My good friend and mentor Robert Rabbin wrote recently:
After some 35 years of working in my teacher’s organization and then working with numerous diverse organizations and professionals, I discovered a single principle the practice of which definitely increases self-awareness, while at the same time creating an organizational culture that fosters interpersonal connection, trust, reliability, accountability, enthusiasm, wholeheartedness and all kinds of other good things. One principle does all this. And I want to share that with you now.
Do what you say you will do.
I LOVE it!
Recently I was running an implementation and productivity workshop. I said that the single biggest thing you can do to be more productive, successful and fulfilled is to keep your promises.
We all know some people who say they’ll do something, be somewhere or look after something, and inside we think ‘we’ll see.’ And there are other people who when they say something, we know we could take that commitment to the bank. It’s going to happen. Much more powerful to be in the second group.
I’ve recently engaged a new financial planner – Matt. He had come highly recommended and he knew his stuff. But here’s what sold me. The morning of our meeting he had got up at 3:30am to go to the gym. Sounds a bit insane, but he’d made a commitment to go to the gym 100 days in a row. And this particular day he was playing golf at 6am before work, had a function after work, and the only way he could make it was get up at some stupid hour of the morning.
Again, I LOVE it. Here’s a guy who keeps his word. Even when it’s completely unreasonable to do so. It’s easy to keep your word when it only takes reasonable actions to do so. The test comes when it requires setting the alarm at 3:30.
Love to hear your thoughts, how important do you think it is to do what you say? You can leave them below.
