Catherine Bell explains the difference between keeping your word and honoring it. A "promise" is your firm deadline, a "go-for" is your stretch goal. Missing a promised time cascades through others' commitments, so transparent communication matters when you need to adjust.
keep— if you always keep your word, to what Catherine was pointing to, if you're somebody who always keeps your word, you're playing too small a game. And it's okay to be flexible and communicative. And that's really the core, is communicating and moving forward and just not being super strict on those deadlines and being just ready to adapt and recuperate and continue.
And, and there's also another thing that I learned decades ago when you're making promises, like setting goals and criteria, it's called a promise and a go-for. So, the promise is that absolutely, I'm going to get this done by this particular date, whether it's a couple weeks out. But my go-for is that I'm gonna get it done this week, right? So, the promise is I know, like I know, like I know I can get it done and achieve this goal. However, I'm gonna still push myself and see if I can get it done sooner. Does that make sense? So having those two like measures, that's a huge part of what's allowed me to collapse timelines.
Right? Yeah. And another way it could look like is I promise to make 20 calls and I'm going for 50 calls. But once I've made the 20 calls, I've honored my word. And then to, to what you were pointing to, Katya and Catherine, with integrity is honoring your word. And you don't— you won't always keep your word. If you keep— if you always keep your word, to what Catherine was pointing to, if you're somebody who always keeps your word, you're playing too small a game. So the distinction between keeping your word and honoring your word, you can always honor your word, even when you haven't necessarily kept your word. And that looks like what Catherine was pointing to—
Right.
—as soon as you know you can't "Uh, you know, I said I'd have it by noon today. I'm not gonna have it by noon today. I'm having it by 5 today." Now there's still integrity. You're still honoring your word. You just didn't keep the original word. But you didn't let 12 o'clock go by and everybody who was counting on something at 12. 'Cause as you'll find as you play bigger games, if I give a promise to Catherine for something by 12, she's most likely given her word to somebody else for something by 2 that needed that thing by 12. So if I just like blow off the 12, then that's the whole ripple chain of, you know, so sometimes you also, if you're going to re-promise your word, you gotta deal with, are there any consequences to you not honoring your original words? Yeah.
