Honor Your Commitments

The day always comes when your manager asks you: are you able to complete a certain task by a certain deadline. Your answer can literally change the direction of your career and your destiny. If you say you can complete your assignment in time you will be held accountable for it. Your success will make you reliable, trustworthy, and someone that others can depend on; people will want to work with you. If you aren’t able to meet your commitments, the opposite is true: your ability to estimate will be questioned and your judgment made suspect. Therefore it's in your absolute best interest to meet your goals.

Before you answer your manager, you should ask yourself: do you have the resources to keep your promise?

If you are a sole contributor and all you require is yourself, it's easier to gauge whether you accomplish a task. Problems begin to emerge when you involve others in accomplishing your project; some tasks simply cannot be done alone as they are possibly quite complex or require skills that you don’t possess. Is it fair for your manager to ask you to do something you can’t do all by yourself? Perhaps…but they will still ask and you should consider your answer carefully.

The truth is that you won’t be able to accomplish everything alone and you will need to marshal the correct resources to accomplish these tasks. Your manager isn’t only asking you to do something, but also bringing together those individuals/teams who can help you with that. But everyone is busy: why would this other team help you? Only you know the answer to this question but a great first step will be to better understand the needs and goals of those who require help. They may be very busy with their own workload…so busy in fact that they can’t actually help you accomplish your goals. But you’ll only know this by asking the right questions and understanding what they do and how they do it. Knowledge is your greatest asset in determining whether something is possible or not. Remember: keeping your word and your commitments means working with others and learning from them.

Manager: So can you do it?

You: I understand the problem! Based on what I know and can leverage I think I…… (you fill in the rest)

It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath.

Aeschylus