Managing by commitments.

Full Abstract

What makes a great manager great? Despite differences in their personal attributes, successful managers all excel in the making, honoring, and remaking of commitments. Managerial commitments take many forms, from capital investments to personnel decisions to public statements, but each exerts both immediate and enduring influence on a company. A leader's commitments shape a business's identity, define its strengths and weaknesses, establish its opportunities and limitations, and set its direction. Executives can all too easily forget that commitments are extraordinarily powerful. Caught up in the present, managers often take actions that, while beneficial in the near term, impose lasting constraints on their operations and organizations. When market or competitive conditions change, they can find themselves unable to respond effectively. Managers who understand the nature and power of their commitments can wield them more effectively throughout a company's life cycle. Entrepreneurs can avoid taking actions that imprint a new venture with a dysfunctional character. Managers in established enterprises can buttress past commitments that retain their currency and learn to recognize when commitments have become roadblocks to needed changes. The manager can then replace those roadblocks with new, rejuvenating commitments. That doesn't mean you should try to anticipate all the long-run consequences of every commitment--and it certainly doesn't mean you should shy away from making commitments. But it does mean that before making important decisions about, say, operating processes or partnerships, you should always ask yourself:
Is this a process or relationship that we can live with in the future? Am I locking us into a course that we'll come to regret?

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Author information

Author/s: Sull, Donald N (DN);

Affiliation: Harvard Business School, Boston, USA.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Harvard business review (Harv Bus Rev), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-Jun; vol 81 (issue 6) : pp 82-91, 137

Dates: Created 2003/06/12; Completed 2003/07/21; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 12800719, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Administrative Personnel - psychology; standards
Commerce - organization & administration
Creativeness
Decision Making, Organizational
Efficiency, Organizational
Humans

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