Appropriate Promises

The older I get, the less I like the phrase under promise, over deliver. We say it all the time, especially in the professional world. And everyone nods and smiles, agreeing that it is the way to go. Because, we never want to underwhelm our partners.

I’ve always nodded and smiled too, certain that I knew what people meant. I’m sure I’ve used the phrase myself plenty of times. But lately I’ve been less certain that I understand those four words. And every time I question their meaning, I become more certain that I don’t like it.

What does it take to under promise and over deliver? On the surface, it seems like a good thing. But how do we get there? Do we low ball our capabilities in what we promise so we can guarantee our results are above and beyond? Sometimes, I think that is exactly what we do.

We promise only as much as we can do in our sleep. Our automatic results that we can deliver consistently with little effort. So, when we put in just a little more effort we can deliver more than our promise. Maybe along the way we will challenge and push ourselves, but not every time. Not with any regularity anyway. But that’s okay, because we are still over delivering.

I can’t help but wonder, is under promising a way for us to skate by without ever taking the risk to find out what we are capable of? When we under promise so that we can over deliver, are we really just under delivering most of the time?

And what happens when we do consistently over deliver on our promises? Our results become the new expectation. Think about it. If we constantly deliver more than what we said we will, people will get used to us always blowing their expectations out of the water. What happens that one time we can only meet what we promised?

Disappointment happens. We let other people and ourselves down. Because we did exactly what we said we would instead of more. Why should we consistently put ourselves in a situation where being reliable isn’t enough? Because we live by under promise, over deliver.

What if instead we appropriately promised? What if the goal was simply to be reliable?