Recently, I had the good fortune of attending a half-day leadership motivation workshop for a large organization. The primary aim of the workshop was to bring about a change in the mindsets of the management and employees of the organization. So that they work better together as a team. A high-performance team.
(I am an outsider to the organization, but was present, in a different capacity).
A well-known personality was given the mandate of motivating this group, of reigniting the latent leader in them. And the person did speak very well. I learned and re-learned quite a few things from his inspiring speech. I was impressed.
Until when he shared one "success tip", which completely shocked and disturbed me. It seemed to me that the entire purpose of the workshop was being defeated by this one single-line tip.
This fatal tip was (and is): "Under-promise and over-deliver".
The speaker seemed to have offered this advice as a clever way of 'managing' superiors' expectations.
However, a closer examination would reveal to us that...
1) This is not a sustainable approach. If we consistently over-deliver, it would necessarily bring to light that we purposefully under-promise. This could then force us to promise higher and higher, thus reducing more and more our ability to over-deliver. Till a point reaches where we cannot under-promise. Or over-deliver.
The advice has a short life-span in this sense; this however is fine. Which brings us to a more important issue...
2) The situation will play out as above only if the superior is sufficiently smart, discerning and has sufficiently intimate knowledge of his/her subordinates' work. Otherwise, the subordinate might find it convenient to keep under-promising and over-delivering relative to the 'under-promise', while he/she could have promised as well as delivered much more! Leaving the superior under the illusion that his/her subordinate has over-delivered. Thus creating sustainable illusions of performance and hidden non-performance.
But this situation would arise only when some human actors involved have wrong intentions. There is an even bigger reason why this advice is wrong....
3) And that is what makes this advice fatal. Especially so in an organizational context.
As discussed in an earlier post, there is a host of factors which hinder the free flow of ideas in an organization. And hinder organizational performance. Dominant among them is the basic human fear of making a mistake. Of failure. And hence the tendency to aim low. Often very low.
On top of this innate tendency, if all employees begin to consciously under-promise, organizational growth would be dampened by a huge extent. Nothing could perhaps be a bigger innovation killer! This is more so in an organizational context because:
PS: Here is a totally different perspective on the issue, leading interestingly to the same conclusion. :)
(I am an outsider to the organization, but was present, in a different capacity).
A well-known personality was given the mandate of motivating this group, of reigniting the latent leader in them. And the person did speak very well. I learned and re-learned quite a few things from his inspiring speech. I was impressed.
Until when he shared one "success tip", which completely shocked and disturbed me. It seemed to me that the entire purpose of the workshop was being defeated by this one single-line tip.
This fatal tip was (and is): "Under-promise and over-deliver".
The speaker seemed to have offered this advice as a clever way of 'managing' superiors' expectations.
However, a closer examination would reveal to us that...
1) This is not a sustainable approach. If we consistently over-deliver, it would necessarily bring to light that we purposefully under-promise. This could then force us to promise higher and higher, thus reducing more and more our ability to over-deliver. Till a point reaches where we cannot under-promise. Or over-deliver.
The advice has a short life-span in this sense; this however is fine. Which brings us to a more important issue...
2) The situation will play out as above only if the superior is sufficiently smart, discerning and has sufficiently intimate knowledge of his/her subordinates' work. Otherwise, the subordinate might find it convenient to keep under-promising and over-delivering relative to the 'under-promise', while he/she could have promised as well as delivered much more! Leaving the superior under the illusion that his/her subordinate has over-delivered. Thus creating sustainable illusions of performance and hidden non-performance.
But this situation would arise only when some human actors involved have wrong intentions. There is an even bigger reason why this advice is wrong....
3) And that is what makes this advice fatal. Especially so in an organizational context.
As discussed in an earlier post, there is a host of factors which hinder the free flow of ideas in an organization. And hinder organizational performance. Dominant among them is the basic human fear of making a mistake. Of failure. And hence the tendency to aim low. Often very low.
On top of this innate tendency, if all employees begin to consciously under-promise, organizational growth would be dampened by a huge extent. Nothing could perhaps be a bigger innovation killer! This is more so in an organizational context because:
- Under-promises have a diminishing cascade effect as they travel upwards. If A1 under-promises to his/her boss A2, the promise that A2 makes to A3 based on that would be even smaller! And so on!!! This way, the promises that reach the top management could very well be very modest indeed!
- Delivery demands allocation of resources. If promises made are modest, allocation of resources would be made accordingly. Further, the natural tendency is to be conservative when allocating resources. The modest allocation of resources in response to the 'under-promise' makes it that much more challenging to deliver even what was 'under-promised'.
- The organization performs best when everyone is on the same page. When there is a shared aspiration and a common understanding of goals and the ways to attain them. The mechanics of this advice goes against this, by creating artificial barriers between people regarding promises and deliverables.
- The ensuing failure to aim high, to extend the horizon of the possible, could thus be fatal to the organization. It would be failing spectacularly in realizing its potential.
I found the advice to be particularly disturbing because the organization in question was a typical 'traditional' organization, plagued by very low aims, risk avoidance, aversion to making mistakes and conformism. This advice was hence the very opposite of the wisdom the management and employees of such an organization needed. A license to aim low in the delusional hope of 'over-delivering' relative to a low standard.
[Being an outsider, I could not publicly question the speaker about the wisdom of his advice (I wanted to, for the benefit of the audience). However, I approached him in private afterward; on advancing my reasons, he admitted his fault, though subtly.]
So, let us keep it straight and simple. Promise. And Deliver.
PS: Here is a totally different perspective on the issue, leading interestingly to the same conclusion. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment