Most of your plan is someone else's promise: collecting commitments that hold

Read through the plan for your next significant job and ask a simple question of each date and assumption: who actually made this commitment? The answer is rarely your own team. The venue will be ready by 6 am because the venue manager said so. The equipment arrives on the 14th because a supplier’s sales representative said so. The customer will approve the design within five days because their project contact agreed. Two staff from another part of the business will be free in March because their manager signed off the plan.

A plan reads as your commitment. In practice it is mostly a bundle of other people’s promises, with your coordination wrapped around them. When the plan fails, the review usually examines the coordination. More often, the problem is that several of the promises were never really made.

This article explains why a signature or an approving email is not the same as a commitment, how to collect commitments that hold, why a refusal is valuable information, and how to cover the handoffs between parties that nobody’s promise includes. It is general information for owners and managers who plan work that depends on others.

A signature is not a commitment

Many plans are “signed off” by circulating a document and asking people to approve it. People read it quickly, if at all, between other work. Signing costs nothing; not signing means a conversation. So they sign. Later, asked to deliver their part, they discover they cannot, and they are genuinely surprised, because they never formed the belief their approval seemed to express. What they understood themselves to be saying was “I have seen this”, not “I commit to this”.

The failure is not bad faith. It is the method. Nobody would close a supply agreement by emailing a document and asking for initials, yet the same business often treats exactly that as binding when the commitment is from a colleague, a subcontractor’s scheduler or a customer’s project contact.

Four misreadings are common:

• The plan is our commitment. It is mainly a register of other people’s commitments.
• An approval is a commitment. Approval to proceed and individual undertakings are different things, even when they happen in the same meeting.
• The person who signed can deliver. The sales representative may not control the installation crew. The customer’s contact may not be able to approve design changes. The manager who signed may have already promised the same people elsewhere.
• A commitment holds whatever happens to the plan. Commitments are made against a particular shape of work. When the dates or scope change, the commitment may have quietly lapsed.

Collect commitments, not approvals

A practical method has five steps:

1. List the commitments the plan depends on, by party. Not the tasks; the undertakings. “The AV supplier provides a crew of four from 6 am on the 13th.” “The customer approves the final drawings by the 3rd.” Most plans have between six and fifteen. Writing them out separately from the schedule is often enough to reveal the problem.
2. Find out who can actually give each one. That is the person who controls the capacity or the decision, not the person who manages the relationship. Where they are different people, you are collecting a promise from someone who cannot make it.
3. Collect each commitment in a conversation, with its shape. Ask what they are committing to, over what period and at what level. “Available in March” is not enough if the work needs two people for five specific days in the second week. A promise without a shape is not really a promise.
4. Record refusals and qualifications as risks, with an owner and a date to resolve them. Do not argue them away on the spot.
5. Re-collect after any significant re-plan. When dates or scope move, ask again.

Where several parties are involved, bringing them together briefly is worth it. A commitment made in front of the people who depend on it is considered more carefully, and an objection raised there can be resolved there.

What a usable commitment records

A one-line entry per commitment is enough, as long as it captures the shape:

The “depends on” column is often the most revealing. A commitment that depends on another party’s commitment is only as good as the weaker of the two.

A no is useful information

When a supplier or colleague says they cannot commit, they have told you something the plan needs and would otherwise have hidden until it was too late to fix. Businesses that react badly to that answer stop hearing it. They are then left with plans in which every commitment appears to be in place and none can be relied on.

So make it easy to say no. When reviewing a plan with others, deliberately point to the parts most likely to go wrong and invite awkward questions. That feels like making your own plan look weaker, which is exactly why it helps. Better those questions come up while the plan can still change. A plan is meant to be realistic, not a tool for blaming people later.

Cover the handoffs nobody owns

Each party usually commits only to their own part. A supplier promises delivery; an installer promises installation; the customer promises access. Every party can be confident in their own piece, and the plan can still fail at the point where one party’s output becomes another’s input, because that handoff sits inside nobody’s promise.

Before finalising the plan, name the three or four handoffs it really turns on, and have both sides agree to each one together: what is handed over, in what form, by when. Two people agreeing a date in front of each other is a different thing from each agreeing their own half separately. The testing the dependencies in your schedule article covers checking what really enforces each link.

Commitments from inside the business

The same applies internally. When a manager agrees to release staff for a project, they are making a promise about people who do not report to the project. Ask them what they understood they were committing to, and when. A team with a busy season in the middle of the project may honour the commitment for most of it and break it exactly when it matters. The who controls the people on a project article covers allocating people’s time honestly.

Commitments from customers

Customers’ own commitments are part of most plans: providing information, approving designs, giving site access, making decisions on time. These are often the least formally collected and the most often missed. Write them down, agree them with the person who can actually deliver them, and make the consequences of a late customer commitment clear in your quote or contract, so that delays caused by missed customer commitments are understood as such. The scope that says what is out article covers stating assumptions and exclusions clearly.

