Language Of Commitment

Here are my takeaways from the L. David Marquet book Leadership is Language of Commitment.

Commitment is essential to being able to collaborate effectively. Commitment comes from within so it invites full participation and engagement. On the other hand, compliance is forced by external sources and invites doing just enough to get by or get it done. Commitment attaches action to the decision. Compliance only gets the minimum fulfillment of requirements, whereas commitment invites discretionary actions.

Don’t and can’t:

By using the word “don’t,” motivation starts from within, e.g., I don’t eat sweets. It allocates power to you. On the contrary, the word “can’t” gives the feeling that imposition is coming from outside. E.g., I can’t eat sweets. If you want it to be your personal commitment, use don’t and not can’t. Be intentional about using don’t and can’t.

Choices

Whenever we need to make a commitment, there should be choices. If a person has no choice but to say yes, then what we have is compliance and not commitment. Note that when there are safety concerns, choices can’t be made and people need to comply, e.g., wearing a helmet while riding a bike.

Ways to move from compliance to commitment 

• Commit to learn and not just do: It is easier to commit to action when we put ourselves in learning mode. Focusing on a learning goal lowers the barrier to transitioning from thinking and planning to doing. Along with asking, what are we going to do? Also, ask what we are going to learn.
• Commit action, not belief: Don’t try to convince people to believe what you believe or try to get them on board with the idea. Instead only get the commitment on action. If the people on the team do not think it is the best way to go on something, do not try to convince them. Let them hold on to their idea as long as they commit to support the action.
• Chunk it small but do it all: If you have made a commitment to eat seven layers of dip, it will be eaten one bite at a time but there are two ways to select what should be in each bite. Either eat one layer at a time or take a deep scoop including all layers but in thin slices so that it can be eaten in one bite. This is called Chunk it small but do it all. Note that in product design and development, we need to deliberately chunk into discrete, small bite size pieces so that each chunk results in complete product increment and is testable in the market. Shorter chunk size increases learning but decreases production output. On the other hand, larger chunk sizes decrease learning but increase production output. We want to increase learning so that course of action is easy to change, if needed, based on the learning. Making a commitment to small increments allows one to be completely absorbed in the work for only a short period of time. It saves us from monitoring, if we are on track or not. Also it is easy to make a strong commitment to a short burst of activity as compared to an activity which will span a long period of time to complete. It is because commitment tends to be self reinforcing. Once we commit to a small step, humans have a tendency to continue to commit in that direction (See escalation of commitment). When detailed planning is not done upfront, there is opportunity of learning after each increment and it is easy to decide next steps based on the outcome of previously completed small chunks of work. 

Inviting commitment statements from a team member:

The commitment statement should include action and a plan to shift back to the thinking and planning phase and condition it after some duration of action. Here are some of the questions that can be asked:

• What are you planning on doing?
• When will you start doing the work?
• What is the expiration date on this commitment?

There is power in how and what questions.

There are three types of how questions:

• Probabilistic how:
  • How sure are you?
  • How likely is that assumption to be true?
• Inquisitive how:
  • How does ….effect…?
  • How do you see that?
• Aspirational how:
  • How could we start?
  • How could we test that quickly and cheaply?
  • Note that this type of question shifts people thinking from worrying about obstacles and barriers to considering what can be done within the resources that are available. This shifts the focus from what we can’t do to what we can do.

What questions that help getting commitment:

• What is the smallest slice we could make?
• What can we do?
• What would that look like?
• What would a first step look like?