Comments

Wonderful!- couldn't agree more Tom

In fact a promise is NOT a promise until you achieve it.

Posted by Trevor Gay at August 10, 2005 9:54 AM

Promise = Promise !!
There is no half ground there. Its all about personal intergrity. Like the native indians say, "I speak, so it will be done". They acutally dont have a concept of promise in the old ways.... !! yet the same principle exists, which in reversve analogy makes ,ones a liar if s/he dont do what they say would have done, and thereby lose face and creditablity!!

Posted by /pd at August 10, 2005 10:01 AM

Totally agree with u on this one Tom!

Why the hell one makes promises if one cant keep up????? Are promises meant to be broken??? Well, as Jonathan Swift once said "Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken".....well, i guess he didnt really mean a bit of it! However, in this context, i wish to place on record one of my favo quotes on PROMISE as told by 'Fanuel Tjingaete' -"A winner makes commitments; a loser makes promises."......so true rite???

Posted by K.Sriram (from India) at August 10, 2005 10:16 AM

And one more thing i forgot to mention on my previous post "Expectations is the MOTHER of all f**kups!

Have a gr8 day!

Posted by K.Sriram (from India) at August 10, 2005 10:17 AM

Underpromise. Overdeliver.

Posted by Kirk Samuels at August 10, 2005 10:37 AM

The standard to be sure but suppose your child is struck by a car and rushed to an emergency room where their life hangs in the balance, now what do you do?

Posted by Todd at August 10, 2005 11:10 AM

You pray Todd :-)

But before that ... you pray with all your might you never have to face that situation. It must be awful. As a parent my hear goes out to any parent in that situation.

In my experience in those circumstances doctors never, ever, promise ANYTHING.

I worked with hundreds, maybe thousands of doctors in my career. I cannot recall one occasion when a doctor made a PROMISE to a patient.

'Opinion?' yes, 'hope?' yes, PROMISE? - NO!

Posted by Trevor Gay at August 10, 2005 11:22 AM

Why promise anything?

Simple: you're building TRUST. If you do what you promise to do, your credibility shoots straight up.

And if you can't make sure the outcome is what you want to promise (such as Trevor's doctor example), best to not promise anything. Better to show your uncertainty than to promise something you're not sure you can do.

Good one, Tom.

Posted by Ron at August 10, 2005 12:59 PM

Apart from the truly exceptional circumstances like we see above, which all reasonable folks would surely understand, you keep promises: it's basic. It's about showing the commitment and accountability you want from other people. It's about showing respect for the other person by doing what you said you'd do. It's about your own personal dignity.

Posted by Mark JF at August 10, 2005 1:29 PM

Absolutely. That's what it means to be a professional - you do what you say you will do. Sometimes there're problems and delays, like meeting deadlines, but you keep the customer informed and you always deliver.

Speaking of deadlines, here's what Douglas Adams, the guy who wrote the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books, had to say about them:

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."

Posted by Noel Guinane at August 10, 2005 2:16 PM

Remind me to not let Mr. Adams ghostwrite my book.

Posted by Ron at August 10, 2005 3:11 PM

Unless you don't mind him really ghostwriting your book ... unfortunately, he had a heart attack on of all things an exercise bicycle and people who were there at the time said that when it happened, he reached for his towel.

Posted by Noel Guinane at August 10, 2005 3:16 PM

Noel,
that's a great line from THGTTG! Now where did i leave my copy of that book? I want to read it before i head out to watch the film.

On a more serious note, I feel that most quality systems - Six Sigma, Kaizen, CMM have a basic principle - Make sure people deliver correctly on their deadlines. Now how many ways can you re-imagine that? :-)))))

Arun
http://pricingconsultant.blogspot.com

Posted by Arun Sadhashivan at August 10, 2005 3:19 PM

As an interviewer, I could never understand those people who showed up exactly on time or late for an interview. Did they really think that they would WOW me by being late on the first day, when they're trying to make their best impression???

If we always try to exceed expectations, we're much more likely to meet them. If I have a meeting at 11am, it's a 10:50am meeting as far as I'm concerned.

When will people realize that traffic can potentially delay them?? Duh! Leave with plenty of time to spare, figuring in that there WILL be traffic. If you get there early, make some phone calls or send a "thinking of you" card to your partner...but for the sake of all things holy, err on the side of punctuality!!!

Posted by Tom O'Leary at August 10, 2005 4:21 PM

Arun, don't bother. Stick with the book, or better yet, the original radio shows. The film was weak, in my opinion mostly because Douglas Adams' influence over it was minimal.

Posted by Noel Guinane at August 10, 2005 4:30 PM

If you make a promise you create an expectation for that agreement to be met, common sense. If you promise and don't deliver we all know what can happen: bye credibility, hello mad customer.

After scanning the recent posts I sadly found none from a woman...At this stage what I expected was to have more women posting on this site. Bringing them to this site should be named becoming smarter. Just a reminder: it was precisely on this site where one could read something along that "if you are not in a situation where you are scared, you are not learning".

Posted by Omara at August 10, 2005 5:32 PM

Omara, I was thinking the same thing. Where are the women?

