Would I Be Accurate If I Said You See Examples Of Your Failure To Act Consistently With Your Commitments?

Would I also be accurate if I said it is much easier for you to see this failure to act consistently with your commitments in your colleagues actions and behaviors than in your own?

High performing individuals and organizations have a super sensitivity to the things they do that are inconsistent with their commitments, and they have a set of practices and disciplines to correct quickly.

So what do the rest of us do that keeps us from being high performers? Well the first part has many variants:

1. Firstly, we don't make many commitments – we are reluctant to put ourselves at the risk of failing (more about that another time), or looking bad
2. We are mostly process or activity oriented, not outcome oriented, so the attention is on the to do list, or action items, or the process, not the outcome or result that is wanted and needed
3. Even when we are clear about the result we settle for reasons, explanations and excuses as a substitute for results. So the formula looks like, no intended result + good reason or excuse = the result we'll settle for. Look at something as simple as being on time for meetings. The formula looks like this: late + an excuse = as acceptable as being on time. And we settle for that. The advanced state of this bad habit goes straight to putting up with. We don't even bother with the excuses part and go straight to putting up with and settling for the condition. So, in the late to meeting example, we just accept lateness as part of the way we do things around here. You can be sure that same lack of discipline shows up equally unnoticed and unchallenged in many other parts of the business
4. We allow ourselves, and others, to pass off unspecific vague statements of activity or aspiration as commitments we are skilled at making these statements vague, but sound good – many of your KPI statements will likely fit this description. By being vague about exactly what is to be produced by whom, by when, means we deny ourselves the opportunity of seeing things as consistent/inconsistent with our intentions
5. We speak equivocally: I'll do my best, I'll try, subject to... In other words we don't make promises.

The Second part has to do with missing practices, or bad habits.

1. We don't make sufficient (if any) promises
2. A bad habit in many organizations is to default to reasons and explanations rather than promises – yes, we need the facts, we need to know what did or didn't happen, but not as a substitute for results. The best generator of actions that will produce desired outcomes/results is to promise – what, by when to whom
3. Another bad habit is overt or covert wrong making. The background conversation and often the foreground conversation too is, "there's something wrong we me, him/her, them it" when something unwanted happens. This keeps us on the defensive, justifying and excuse making rather than in action committed to produce the desired outcome
4. A missing practice is regular after action reviews.

My header question is a very difficult one for most of us to ask of ourselves (never mind ask of others), because we have been trained to related to our failure to deliver, to live up to our commitments as evidence that we are somehow bad or wrong, somehow flawed, somehow insufficient. We fear being exposed as not up to the job – exposed as incompetent in important areas, masquarading as overall effective executives.

After all good people keep their commitments – right? Effective executives deliver – right? Well maybe... A longer conversation for another day.

So the first step in examining the question is just to notice where you see that your actions are inconsistent with your commitments and values – just notice:

• Resist the temptation to judge and evaluate
• Resist the automatic tendency to make an assessment about what it means that you acted inconsistently with a commitment or value – just notice
• Counter-intuitively don't try to fix anything – just notice
• If you MUST do something then keep a count, that's all, – just count
  
• Well, maybe one thing more – keep a log, keep a record of what happened that was inconsistent - just keep noticing.

HEALTH WARNING: DON'T GO DOWN THE "MAKE WRONG" TUNNEL – THERE IS NOTHING USEFUL THERE.