Why is promises important

This phase typically starts when the customer requests something from the provider. The two parties will have different takes on what should be done to fulfill the request, why, how quickly it can be done, and which resources should be used. Because of divergent worldviews—across divisions, companies, countries, and languages—people often end up talking past one another.

The customer and the provider must therefore sit down and explore the fundamental questions of coordinated effort: What do you mean? This phase of discussion concludes when the provider makes a promise that the customer accepts.

In the next phase— making it happen —the provider executes on the promise. Regardless of what the provider may think, now is not the time to take the phone off the hook.

Conversation is more critical than ever. Even well-crafted promises remain fragile, susceptible to shifts within the organization or in the broader business environment that prompt executives to reshuffle priorities and reallocate resources. In light of such shifts, the customer and the provider will need to continue interpreting and reinterpreting the promise. Indeed, if the provider realizes he cannot satisfy the promise he made to the customer, he should immediately renegotiate the terms of delivery.

Likewise, the customer is obliged to initiate renegotiations if her priorities or circumstances change in ways that affect what she has asked the provider to do. In the final phase— closing the loop —the customer publicly declares that the provider has delivered the goods or failed to do so.

Closing the loop gives the customer and provider a chance to offer each other feedback on how they could work more effectively in the future, thereby building continuous improvement into the quality of other promises they make. Note that the customer and the provider must come not only to a meeting of minds but also to a common purpose. A provider may be reluctant to enter into a commitment for good reasons—such as keeping her options open and protecting her reputation for delivering the goods.

In their haste to get things done, many managers rush through these important dialogues or skip them altogether. When promises are unreliable, managers waste a lot of time checking progress, exerting political pressure, or duplicating work.

Organizational efficiency and effectiveness suffer. If managers and employees understand how to solicit and make good promises, they can minimize this kind of friction. Promises that are made, monitored, and completed in public are more binding—and therefore more desirable—than side deals hammered out in private. After all, their reputations for competence and trustworthiness are on the line.

A good example of the power of public promises comes from Royal Bank of Scotland. In the past decade, RBS has moved from the number two bank in Scotland to one of the top ten banks in the world. Moreover, RBS pledged that its managers would take personal responsibility for delivering on those initiatives.

A promise made in public should remain public throughout the life of the commitment. They pledge to hit target numbers for, say, increasing company margins, improving service levels, or cutting costs. The resulting culture of transparency and execution has helped propel AmBev from the number two brewer in Brazil to the largest brewer in the world by volume through InBev, its joint venture with the Belgian company Interbrew. In many organizations, customers hurl requests at providers like paperboys cycling through a neighborhood chucking newspapers onto doorsteps.

Providers catch the requests, throw them on a pile, and go back to work. Requests like these rarely elicit good promises. As we discussed earlier, negotiating a commitment should instead be an active, collaborative process. Misunderstandings will inevitably occur when providers and customers come together from different disciplines, business units, organizations, or countries, or when they are pursuing a novel initiative.

Even worse, when an organizational promise is broken, people often believe that the other party has acted in bad faith. No one gets the benefit of the doubt, and every miscommunication is interpreted as further evidence of evil intentions. This downward spiral of distrust poisons relationships and impedes performance.

In such situations, probing discussions can unearth the different assumptions customers and providers are making. These discussions often start out productively but stall when the participants seek complete certainty before hammering out a deal. The top executives of one biotech firm were caught in exactly this trap. The senior team consisted of brilliant scientists who spent all their time trying to prove they were right. The discussion was insightful and erudite, but in the end nothing got done.

Active conversations should comprise offers, counteroffers, commitments, and refusals rather than endless assertions about the state of nature. In the biotech company, the senior executives eventually agreed to make clear requests of one another and provide only the background information necessary to flesh out those requests for potential providers. One of the executives was tasked with interrupting those who went overboard explaining their rationales.

Potential providers were allowed two rounds of questioning for clarification. They were then required to get back to the customer within 48 hours with a refusal, a commitment to act, or a counteroffer. Conversations should comprise offers, counteroffers, commitments, and refusals rather than endless assertions about the state of nature.

In many organizations, people feel compelled to comply with each and every request in order to be seen as team players, please their bosses, or avoid looking like jerks.

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Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 17 04 , Leadership and credibility in n-person coordination games. When a promise is vague, especially with children, it is effortless to find a way to work around that commitment.

Make that commitment an essential, high priority, to keep the promise. It may also need to perform it quickly or keep a reminder for the time and place that we agreed to complete our pledge.

When we keep our commitment to an activity, team or individual, others will trust us, think of us as mature, reliable individuals. Most important we are honoring ourselves as having value, not feeling disappointed in ourselves or like we let ourselves down again. All of this is true for children and adults. Check out some of the simple starter promises that we can begin our children on so they are building self-esteem as well as trust in themselves while others see them for their integrity.

Check out Numbers and Deuteronomy for more. You receive blessing so you can be a blessing! Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel. Skip to content Home Essay Why is keeping promises important? Ben Davis April 30, Why is keeping promises important? What does keeping promises mean? How do you keep a promise? Is promise keeping morally important?

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