Motivation

We are social animals. We cannot survive alone. We develop relationships to grow and prosper. In each relationship we are branded, sometimes without us knowing. Agree or not, but every day we are marketing our personal brand, ‘Me Inc.’, in personal and professional worlds. Everything we do is either enhancing or damaging our brand. The simplest way to improve the brand image is to keep the promises we make. It is easy to say, but difficult to do. It is even harder to deliver more than promised. In the previous post, we discussed about why we tend to make promises that we cannot/don’t intend to keep.

Promises may fit the friends, but non-performance will turn them into enemies. – Benjamin Franklin

A promise gives other person a basis to expect something humanly tangible from you. He is then less worried about the uncertainties and this makes him at ease to some extent. But if you want to rise beyond expectations, over deliver.

Why to deliver more than promised?

1. For personal satisfaction: I try to keep promises I make. That makes me a responsible person. But there is nothing unpredictable in it. Fun is when I over-deliver and exceed the expectations. Whenever I deliver more than promised, I feel good for doing a quality job, and my confidence gets a boost. Moreover, my ‘extra’ efforts are recognized and appreciated by others.

2. To gain trust: Once people around you know that you put in extra efforts to deliver beyond expectations, they start trusting you. They will stick with you as long as possible since they know that at the least they are going to get what is promised. I am a vegetarian and I face problems when I go out to dine because of limited choices. But in a few restaurants, they understand my plight and offer me more options than stated on the menu. So, I visit those restaurants more often.

3. To take relationships to the next level: Delivering more than promised makes you extraordinary. You not only gain trust but also win a following. You create evangelists for your brand. Why people love Google, Firefox and Apple so much? Why their users become their marketers too? It is because they deliver more than what other search engines, internet browsers, and personal computers offer. The relationship between them and their users has advanced to the next level. Please find me a user who is not happy with them.

Have you ever under-promised and over-delivered? Do you put extra efforts to rise above expectations?

However, sometimes we are not able to keep our promises, even if we want to. After all we are humans. Things do go wrong and mistakes happen. It is important to remember that mistakes are allowed provided we accept and don’t repeat the same.

What to do if we could not keep our promise?

Instead of hiding, ignoring or lying about it, if we just communicate and accept it openly, we can still maintain the relationship and not lose the trust.

- Accept it. Tell the truth. Move on.

- Learn from your mistake or keep your mouth shut next time.

[Update]

Also Read:

• The brand formula – Seth Godin
• Ego – Seth Godin
• Who says we need our logo on every slide? – Garr Reynolds
• Overdeliver – Yuri Filimonov

In my earlier post (part 1), I said that two individuals practicing for same number of hours might not progress at the same speed. This means that they might not get the same results from their endeavors. Why is that? Is one person having more natural talent than the other? Not likely. The difference is in one’s ability to choose where to focus. Choosing where to focus, what to practice on is not easy as it sounds. You might say, “Just focus on the barriers and you’ll be fine.” I am sorry to break this illusion but it doesn’t work this way. If your focus is on the wrong barrier, you won’t accomplish your goal, and your under performance will lead to frustration.

So the key is to identify different kinds of barriers. Based on my experiences and readings, I consider mainly two kinds of barriers.

1. Primary barriers

First type of barriers are those which hamper your progress. These barriers interfere with your strengths and that’s why you are not able to reach your full potential. These are the primary barriers.

2. Secondary barriers

Second type of barriers are those which do not block your progress. These barriers do not prevent you from exercising your strengths to full extent. These are the secondary barriers.

For example, in cricket fastest bowlers are not the best bowlers. So, lack of speed in my bowling is not the real cause of my average performance. Speed is the secondary barrier. My primary barrier is the lack of good length and tight line. So, instead of practicing for fastest delivery, I should be practicing for good line and length.

What to do?

The trick is to distinguish between these types of barriers and work only on the primary barriers. Working on secondary barriers is a waste of time unless you have already overcome your primary barriers and overcoming the secondary barriers will help you perform better. Overcoming primary barriers will allow you to play to your strengths with full potential. Do understand that this will improve your effectiveness but not necessarily your efficiency. In essence, to become a great performer what you have to answer is – how to be more effective (in practice sessions).

To be able to distinguish between these two types of barriers requires clear understanding of what you want to achieve. If your goals are not clear to you, you will never be able to identify and focus on your primary barriers. Another important thing to remember is to keep your mind open to suggestions. Sometimes, when you can’t see the primary barriers, external sources, like your teachers, parents, siblings, or friends, might help.

For example

When I was in 7th standard, we were learning how to balance chemical equations in our chemistry class. Every one was practicing hard on it because that was the only topic that was supposed to be in our midterms. Like everyone, I was also practicing a lot to solve the equations using mathematical concepts. But maths alone was not enough to make it work. I was not getting the right answers, no matter how much I practiced.

Thanks to my mother, she saw me in frustration and came to help.

The first thing she made me to do was to memorize the periodic table and learn the atomicity of all the elements in the table. Knowing whether the element is diatomic, triatomic, etc. helped me deciding what multiplication factors can be used to balance the equations. Then we set up some rules, e.g., tackle the complex molecules first and the independent elements last.

So, this time I practiced with the knowledge of atomicity of the elements keeping the rules in my mind. The result – I was the only student in my batch to get all the answers correct in the midterms. That definitely made me popular in the school but the important thing was the lesson I learned.

Finale

Lesson learned was: know what is obstructing your progress and work only on it.

What really matters is your ability to recognize what really matters. You cannot run blindly for one thing today and for another tomorrow. Identify the limiting factors, differentiate them into primary and secondary barriers, and focus completely on the primary barriers.

Practice with a plan and the knowledge of the primary barriers. Some people are able to do it subconsciously, while others, including me, need to be explicit about it.

Read also: Bend it like Beckham. But how? Part 1