We distinguish a difference between a commitment and a promise, and we do it for the reason that it’s useful in the context of mastering execution.
As already stated, a commitment is a declaration, but it must be one you have the authority or the right to make. When you’re accountable for something, you have the right to commit, and arguably an expectation to do so. On the other hand, declaring the world will end by a certain date is not in most of our job descriptions (and we have a lot of evidence that those are really predictions, not declarations, and they are, so far, all meaningless – thankfully).
If you’re fifty years old, not in good physical shape, and 5’6” in height, you probably don’t have the right to declare that you’re going to be a professional basketball player in the NBA. You can say whatever you want, but you saying it, doesn’t make it so. To actually commit yourself to it may make for an interesting adventure, and it may lead to being in better physical shape, or maybe someone will make a video of your story that will go viral, but it isn’t going to lead to your being drafted by the New York Knicks.
We have worked with a lot of people over the years and have been in conversations with them about what is or what isn’t possible. We like to say that nothing is impossible, but, on the other hand, there’s a difference between attempting to accomplish something that is a stretch for you and something that is far-fetched and way out of reach. There’s an art to setting stretch goals that only comes with experience. The experience very often goes like this: you set your initiatives for this year, and find that you set them too ambitiously; the next year you swing the other way by setting them too modestly; and so on. Sooner or later, you get good at it. If you’re aware of this tendency, you’ll become artful at it much sooner.
Perhaps more to the point, if you don’t say it and commit yourself to it, the likelihood you’re going to accomplish it is very slim. If you don’t know the place for commitments in your journey to the mastery of execution, you’re going to have a difficult journey and it’s not going to end up where you want it to.
It’s critical to know this – if you commit to something, it must imply you mean it. You know it’s not going to be easy, but you’re ready to do whatever you have to do (note that every time we express this we mean “so whatever you have to do within the limits of legal, moral, ethical, and other such boundaries”). If you really mean it, and you have the authority and the will to make it happen, you need to manage yourself from there in order to have it come about. You’re saying you will do this, that you will do whatever you have to do, that you will overcome all of the barriers and that you will stick with it in order to have it be accomplished.
Obviously, sometimes you’ll make commitments and really mean it, but fail. If you succeed at all of your commitments, you’re probably not setting the bar high enough. To accomplish mastery of execution at a high level, you want to get yourself to a place where most of the times when you commit to something, you achieve it.
We have already established that a promise is made in order to fulfill on something that you’ve been asked to do or that you’ve offered to do. It is relatively basic in nature and will often not involve other people. For example, you can meet with your manager in his office tomorrow morning at 9:00 AM. You can promise that, but it doesn’t necessarily mean something won’t happen along the way that will throw you off. You’ll still do what you can to make it happen, but if some emergency comes up and you can’t make it, you’ll call and let your manager know and then re-schedule if possible. You have an intention to keep your promises, but as we’ve said before, nobody keeps all of their promises. The point here is if you just can’t keep a promise, apologize and let the other person know that it was unavoidable. You want them to know that you take your word seriously and that you can be counted on in the future.
A commitment is more complex. It’s a response to a larger request, but it’s a request that a simple promise won’t cover. For example, let’s say it’s an initiative or a project or a result that you can’t really promise because you don’t know for sure that you can do it. However, you’re declaring that you’ll do whatever it takes to succeed at it. A corporation often makes forecasts for the year to its shareholders and board, but these are generally considered predictions, not commitments. Often, as the year progresses, the CEO will make adjustments to these forecasts, sometimes quarterly. What we would want to know, if we were on their board, is not what they are predicting they are going to do, but what they are going to do. There is no commitment in a prediction. The weather people make predictions every day and perhaps at some point if their predictions continue to be wrong, they’ll lose their credibility. However, their job is not to commit to what they say the weather will be tomorrow. In the organizational world, predictions may be useful, but commitments have much more meaning and produce more meaningful results.
To dig deeper into this subject or to review the book“Discovering Execution – The Key to High Performance Organizations”byMiles Kiersonand Gary Tomlinson. ContactAmazon.comfor your own copy.
