.

The performer should not accept a task they do not believe can be achieved.  Standing up for reality at the outset builds trust.  Must of us have run across counter examples of this – a work colleague who always agrees, although he knows he cannot do everything to complete the request.  Some components of the request will not be completed, not fully completed or completed on time and to the expectation of the requestor.  Sadly the requestor or customer will often not know this until very late in the game.  Through fear of being viewed as not a team player, or of losing his job, he believes he cannot say no up front.

Once an explicit agreement is forged, the subsequent delivery of “bad news” is even more important.  The project is properly planned, tasks have been assigned, and then, as we all know, s- – t happens.  It is common knowledge and more or less taken for granted that we learn more about the nature of the task after it has been taken it on.  That new information comes to light is not the issue.  The key to building trust is how quickly and clearly the new information is shared with the requester/customer.  Waiting to report problems until the Friday staff meeting builds far less trust than a private communication on Tuesday.

Effective software design can facilitate sharing “bad news” during the delivery stage.  Simple tools like red/yellow/green “traffic lights” enable the performer to quickly and easily signal concerns to the requester.  The goal is to prompt earlier and earlier notice of problems when working around “bad news” or changing plans is easier.

The manager/requester is as important to the entire process and shares the burden of confronting reality when it comes time to acknowledge and assess the delivery.   Performers learn very fast how much they can trust their manager by the consistency and honesty with which deliveries are assessed.  If it is good work, the message should be clearly and succinctly delivered – at the right time; conversely if it is not good work, the requestor/manager should provide in a proper dialog what was not satisfactory and how to improve on delivery and possibly help in the delivery for the next set of deliverables.. Trust is not built, and the organization does not learn, unless clear feedback is provided on whether the requester was satisfied with each delivery.

4.)  Delivering results is the natural outcome following from the above three behaviors.  The performer and requester have made a clear agreement, accountability is palpable and shared in the conversation, and each of the parties openly discuss in a straightforward manner any problems or concerns as they come up.

Note, however, that this behavior is about more than just completing the task by the agreed due date.  Sure, the baseline for measuring results is tracking that the task was completed on time, but one should consider a broader definition of what constitutes results.  In the context of this discussion, an additional result is the degree to which your “trust account” was added to or debited during the entire conversation.  There is also a virtuous cycle of trust – those you trust are monitored less closely (i.e. management productivity gain), their confidence builds, they feel more empowered, they perform better (i.e. staff productivity gain), and they earn more trust.

Delivering results on a consistent basis builds a reputation for trust.  The requester as well as the performer benefit from having a robust historical record of past deliveries.  Reputations should be built as much as possible on objective data, not subjective and imperfect memory.  It is surprising to note how few task and project management applications actually save records of completed deliveries that can provide this objective, historical view of deliveries.

In summary, work management applications that are sensitive to the issue of trust can effectively facilitate and encourage the practice of these trust-building behaviors.  Software can help individuals and organizations build trust – the one thing that changes everything.

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Posted in Accountability, Commitment Based Management, Trust

Do People Really Want To Be Held To Their Promises?

Posted on August 16, 2010 by | Leave a comment

If you are a reader of this blog, you know that we here at 4 Spires (www.4spires.com) are promoting a new way of managing workflow through the enhanced dialog between a requester and a performer that improves accountability by making and tracking explicit commitments.  After a short period of reflection, most people inevitably come to the following question: Do I, or other people, really want to be held to our promises and/or commitments?  So let’s address this concern head-on.

There are several levels of response.  First of all, let’s grant that some people do and some do not want to be held to their promises (they also do not like or embrace stretch goals).  If queried, however, many people would report that working hard to deliver on a commitment was one of their proudest accomplishments.  There is no getting around the fact that making a promise to deliver creates a more compelling bond by the performer than most are used to.  From early childhood, we are taught that promises are special.  Nobody wants to make and then have to break a promise.  The truth is that this level of commitment is quite rare in today’s work world.  What is being advocated is uncomfortable because it is new and inserts an added “energy” into the conversation.  It is this “energy” that makes the difference and improves the likelihood of an on-time delivery.

But this discussion is not only about keeping agreements.  Sometimes there are very good reasons for not being able to keep agreements and these have nothing to do with the project or request itself.  The key is that having made a clear up front agreement, the performer will be more forthcoming about having to change it should the need arise.  This is so much different than the more common behavior we have all experienced where the performer provides a sort of “universal compliance” to all requests that are thrown at him, and then uses a form of “selective pocket veto” to drop some and deliver others.

Making explicit commitments and being “held” to them is new behavior for most of us.  Any new behavior creates resistance, even if we agree with its value to stretch people and get more done.  Moreover, whether anyone wants to be “held to my promise” actually has more to do with HOW the request is made versus WHAT the performer is being asked to complete and under what timetable.

Let’s extend the point and explore not just the mechanics of making and keeping promises, but also the sociological and interpersonal aspects.

There are always two people involved in a task related conversation – a requester and a performer. Requesters (think internal or external customers or managers) are interested in “extracting” promises from performers (think staff) they have requested a delivery from.   So even if the performer does not want to be held to their promises or commitments, in a sense, the requester can force the issue.  You could say the requester is enforcing a commitment to deliver, and one could reasonably expect some resistance, either overt or covert, from the performer.

While there are some managers who operate in a demand request mode, this is not the type of heavy-handed, top-down behavior that is being advocated here.  On the contrary, this misses the point entirely.  The point is to prompt a sincere, two-way dialog between the two parties during which an agreement is mutually forged.  The requester grants the performer “room” to make counter-offers or even to decline a request.  The dialog results in the performer willingly making an explicit promise they are fully committed to deliver.

Lastly, there is the issue of tracking, following-up and managing the outcome of the promise.  Here again, the key is NOT about “holding people to their promises” or about following up with the question “did you do it?” but about changing the quality of the dialog between the two parties.  Just because a performer has made a promise does not mean that the delivery will happen exactly as planned. Issues and problems still arise.  BUT, having made an explicit promise in the first place, the performer will be more motivated to notify the requester and renegotiate the delivery.

The real goal is not to “HOLD performers to their promises”, but rather to raise the conversation to an explicit level.

The 4 Spires team believes that one of the most important systemic benefits of the Managed Commitment approach will be that performers will find and report concerns and breakdowns earlier when adjustments to plans and resolutions are easier to accommodate.  Imagine for a moment how your projects would progress if the whole process of identifying and resolving breakdowns were accelerated.

Being “held to a promise” is not the point.  The point is to be having the right conversation in the first place.

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Posted in Accountability, Commitment Based Management, Managed Conversations