Posted by Noel Guinane at August 10, 2005 5:58 PM

I have a personal saying that sometimes slips out to clients and friends.

"Not dead. Can't quit."

Which is often reworded as:

"The only valid excuse for not doing X is that I am dead."

And that pretty much sums up what I think of fulfilling explicit or implicit promises that I make. I’m more forgiving with others...

Enjoy,

Posted by Michael Vanderdonk at August 10, 2005 7:41 PM

Re "getting there early," one of the many "Wows" (they use the word more than I do) from our pals at Commerce Bank is making sure that every branch is open 15 minutes before the posted opening hour.

Another pet peeve of mine is the retail shop where 3 customers are in line and the kid stands there on the other side of the door at 9:58 for 2 minutes before unlocking the door.

Posted by tom peters at August 11, 2005 10:25 AM

...or standing at the door 2 mintutes before closing time with the key in their hand, making you, as a customer, feel as though you're holding them up while you're waiting for your receipt!...

Believe it or not, while living in Naples Italy, my wife and I went into town one afternoon and found our stomachs grumbling at about 1:30pm. Evenutally, we saw a sign for a restaurant and hurried across the street...only to find a sign on the door, BELIEVE IT OR NOT, "Closed for Lunch"! (in Italian obviously) (and perhaps, in Naples obviously!)

Posted by Tom O'Leary at August 11, 2005 12:08 PM

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In defense of the "kid" waiting to open or trying to close on the dot--it isn't their fault, really. I worked in food service a long while and I know that nobody is paid well or treated properly by their employers. What do you expect when they make minimum wage with little hope of a raise or advancement? If they had any ambition, they wouldn't be in that job anyway.

I agree with the idea of all managers having to wait tables a while, but I also know from bitter experience that many of the eager-to-please, take-the-customers'-abuse servers took out their frustrations on the poor line cooks when the customers couldn't hear them. (Don't deny it, all you former waiters and waitresses!)

Posted by Mike at August 11, 2005 12:14 PM

I hate to sound so sappy, but I believe the essence of Excellence is making the best of a crappy situation, from Rudy Giuliani on 9/11 to the underpaid waiter. Those who will succeed in the end (e.g. own a successful restaurant) will have learned what a restaurant can be and often is not from day #1 as a minimum wage busboy.

Posted by tom peters at August 11, 2005 3:47 PM

Of course Tom is sappily right. It comes back to William Osler addressing his students (just substitute waitress for student:

"As to the method of your work, I have a single bit of advice, which I give with the earnest conviction of its paramount influence in any success which may have attended my efforts in life—Take no thought for the morrow. Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day's work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition. ... The student who is worrying about his future, anxious over the examinations, doubting his fitness for the profession, is certain not to do so well as the man who cares for nothing but the matter in hand, and who knows not whither he is going."

...or Martin Luther King when he said something to the effect "...If you're a street sweeper, be the best street sweeper that you can be..."

Posted by Tom O'Leary at August 11, 2005 6:45 PM

I recognize a few of the sentiments expressed.

We recently opened our business, and dealing with contractors who didn't show up about drove me around the bend. I spent 23 years in the Air Force, and if you said you were going to be someplace, you were there. In non-operational situations, you could be late, but only if you were delayed by truly unforseen circumstances and if you got word to the people who were waiting for you. viagra uk paypal

viagra free sample pack On the comments about retail service, yeah employees are treated and paid like sh*t. I remember reading an article in the Washington Post recently about pay in retail. To reduce turnover and ensure we could attract the best, we're paying well above market.

We were interviewing a kid just out of high school. He had his salary expectations down on the form, just like it asked-$8 an hour. I told him that was a problem---pause--because we didn't pay that low. Needless to say he was happy.

It paid off. He and a high school girl we hired saved our bacon. Without their hard work and initiative, we wouldn't have been able to have a successful opening. Reward--a $100 bonus for each of them. viagra with no prescription

I could say more, but it's late and tomorrow's a long day...

Posted by Tony Paulson at August 13, 2005 12:13 AM

Good luck with your business, Tony. That's pretty much how we handled the immigrants and students we hired in our business. We started them out at $7 (back in '91), encouraged them to work hard and then incrementally increased it to $10 an hour ... within a month. We'd budgeted for that amount from the beginning, but wanted them to feel like they were earning it rather than thinking we were just being super-generous when the going rate was $5 an hour. It paid off. People bent over backwards to please our customers and though for many of them it was transitory employment, i.e. they came and went, we never ran another hiring ad - all of our new hires came from referrals.

Posted by Noel Guinane at August 13, 2005 3:34 AM

I owned a catering business before I went into the corporate world. When asked to commit to a deadline, I would say that I never went to a bride and said, "Sorry, I am running behind. Will have you reception a couple of hours later than planned."

Then I would look at the others in the meeting and say that is the time scheduling and pressure I am used to committing to. Perfection on the most special day is a womans life.

Will everyone else step up to that standard?

T

Posted by Tom at August 14, 2005 7:16 AM

Tom! Are you telling me that the world war was a bad idea?

Posted by pankaj at August 16, 2005 12:19 PM