Promises

The fabric of society and the economy is held together by promises (AKA agreements or commitments) between individuals and organizations. E.g, an employer promising to pay someone for work done.

The effectiveness of the request affects how clear both parties are about what exactly has been promised. Ineffective requests could cause both parties to have different interpretations about what exactly has been promised.

Promises change the world the instant they are made, not just by their fulfillment. The other person makes different choices because of the promise. Language communicates commitment, not just information.

When keeping or breaking a promise, it affects:

• Trust
• Relationships
• Success
• Self-esteem

When keeping a promise, all of these elements go up (or down when breaking a promise) for the parties at both ends.

How well you manage your commitments has a huge impact on public identity.

Angle Of Inauthenticity

The angle of authenticity (i.e, the BS angle) is the difference between:

• What I say I will do, what I say I will say
• What I actually do, what I actually say

In this analogy, whether we keep our promises is the amount of bullshit we’re producing. People have good BS detectors.

Types Of Promises

1. Strong promises: promises that you’re committed to keeping. You can count on me.
2. Shallow promise: like strong promises, but with an unsaid “unless x or y happens”. There is a private out for ourselves that the other person doesn’t know.
3. Criminal promises: promises we have no intention of keeping at the moment when they are made.

As an exercise, think about the various types of promises you make in various domains (work, friends and to yourself).

Low self-esteem is closely related to promises. We often make criminal promises to ourselves. The broken promises live on in us, which affects moods and results.

Managing Commitments

No one is perfect, so there will be situations where you can’t keep a promise made in good faith due to e.g circumstances out of your control.

Managing these commitments by letting the other person know that you can’t keep it as soon as possible lets them make alternate arrangements or renegotiate the promise. Not managing this well has obvious effects on the relationship and your public identity.

We can’t keep every promise we make, but can take responsibility to manage all of them.

Single promises are often linked with other promises. Your ability to deliver on a promise might depend on someone else keeping their promise to you. Likewise, the other party being able to deliver promises to others depends on you keeping your promise.

Commitments are also not made in isolation - often on top of existing commitments. The other person doesn’t know about the 20 other commitments you’re juggling, just that you made a promise to them.

This causes people to be overwhelmed. Time management books try to address this but improvements are often not sustained in the long term.

There is no such thing as time management: time doesn’t stop. We can management commitments, not time.

Saying no is extremely important to manage commitments to avoid others running your life. It may not be easy, but it is worth it.

Requests Vs Demands In Organizations

In organizations, there will be legitimate situations where saying no is not an option. This would be a demand. Being employed means you agree to say yes in such situations.

However, there is a boundary between these requirements and requests. Its often the case where the person making the request views them as requests while the other party views them as demands with no room for declining or negotiation.

It may be useful to have a conversation to clarify what are requests vs demands.

Responsible Complaints

Not dealing with broken promises usually leads to resentment, decline in the relationship and less productivity and effectiveness when working together. To manage an unfulfilled promise when you’re on the receiving end, initiate a responsible complaint.

A responsible complaint is a conversation where the recipient of the broken promise initiates a conversation with the other party¹ to take care of the broken promise in a way that maintains or even strengthens the relationship.

Responsible complaints are only applicable when there has been a broken promise, not when someone doesn’t meet an (usually unspoken) expectation. Promises unkept are NOT equal to expectations unmet.

Start by having a conversation about responsible complaints - where people working together discuss commitments and managing commitments, as well as the negative consequences of having promises go unkept and unmanaged. Participants in this conversation give each other permission to call each other on unmet commitments. Share concerns with being beginners and not “getting it right” and “hurting feelings” which are valid concerns. This sets the context in which a responsible complaint has the best chance of success.

To make a responsible complaint:

1. Start with assertions. Clarify with the other person whether the promise existed in the first place, and whether the promise did or did not get fulfilled.
2. If the promise was made and has indeed not been kept, declare the unacceptability of this happening again. Share assessments of negative consequences that occurred. Request that promises in the future are managed by doing X or Y.
3. Make a new request with a new time frame and obtain a promise to take care of what needed to be taken care of.

Responding To Requests

When trying to create a culture of commitment and personal ownership and responsibility for managing promises, these responses to requests are not effective:

• I’ll try
• Maybe / possibly / perhaps / we’ll see
• Silence (no response)

Instead, the conversation should end with one of these 4 responses to a request:

• Yes: acceptance, so we have a promise
• No: decline, so we don’t have a promise
• Commit to commit: a promise to get back to the requester at a specified time with an answer
• Counter-offer: a decline of the initial request with its conditions and an offer to accept if some conditions are changed. “I can’t get it done by Fri, would Mon work?”

These responses are all clear and not fuzzy. Its a clean interaction where everyone knows what’s going to happen.

Commitments In Organizations

Organizations can be viewed as a web of promises - nested cycles of commitment which are connected to one another.

In an organization where promises are not met and allowed to slide, unspoken assumptions and responsibility not being taken to manage commitments, there is lots of blaming others and excuses about why things are not done.

In an organization where commitments are made publicly and most people manage their commitments and take them seriously, there is much less unexpected drops of the ball as people are often communicating with others and renegotiating commitments. Everyone expects commitments to be kept and managed. Anyone failing to manage a commitment will be called out on it by peers or subordinates not in a accusing way, but one consistent with a culture of trust, responsibility and teamwork. This is agreed upon in advance.