Want to Increase Trust? Increase Your Say/Do Ratio!

by Bill Sanders, Principal and Sr. Consultant with Roebling Strauss

Biz Stone was recently invited to speak at private gathering for one of our clients to discuss design thinking. What followed was an engaging exchange across, not just the topic at hand, but across a litany of subjects driving current events, leadership and other business issues. In response to a question, Biz made the following comment.

"Say, do. Say, do. Say, do. It's the only way to build trust."

I found his comment a much more succinct summation of my philosophy: If you want to build trust, make and keep commitments.

Think about that for a moment. Think about the people you work with, clients, vendors, co-workers. Who do you trust and why? Who trusts you?

My experience is that we tend to trust those people who do what they say they will, when they say they will, and deliver the expected level of quality. Delivering on our commitments is a key component of building trust.

Requesting, negotiating, making, managing, and keeping commitments is something we are all engaged in on a daily and sometimes even hourly basis. And those of us with high expectations of ourselves and our work are acutely embarrassed when we miss a deadline, forget a promise, or produce something that doesn't meet expectations.

That insight and our desire to personally up our own performance was one of the key drivers for Chris Heuer , Rawn Shaw , and I to co-found Alynd in 2013. And while the product has pivoted due to market demand, we experienced and learned much from the initial foray into the development of commitment management software. Especially when we began using it ourselves.

Immediately upon completion of our first prototype, we began using the software to manage our commitments to one another. And it was successful in terms of helping us keep our commitments to one another, with one massive side effect; what we gained in the consistency of keeping our agreements, we initially lost in sleep.

Here are my key learnings on how to keep a high Say/Do ratio and still get a good night's sleep:

Ask the Right Questions

Moving from a rather fluid, effort-focused start up mentality to one of explicit agreement requires everyone engaged in the project to be on the same trajectory. If I know exactly what you want, and have done it before, I have a much better chance of estimating the resources and time required before I make another commitment to you. I must know what it is you expect. Sometimes more importantly, I need to know what you don't expect.

I now recommend that you always define quality criteria (what "it" is and what "it" is not) for deliverables. Ask questions about budget limitations, design boundaries, and competing commitments related to the project. Find out what the consequences are for not meeting the objective by the requested deadline.

Time Is a Priority

As Alan Weiss is fond of saying, "Time is not a resource, time is a priority."

Considered separately, many requests were clearly possible to complete in a week. But from a holistic viewpoint, I couldn't complete them all. After a couple of weeks using the new tool, my delivery was near 100%, but I was getting no sleep. The culprit? I was making immediate commitments to requests, without systematically considering other commitments I had already made, or evaluating the priorities of the new requests.

The interesting thing here is that our prototype was highlighting a way of operating as well as keeping me aware of all the commitments I had made. It didn't take long to learn the phrase "Let me evaluate that and I'll get back to you this afternoon with my commitment."

Build in Margins

Closely related to priority, I found that if I was going to keep all my commitments, then making less of them wasn't going to do the trick all by itself. Inevitably, things come up. Opportunities present themselves. Trains don't run on time. As I monitored the results, I became much more adept at leaving unscheduled time in my calendar so that the unexpected didn't have to come out of my sleep.

I now generally leave prep time and follow up time for meetings. And I'm more selective in the meetings that I do commit to attend. This makes a tremendous difference at the end of the day when I'm not left with two hours of follow up.

Want to improve trust? Improve your Say/Do ratio. Here are three simple tips.

1. Confirm all commitments in writing. Send an email reiterating who will do what for whom by when. The simple act of writing it down will help you remember it as well as allow the other party to clarify any misunderstandings immediately.


2. Track your commitments. Use whatever tool best fits your operational style. It can be a whiteboard, your calendar, or an excel spreadsheet. Two keys; everything has to be on it, and you have to be able to access it.


3. Track your progress. On a week by week basis track how many commitments you made and kept. While it is difficult to track trust, it is easy to track if you are keeping your commitments.

It feels good when you know you are delivering, which of course increases your ability and energy to deliver. Develop the habit of saying and then doing; of promising and then delivering. It's a virtuous cycle that's addictive. And it will pay huge dividends in your personal and professional life.

Bill Sanders is Principal and Sr. Consultant with Roebling Strauss, a boutique consultancy that specializes in delivering dramatic improvements in organizational effectiveness: co-founder and Advisory Board Member of Will Someone, software that facilitates and supports team alignment through commitments: and Co-Lead Link of the Finance Circle for Great Work Cultures, a community dedicated to creating a new norm for work cultures that optimize worker effectiveness and human happiness. Connect with Bill on twitter at @technacea.

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