The drawback of promises

`0:38:38`

Do you see this work in businesses that aren't your business this approach? Well, let me talk about promises for a second. Promises are the downfall of every business. Every time we've made a promise to get something out in a certain period of time and we kind of inevitably seem to miss it, it's funny how it's almost like it would've been out in time, but the fact that we'd promised it made it not deliver in time. There's some strange thing that happens when you promise things. So we've learned to not promise anything. We can share what we're working on if we want to. We can tell people we're doing something. And by the way, the worst promise, and by the way, we've made a couple of these recently, we always regret them. It's like by the end of the year. That's the one promise you got to be very careful of, because it's so easy to make.

`0:39:26`

There's nothing easier than promising work later. And the further away it is, the easier it is to promise. And so this whole, by the end of the year, oh, red flag. Just remind yourself whenever you say that to yourself, go, oh, wait a second. Wait, wait, what am I doing right now? Because you're probably setting yourself up for disappointment. So as far as other companies running this way, there are a number of other companies that are running this way and more and more are adopting Shape Up all the time. But it's a struggle. It's hard. It's hard to change the way you work. I think companies form roots and roots go in the ground and once your root structure is formed, the plant that grows from that is the plant that grows from that, basically. You kind of have to uproot. And this is not really a totally clear metaphor because that plant is that plant, but you