Episode #495: The 12 Commitments Method

Shaun Tomson was a famous South African world champion surfer and the recent guest on Tim Reid’s podcast Small Business Big Marketing, of which I am a fan. In the show, Shaun was talking about what he called his Code concept, based around 12 “I will” statements. In fifteen minutes, we have to come up with twelve statements, each starting with the words “I will…”. The idea is that we have to use our stream of consciousness to get down ideas about what we need to be doing. In Shaun’s case he is getting people to think about things they need to do to improve their lives, but it can also be used for more specific business purposes. I tried it for myself and thought this was a useful idea for strengthening the commitment of the team, to hit our goals and targets.

I changed the naming from Code to Commitment, because I wanted a purely business oriented focus in this methodology. Tim asked Shaun why the number twelve and there was not a particular reason for him to choose twelve, but I kept the same format. I think twelve makes sense, because it isn’t a long laundry list of things that need to be done, which are so numerous, people just give up. It also can’t be too few either, because we have many things to get done and we need some meat on the bone to make it worthwhile doing it at all. By the way, I found the first few were relatively easy to get down, but twelve pushed me a little to go a bit deeper in my thinking.

So you may have a revenue target to reach or some similar business goals and so try it and get your people to spend the 15 minutes to do the exercise. When I think about it, I usually leave the execution component to the team, after we have announced their targets. This 12 Commitments approach goes a bit more granular and starts addressing which concrete actions they are going to take to get there. As I mentioned, the first commitments flow easily without too much thought, but the last half create a bit of tension to come up with things beyond the obvious. The 15 minute time limit cuts down on the procrastination and perfectionism, which can so often becalm initiatives, as we over think them or make them so complex they never get done. The 15 minutes is enough time without being too much time.

I did this exercise with the sales consultants and once everyone has their Commitments, it is important to publicly announce them in front of each other. Get your people to stand up one at a time and read them out. There is a level of a super buddy system here, as we all become witnesses to each other’s commitments. As the boss, it is also revealing to see what quality level of commitment people can come up with. Do they have a clear focus on what they need to achieve? How well have they absorbed the culture of the organization? How clearly do they understand the hinge points in their work, which will make a difference to getting the outcomes we need? In some cases, listening to these reports, we may flag we need to do some additional coaching with some people.

In this regard, I also ask everyone to send me their commitments. Listening to a bunch of people going through their commitments, one after another, becomes hard to remember all of the detail. I will make the time and go through these with them one by one, to see where I can coach them further and also increase their resolve to actually do what they have said they would do. I also plan to publish each person’s commitments internally, so that the whole team can be a witness to what has been committed. I may even get them into some printed format and hand them back to the team to keep in front of them as they do their work. Having physical reminders of intellectual aspirations is always a good combination.

I don’t think in a business context, we can just go through this exercise and leave it there. These twelve items make a good base for the weekly catchup meetings between the boss and the staff to see how they are progressing. By keeping the interest alive, they feel some pressure to actually implement what they have said was important in their work. This could just as easily be a temporary boss fad, a passing interest with no great importance. We don’t want that. The Commitments can also be useful milestones for the formal reviews of staff performance. They had their targets previously and now they have their action items to report on as well.

Anything I can do to get my team more focused and committed to achieving the outcomes we have set for the business is very attractive to me. Shaun’s comments in the interview mentioned that there are tens of thousands of people around the world who have gone through this exercise, achieving good results. That sounds pretty good to me and so let's see how far and fast we can drive this approach.