Ask for early warning, not just a promise

Commitments fail gradually before they fail openly. A supplier knows a week ahead that the crew is short; a colleague knows a fortnight ahead that a busy period is coming. Agree with each party, when the commitment is made, that they will tell you as soon as they suspect they cannot keep it, and that doing so will be welcomed, not punished. For the most critical commitments, set a reconfirmation date a little before they fall due. An early “we might not make it” leaves options open; a late “we cannot” usually does not.

Learn who keeps promises

Most businesses know informally which suppliers, subcontractors and internal teams reliably honour their commitments, and use that knowledge nowhere. Keep a simple record across jobs: what was promised and what was delivered, by party. Over time it becomes a planning input, showing where to add buffer, where to ask for a firmer commitment and where a problem lies with a party who regularly over-promises rather than a team that under-delivers.

A worked example

This is an illustration. A small events business is running a two-day conference for a corporate client. The plan has been approved by email by the client’s marketing coordinator and circulated to the venue, AV supplier and caterer.

Three weeks out, the event manager lists the commitments the plan depends on:

• Venue: access to the hall from 6 am the day before for setup.
• AV supplier: a crew of four from 6 am for setup, and two operators during the event.
• Client: final run sheet approved ten days before; speaker slides supplied five days before.
• Caterer: final numbers seven days before, with dietary requirements.
• Internal: two coordinators from the business’s other events team for both days.

They then check who can give each commitment. The AV crew was promised by the supplier’s sales representative, but the crew scheduler says only two technicians are free until 9 am, because of another job the night before. The client’s marketing coordinator can approve the run sheet, but not changes to speakers; those go through the CEO’s office. The venue’s 6 am access is confirmed in writing by the venue manager.

The event manager records the AV shortfall as a risk with a decision date. The options are to hire two extra technicians from another supplier, or to simplify the staging so setup can start at 9 am. They choose to hire, at a cost of about $1,200, because the simpler staging would not meet the client’s brief. They ask the client to name someone in the CEO’s office who can confirm speakers, and that person agrees to confirm by a specific date.

Next they name the handoff most likely to fail: speaker slides from the client to the AV operators. The client contact and the AV lead agree, together, on the format, the file-sharing method and the deadline. The internal events manager is asked directly whether two coordinators are truly free on both days; one turns out to be committed to another event on the second morning, and a replacement is arranged.

The conference runs to plan. In the event manager’s records, the AV supplier is noted as one whose sales commitments should be confirmed with its scheduler in future.

How this applies to a small Australian business

• List the commitments your plan depends on, separately from the tasks.
• Confirm each with the person who controls it, not just the person you usually deal with.
• Collect commitments in conversation, with dates and amounts.
• Treat refusals as risks with owners and dates.
• Have both sides agree the critical handoffs together.
• Write down customers’ own commitments, and the consequences of missing them.
• Re-confirm after any re-plan.
• Keep a record of which parties keep their promises.

Signals worth watching

• Plans approved by email with no conversation.
• Commitments given by people who do not control the resource.
• Surprise from parties who “signed off” but cannot deliver.
• Problems that appear at handoffs between parties.
• Customer delays that nobody recorded as the customer’s.
• The same supplier repeatedly missing what its sales staff promised.

Common mistakes

• Treating approval as commitment.
• Collecting promises from the wrong person.
• Accepting commitments without dates or amounts.
• Arguing away a refusal instead of recording it.
• Ignoring handoffs between parties.
• Never re-checking commitments after the plan changes.

Frequently asked questions

Isn’t this a lot of extra work? Listing commitments takes about an hour for most plans. Confirming them takes a few conversations. Both are cheaper than discovering a missing commitment in the final week.

What if a supplier will not commit in writing? A clear verbal commitment from the right person, confirmed in a short email afterwards, is far better than a signature from the wrong one.

How do we handle a customer who misses their commitments? Record them as they happen, tell the customer the effect promptly, and follow whatever your agreement says about delays caused by the customer.

Should we share our risk list with suppliers? Often, yes. Telling a supplier which of their commitments is critical helps them prioritise.

What about commitments from our own staff? Ask them directly, with dates. Internal promises fail for the same reasons external ones do.

Questions to ask

• Which commitments does this plan depend on, and who made each one?
• Can the person who made each commitment actually deliver it?
• What exactly did each party understand they were committing to?
• Which handoffs between parties could fail?
• What has the customer committed to, and is it written down?
• Which of our suppliers and teams have kept their promises before?

Bringing it together

Most of a plan is other people’s promises. Treat sign-off as the collection of real commitments, not approvals: list them by party, confirm each with the person who controls it, attach dates and amounts, and record refusals as risks rather than arguing them away. Have both sides agree the handoffs nobody’s promise covers, write down what customers have committed to, and re-check after every re-plan. Over time, learn who keeps their promises and plan accordingly.

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Source: KEVOS notes, drawing on teaching material on project plan sign-off, stakeholder commitments and functional managers’ resource pledges. Examples and figures in this article are illustrations. This article is general information.