The definition of reliability for the purposes of this post: other people believing that you (or your team) will:<\/p>\n
Reliability is other people believing that you will do what you say<\/strong> you will do and also what they expect<\/strong> you to do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Why Reliability?<\/h2>\n
Reliability is vital\u00a0<\/strong>to several areas of organizational success:<\/p>\n
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- Successful delegation<\/li>\n
- Independent execution by teams<\/li>\n
- Independent execution by individuals<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Delegation<\/h3>\n
When you hand off a task, it’s ideal if you\u00a0no longer need to think about it – and the more you reliable the person you’re handing the task to, the more likely this is. With reliable people and teams, the default assumption<\/strong> is that any delegated task will be completed. Wouldn’t that be amazing?<\/em>\u00a0Delegation backed by a perception of reliability actually clears brains of stress and\u00a0cognitive dissonance<\/a>. Basically, people can stop worrying and\u00a0focus on the work they<\/em> need to do<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
This magical theory applies to teams as well – if a team does the work\u00a0they own<\/strong>, and they believe other teams will do the work\u00a0they<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0own, then all teams can focus on their own work<\/strong>. Ultimately this eliminates time spent on “following up” (pestering), and lowers everyone’s stress.<\/p>\n
Execution<\/h3>\n
Individuals and teams who are allowed to execute without being required to explain every step and justify every decision can focus more on doing actual things<\/strong>. Even in the awesome Utopian Land of Reliability, some checking in is necessary, for a lot of reasons – one of the best is to give the leader the opportunity to teach and to reinforce good judgement. However, guidance\u00a0<\/em>shouldn’t be a nuisance – it shouldn’t turn into oversight to the point of preventing productivity<\/em>.<\/p>\n
If brains are calm and hearts aren’t worried, people can more easily focus on their work, objectives, and goals – and they execute their tasks more cleanly. When each person or team believes that they can focus on their\u00a0responsibilities<\/em> rather than worrying about other people’s execution<\/em>, this leads to overall organizational success<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
Reliability seems awesome! Uh…now what?<\/h2>\n
Cool, you want to be thought of as reliable so you can do stuff<\/strong>.\u00a0A key question now becomes:\u00a0<\/em>how do you build<\/strong> a reputation for reliability? Or maybe the question should be,\u00a0can<\/em> this be deliberately built? Nope! Blog post ends here. Thanks for reading!<\/p>\n
Kidding<\/em>.<\/p>\n
Building a reputation for reliability is surprisingly\u00a0simple<\/strong>. In any relationship, you start at the ground floor, with basically zero reliability. To increase the number of reliability points, it’s like a ramp – a slow and steady upward movement.<\/p>\n
The super secrety secret to building a reputation for reliability: make a commitment. Fulfill the commitment. Repeat.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Reliability for Newbs<\/h2>\n
Start a meeting by saying, “I’ll make a recap.” End the meeting, re-iterating that you’ll make the recap. Then\u00a0make the recap.\u00a0<\/strong>Tada! You’ve done a useful thing that you promised to do. Congratulations, you now seem more reliable!<\/strong> People now know that you kept that commitment.<\/p>\n
You can do this by doing anything useful – say you’ll do it, and then follow through. For bonus trust points, promise to do it by a certain date and then\u00a0deliver on or before your deadline<\/em>.<\/p>\n
Reliability Level Up<\/h2>\n
To continue to build your new reputation for being reliable, continue to keep your commitments<\/strong>. Small commitments can build reliability only to a certain level – \u00a0but after keeping enough smaller commitments, people will begin to give you opportunities to keep\u00a0larger<\/em> commitments.<\/p>\n
These larger commitments, once kept, will give you more reliability points – but they’ll also be more complicated, and take longer to complete. However, in order to build to a high level of reliability<\/strong>, the pattern is exactly the same: steadily fulfill commitments over time<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
Team Reliability<\/h2>\n