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You make a promise; you keep your word. That's the level at which most of us understand the importance of commitments – mostly at an abstract level. I believe it's much more complicated than that. I find that commitments usually take one of four forms. To wit:
You've told your kid that you'll attend her basketball game. That's an example of an expressed commitment. Those meet two criteria:
• the outcome, actions and timelines are clear to the person making the commitment.
• the intention of the person making the commitment is, in fact, to fulfill the commitment.
In the example, the outcome is your attendance at the basketball game and your intention is to be there.
You're thinking: "Wait a minute. Why would anyone make a commitment that he had no intention of keeping?” One of two reasons. Either:
• the individual making the commitment knows that he'll create greater disappointment by not making the commitment than he would by not keeping it, or
• the nature of the commitment is sufficiently vague that the person making it assumes it wasn't serious or that he'll get a chance to reconsider the commitment.
Here's an example of an implied commitment: John, a successful sales guy, ran into his boss in the hallway. The boss greeted him with the following, "Hey John, it looks as if our sales targets for next year are going to be more challenging than ever." John responds with the following: "I'll make my sales plan no matter how challenging it is. You can count on me!"
John's boss probably inferred more than John intended to imply. That's a great example of an implied commitment. You do not want to be held accountable for your implied commitments. The disjuncture between implications and inferences will kill you!
Personal commitments comprise the third category. Those are the promises that you make to yourself. They're frequently either forgotten or dismissed. Maybe it's cleaning your office; maybe it's finding a new job; maybe it's setting up a personal time-management system. Your brain does not forget about this stuff. It accumulates, renting space in your head until you either do something or develop some malaise with a non-specific origin.
Assumed commitments is the fourth category. They're unintended. Here's a great personal example: About a decade ago, I worked for a guy who had a habit of making obscure, unspecific requests and then holding people accountable for clear, very specific results – not a good situation. One day, he asked me to take a look at a proposal and give him my reaction. I said "sure" and then placed it in my "when I get around to it" pile. Two days later, he left me a voice mail at 4:00 a.m. asking me why the Chairman had not yet received my cost-benefit analysis and "business-case" work-up. Somewhere along the line, unbeknownst to me, I had committed to doing some rather detailed work with a 24-hour turnaround.
In the future when this guy asked me for something, I was very pointed in finding out exactly what his expectations were. He didn’t like the interrogation, but I was much better prepared.
If you're thinking, "Why should I worry about what other people think I'm supposed to do if I'm unaware," you're right, philosophically. The problem is that other people judge us based upon their impressions. Those impressions are often grounded in stuff over which we have very little control. You can absolutely control the commitments you make, their specificity and your delivery against others' expectations, so it's in your best interest to control them. Here's how to go about it:
First, never make obscure commitments. Always drive to "the brutal truth.™" In this case, I mean that precision and exactitude will enable you to achieve what you set out to achieve and what others expect of you.
Next, start by defining the "end result" you want. If that's the completion of a recommendation for the CEO – as in my example – great. If it's a personal issue – maybe something simpler – that's fine too. My point is, don't "march east looking for a sunset."
Finally, develop action plans to achieve your commitments for anything requiring more than one step. So, you don't need action plans to see your daughter's basketball game, but you do need them for the completion of a project.
Your action plans should consider:
• the results and activities that will drive the accomplishment of the objective,
• their sequence,
• impediments to successful accomplishment and
• personal and/or organizational strengths that will be leveraged.
In a future issue, I'll talk about delegation, both as a priority and as a problem. Suffice it to say that in your professional life you retain accountability (consequences for outcomes) for commitments you delegate to others for fulfillment. Our approach, which we call Managing Yourself and Your Priorities – Do it, Delegate it or Ditch it, gets to the heart of the matter of "who does what and by when" in a systematic way.
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