We asked executives how many open commitments they juggle at any one time, counting both what they owe and what they are owed. About two in three put it at 25 or more, and one in ten at 50 or more.
A regional sales director at a large pharmaceutical manufacturer is one of the 25s. Asked for a commitment that slipped, she wrote one sentence.
"Someone committed to researching a fix to a problem and never provides me with deliverables - I have to remember to follow up with them."
The last six words are the system. Asked which part of her week is hardest, she picked remembering what others have committed to her, and this one is held exactly that way: in her memory, waiting for her to notice that it has gone quiet. Asked what this one cost, she did not pick time, money or trust. She picked the only answer still in the present tense: "It's still costing me."
That is what 25 looks like from the inside. Each open promise sits after a decision, in the execution gap, and this one stays open until she remembers to chase it.
–Clint
What's on Larry's mind
At VA Linux I could have bookings, burn, and headcount any morning I asked for them. Same at SugarCRM. Neither one could tell me how many promises its leadership team had open.
I wanted that number. No system we ran was watching the space between a decision and the work, so there was nothing to add up.
The sales director Clint quotes above holds hers in her head. Her shape is the most common one in the stories people told: somebody owes her something and it still hasn't arrived. About one story in five carries something else underneath. Somebody believed a piece of work was in someone else's hands or already done, and it wasn't. In a third of those, they found out only because another person said so.
Ask each person on your leadership team to write down what they owe and what they are waiting on, with dates. Put the lists next to each other. What one person is carrying and what another is still expecting come apart quietly, because neither of them has ever seen the other's list. Add the lists up and you have your number. The mismatches come free.
Bookings, burn, and headcount each got a number because somebody built the thing that produces it. Nobody had built this one.
–Larry
Product progress
Your daily brief can come to you in Slack.
Brief sends it as a direct message at your usual briefing time, with the same items as your email brief. Reply in its thread and you are in a Brief chat that already has the briefing in front of it. You can also message the Brief app directly with any question and get the answer back in a thread. Connecting Slack lets Brief read your messages and pull out the commitments, decisions and questions in them, and it adds the Brief app that delivers your brief and answers your questions. Brief in Slack covers the setup.
If you pick a timezone in Settings, Brief keeps it. When your device moves to another zone, Brief asks whether to switch your briefing timezone before it changes anything.
When Brief attaches the wrong person's photo, title or LinkedIn profile to someone you know, open their page and choose Not this person? to remove it. Brief won't use that profile for them again.
–Zac
An open promise lives in the execution gap, the second of the two stages Larry lays out in the second Executive Intelligence Paper, The Decision-to-Done Gap. It is free and ungated.
How many open commitments are you carrying right now, counting what you owe people and what people owe you?