A late-night buzz, a kept promise, and a reminder of what real dependability looks like.
My phone buzzed at 10:28PM on a Friday night in December. The kids had just finished their last week of school before the Christmas break and I was ready for some rest. I didn’t pay much attention to it and I figured whatever it was could wait until the next morning.
When I logged into my computer on Saturday morning I saw that the notification had been work related – it came from Will Baird who had shared a Google sheet with me. When I saw it, I remembered that just a week earlier the CSM team had asked Will for some important information that required a lot of iterative programming.
Will committed to having it out by the end of the following week, despite not knowing how much work it would take. When Will committed to doing it, I’m not sure he knew he would be sitting at his desk in the final hours of the Friday night when it was due. However, he didn’t make excuses or miss the deadline. George Washington famously said that “99% of failures come from people who make excuses.”
Working with Will reminds me that if we’re going to get results, we all must commit to what we say we’re going to do – that’s the core of dependability.
