American project tools display the state of every commitment as a field — green, amber, red, or on track, at risk, blocked — updated by the owner and visible to everyone. The design assumes the status changes. A system built for agreements that hold at the level they were set would not need the column at all.
Just checking in
Just circling back. Following up on this. Any update? Bumping this to the top of your inbox. Did you get a chance to look at this?
Five standard American formulations for asking whether an agreement is still an agreement, and every one of them apologises in the asking.
They are sent routinely, received without offence, and answered. Nobody treats the question as doubt about the person, because everybody is sending them.
The standing meeting
American organisations schedule the follow-up before it is needed — the weekly one-to-one, the Monday stand-up, the biweekly check-in, the quarterly business review.
The meeting exists in the calendar whether or not there is anything to discuss. Its function is not the agenda. It is the guarantee that the status will be revisited at a known interval.
A promise without a bargain
American contract law will not enforce a promise unless something was given in exchange for it. The doctrine is called consideration, and the Restatement defines it as a bargained-for exchange.
A promise to drive a friend to the airport for nothing is not enforceable, however clearly and unequivocally the promisor expressed a wish to be bound. A promise to pay a taxi driver is.
An American yes, on its own, carries no legal weight at all. The question is always what came back the other way — which is why a yes can be given freely and why its reliability has to be established some other way.
Litigation
Given their litigation-heavy culture, it may seem ironic that Americans are so quick to say yes to an agreement. After all, saying yes and then not following through should make it easier for the one party to file a lawsuit.
However, the reality is the opposite. By having a culturally soft yes Americans make it more difficult for others to successfully sue them. In the U.S. it takes far more than a simple yes to indicate an oral agreement, which offers Americans protection from legal claims.
Gianni vs. Russell Supreme Court of Pennsylvania 1924 – Gianni, who owned a small store, claimed that his landlord told him that he could have the exclusive right to sell drinks in the building.
The landlord then rented another space in the building to a company that sold drinks, and Gianni attempted to sue. However, because Gianni had entered into a written lease, and there was no mention of this right in the lease, the oral contract was said to be nonexistent.
Power Entertainment Inc. v. National Football League Properties, Inc., United States Court of Appeals, 5th Circuit, 1998 – the plaintiff and defendant orally agreed that Power Entertainment would take over a licensing agreement between the NFL Properties and another company in exchange for Power Entertainment assuming the $800,000 debt between the two original companies. However, after the debt was paid, NFL Properties did not transfer the license, and the oral contract was found to be invalid.
Additionally, oral agreements in the US are sometimes called handshake deals. Although an actual handshake isn’t necessary to make the agreement binding, this still shows that it takes more than a ‘yes’ to enter into an agreement.
Iteration
The term iteration has become common within American companies: to communicate several or many communications, back and forth, between two or more parties, in which information is exchanged, decisions made, activities (action items or more simply actions) agreed to.
Merriam-Webster online defines iteration as a procedure in which repetition of a sequence of operations yields results successively closer to a desired result.
Americans iterate, some intensely so. It allows them to maintain flexibility, to ensure information flow, to discriminate between what is important and unimportant, to reduce risk. Like any strength, however, it can be inflationary: too much communication, too little action.
Instead of front-loading an agreement with in-depth discussion about the details, Americans iterate.
Need-to-know
In the Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms of the U.S. Dept. of Defense need-to-know is a criterion used in security procedures. It requires the custodians of classified information to establish, prior to disclosure, that the intended recipient indeed must have access to the information in order to perform his or her official duties.
Streaming: An act or instance of flowing; relating to or being the transfer of data (as audio or video material) in a continuous stream specifically for immediate processing or playback; first known usage 1980; online video streaming such as Megaupload, Pirate Bay; audio streaming such as Grooveshark, Pandora and Sogza.
The American parties to an agreement are in constant communication with each other, streaming relevant information as they receive it. There is no need to front-load the agreement with the details.
One of the most critical success factors in the U.S. business is speed. Parties to an agreement are more interested in getting started on carrying out an agreement than in defining and discussing its details.
Conditional Yes
Commitments are, by definition, conditional due to factors beyond the control of the parties to an agreement. Next-level management may change their priorities. The customer could modify their requirements. Available resources – people, time, budgets – are often redeployed on short notice.
Caveat: is a warning or proviso of specific stipulations, conditions or limitations. In law, a caveat is a notice that certain actions may not be taken without informing the person who gave the notice. “Caveat” originates in the mid 16th century and is derived from Latin, literally from “let a person beware.”
Contingency: Event (as an emergency that may, but is not certain to occur); trying to provide for every contingency; something liable to happen as an adjunct to or result of something else. From Latin contingent-, contingens: to have contact with, befall, from com- + tangere to touch; first Known Use: 14th century.
Lean and Time
Lean manufacturing or lean production – known simply as lean – is a systematic approach to the elimination of waste within manufacturing processes. KaufmanGlobal’s glossary of terms offers the following definitions:
Lead Time – The total time a customer must wait to receive a product after placing an order. When a scheduling and production system is running at or below capacity, lead time and throughput time are the same. When demand exceeds the capacity of a system, there is additional waiting time before the start of scheduling and production, and lead time exceeds throughput time.
Takt Time – The available time over the customer demand. The term Takt is German and refers to cadence, rhythm or tempo. For example, if customers demand 240 widgets and the factory operates 480 minutes per day, takt time is two minutes. If customers want two new products designed per month, takt time is two weeks. Determining takt time serves to set the pace of production to match the rate of customer demand and is at the basis of all subsequent production design calculations becoming the heartbeat of any Lean system.
Throughput Time – The elapsed time required for a product to go through a defined process, from beginning to end, including both processing time and queue time / lead time. Throughput time for a process is synonymous with average lead time and is calculated by dividing the number of items within the process (i.e., work-in-process inventory) by the throughput.
Why we find it hard to say no
To learn to say no, we have to first understand what’s resisting us about it. Below are common reasons why people find it hard to say no:
You want to help. You don’t want to turn the person away and you want to help where possible, even if it may eat into your time.
Afraid of being rude. I was brought up under the notion that saying “No”, especially to people who are more senior, is rude.
Wanting to be agreeable. You don’t want to alienate yourself from the group because you’re not in agreement.
Fear of conflict. You are afraid the person might be angry if you reject him/her.
Fear of lost opportunities. Perhaps you are worried saying no means closing doors. didn’t want to say no as she felt it would affect her promotion opportunities in the future.
Not burning bridges. Some people take “no” as a sign of rejection. It might lead to bridges being burned and relationships severed.
From Celestine Chua of The Personal Excellence Blog.