Chapter 5: Make It Easy--How to Make Keeping Commitments (Almost) Painless

Overview

Ability will never catch up with the demand for it.

”Confucius

It s time to move to the ability side of our model. We ll start with an example. Kyle, a political analyst who works for you, was supposed to write a position paper for an upcoming debate and have it on your desk by noon, but he didn t. You call him in for a private discussion and describe the gap. He lets you know that he really wanted to do what he promised and says that it wasn t his fault that he didn t. The specialist who conducts the statistical analysis was hospitalized with a burst appendix, and she s the only one who understands the data.

In any case, Kyle was prevented from doing what he agreed to do. And then he did exactly the right thing: He immediately called to let you know about the problem, but you were in a meeting across town. He left a message on your voice mail and then tried to track you down. In short, he wasn t able to meet his commitment and did his best to let you know. This was definitely not a motivation problem.