The Idea in Brief
In many companies, critical strategic initiatives keep stalling. Important work sits undone. And emerging opportunities fall by the wayside.
Why such difficulty translating strategy into action? In this world of far-flung suppliers, external partners, and colleagues, companies can no longer rely on their internal organizational structures and processes to push strategic work forward. What really drives successful execution? Promises: employees’ personal pledges to satisfy concerns of stakeholders within and outside an organization. And when strategy implementation falters, poorly crafted promises are usually the culprits.
How to combat execution problems? Manage promises as carefully as you do other organizational resources, suggest Sull and Spinosa. Well-made promises share distinguishing characteristics. For example, they’re public and voluntary. All parties understand what needs to be done and why. The “provider” of the promise delivers as agreed. And the “customer” acknowledges delivery.
Craft promises carefully, and you enhance coordination and cooperation among colleagues. Equally valuable, your company builds the agility required to seize new business opportunities.
The Idea in Practice
Sull and Spinosa offer these guidelines for managing promises carefully:
Understand a Promise’s Three Phases
To create and execute an effective promise, the “provider” of the promise and its “customer” move through three phases:
1. Meeting of minds. The customer requests something from the provider. Both clarify how the request will be fulfilled, why it’s important to the customer, when it will be fulfilled, and which resources will be used. This phase ends when the provider makes a promise the customer accepts.
2. Making it happen. The provider executes on the promise, while he and the customer continue interpreting and reinterpreting their agreement in light of any reshuffled priorities or reallocated resources. The provider renegotiates delivery terms if he realizes he can’t satisfy the promise. The customer initiates renegotiations if his priorities or circumstances change. This phase ends when the provider declares the task complete and submits it to the customer for evaluation.
3. Closing the loop. The customer publicly declares that the provider has delivered the goods—or failed to do so. Each offers the other feedback on how to work together more effectively in the future.
Cultivate the Five Qualities of a Good Promise
Well-made promises are:
Public. People strive to make good on declarations they’ve pronounced publicly, because their reputations and trustworthiness are on the line—and they can’t selectively “forget” what they committed to do.
Active. Promises languish when customers hurl requests at providers who passively catch them, throw them on the pile, and go back to work. Skilled promise-crafters actively negotiate their commitment—including unearthing conflicting assumptions that could spawn misunderstandings.
Voluntary. People assume personal responsibility when they make promises willingly, versus under duress. Effective promise makers have freedom to decline customers’ requests or make counteroffers: “What you’re asking isn’t possible, but this is what I can do for you.”
Explicit. Explicitness is crucial especially when parties have different cultural backgrounds or the promise involves an abstract construct (“optimization,” “innovation”) subject to multiple interpretations. To avoid misunderstandings, the parties make requests clear from the start, provide progress reports accurately reflecting the promise’s execution, and detail success (or failure) at the time of delivery.
Mission-based. When customers explain to providers why their request is important, providers keep executing even when they encounter unforeseen roadblocks. They also creatively address customers’ underlying concerns—rather than blindly fulfilling the letter of the request.
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Copyright 2007 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.
Further Reading
Articles
Harvard Business Review
June 2003
by Donald Sull
The types of promises people make in an organization must be adapted to the company’s needs at three different stages of maturity: 1) When your company’s young, make defining commitments. These public promises and investments establish shared views about how you’ll compete, create norms about how to unite and inspire employees, and obtain needed assets. 2) As your firm matures, make reinforcing commitments. These buttress your defining commitments—building efficiency, sharpening focus, and attracting employees and customers who fit the firm’s identity. 3) When disruptive change strikes, make transforming commitments. These force your firm out of the status quo by enabling leaders and employees to define a new strategic direction and to reconfigure resources, processes, and values to support that direction.
Informal Networks: The Company Behind the Chart
Harvard Business Review
July 1993
by David Krackhardt and Jeffrey R. Hanson
Many promises are made to individuals over whom the promise provider has no formal authority. Thus much of the work that gets done through promises unfolds in large networks of informal relationships that cross functions and divisions—not formal reporting relationships depicted on an organizational chart. To make effective promises, you need to understand the three types of informal networks that characterize your organization: 1) The advice network influences whom people are turning to most often to get work done. 2) The trust network determines who tends to share delicate information. 3) The communication network shows who talks most frequently about work-related matters. By diagramming these three networks, you can more easily determine who should be your promise “customers” and how to craft those promises.
