Under Over

“Under promise and over deliver,” former boss Kristi Bangert taught me. It’s a lesson I immediately took to heart.

Examples of under promising and over delivery:

• If a quarterly newsletter will be mailed in February, date it “Spring.”  While no one will complain about receiving the Spring issue in March, they could be annoyed to receive the February/March issue in March and they could assume the Winter issue is out of date when they see it in April.
• Don’t promote until it’s done. Don’t announce the new app, Web site, video or resource until it’s ready to use. That way, when something happens to cause a delay, you haven’t just annoyed customers and donors and you aren’t spending a lot of time apologizing.
• Set aggressive deadlines for yourself; set realistic deadlines for others. The “to printer” date should not be the “if nothing goes wrong” date.
• Don’t commit to every good idea for an event.  If you’ve promised themed cookies for a reception and they’re not there, ding, ten demerit points for you. If there are themed cookies at the reception and stakeholders are charmed, ding, 10 bonus points for you.

 Sue Edison-Swift, 10/15/2011