How to achieve with the power of promise
The problem with most directors and managers is that they’re ‘drifting’, getting through the week, the month, the year. For some it’s a lack of confidence and fear of failure. They will tell you they have a pseudo direction in which they are heading, without using the word ‘pseudo’ mind you, but it’s a direction decided primarily by external forces. My children are always asking me to explain irony through examples; how about this one? Those who drift instead of being decisive because they fear failure - are actually failing!
It’s effectively about ‘owning’ your direction, understanding both your potential and your limitations, and living into the horizon, which you set and then set sail for. And implicit within this is the fact that those who achieve extraordinary success also have an innate ability to know what’s possible – so the horizons they create aren’t unrealistic.
They aren’t dreamers, they know what’s achievable, maybe at a stretch, but nonetheless they target the possible, so it’s not blind optimism or hope. It’s calculated commitment, whether to themselves or others.
The reality is that the people who truly stand out are those who make a commitment to make life work for them and don’t just let it happen. The unusual ones are those that really understand the power of promise because it’s not actually the single promise (and ability to keep it) that makes the difference: it’s the understanding of the power to continually deliver to your word – to yourself and to others.
Promises are horizons. The thing about promises is that making one creates a possibility to live into a commitment. A promise gives an opportunity to ‘turn up’ when it counts – personally and professionally. And if you can ‘deliver’ when it matters…really deliver, then you’re in an elite minority. In business it may feel as though promises are always an external action – i.e. that of promising others. Isn’t the reality though, that any pledge to another person is only really to yourself if you value your word? Think about it; any promise to anyone, in any context, is really a measure of your ability and inclination to be your word, and the degree of importance you place on being able to do that speaks volumes about just who you are.
It may be a little harsh to describe the majority of people as slippery, but the truth is that culturally we’ve become OK with the idea that promises have degrees of fulfilment required or justification as to why they shouldn’t be delivered. We’ve become a ‘do your best’ kind of society as a ‘get-out’ – and while I think doing your best is a valid notion, it only really applies if you really did!
And in my book, this doesn’t often ring true. The ‘terrain’ is moving for everyone, personally and professionally, but keeping your word, delivering the commitment, is about navigating in a way that keeps the promise afloat – not just accepting that things have changed which justifies letting people down.
Far too many of us now accept broken promises – we expect less and as a result we think they can give less too! Accept people for their flaws; they’re only human. Yet, every time you keep your word, it defines who you are. It’s the difference between standing out or blending in.
The acceptance of this mediocrity is a real blow to achieving what’s possible, because if people expected more of themselves and delivered more of the time, those around them would feel that underlying change. The increase in your standards eventually rubs of. And this is key in the business context. It raises the bar and others then alter their behaviour around you.
The organisational challenge is not just to take stock of yourself and make sure that you are the ‘stand-up guy’ that you want to be, but also to create teams of individuals which can collectively trust in what they are being promised and in turn what they can promise. For the truth is, in the business context, your promise is as only as good as the team around you – given that as the horizons that are ‘painted’ get bigger, so do the resources required to deliver them. The teams of subordinates, peers and superiors have to believe in the collective goal in doing themselves a favour either. Maybe they do it because they wish to project themselves in a way that they imagine needs to be seen, so the customer will trust them and their staff follow them in their vision, but the reality is that they’ll always get found out. If you aren’t standing in your truth, if you don’t really know the limits of your promise, then you’re effectively trying to be someone else and the façade never lasts.
Why is it that the majority of acquisitions don’t deliver the synergy and performance expected? Is it a result of poor decision-making and integration or the reality that the sellers provided a vision that could never really become a reality?
But it shouldn’t be forgotten that being your word is an orientation and a choice. Anyone can become a person of their word. When the penny drops (a paradigm shift in American motivational speak), you can choose to stop portraying the façade that you think others need to see, or saying the things you think they want to hear, and start living the true you.
From start-up to say 100 staff, creating a proposition in your own reflection often comes naturally, but for medium size business and larger, it’s a mammoth task to successfully transfer your personal integrity to company integrity.
Know thyself is key though; it starts with you then permeates to those you surround yourself with. Understand your capabilities and know your weaknesses, choose your promises wisely. In fact become someone who positively embraces the idea that you can’t promise everything. Project an attitude and a character that staff and customers can ‘buy into’.
And I suppose there are three categories to which you can belong: You make promises, create horizons and live into them, or make promises and fail to deliver… or just don’t make promises at all! Which makes me think they should be named Winners, Blaggers, and Drifters. All you have to do is choose which one you belong to, because the choice really is yours.
