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.
Managers have a full set of tools for translating strategy into action. They can redraw their organization charts, redesign their business processes, realign employee incentives, or build sophisticated IT systems to track performance. Nevertheless, critical initiatives stall, and important work goes undone. Emerging business opportunities fall by the wayside or, even worse, into the hands of more agile competitors.
