Can You Deliver?

I tend to hire a lot of freelancers. When I find a good one I will often stick with them for a long time but of course they sometimes get too busy, take a holiday or move on. One recurring theme I find in new hires is that to start with they are super keen and really want to impress but as with many one-man-bands they spend a lot of effort getting clients but then struggle to deliver.

My thought for today is to think about what you promise to do and if you make a promise then do everything in your power to deliver on it.

I’ve made this mistake myself by the way, which is why I’m careful what I take on nowadays.

I hired a team to plan and redesign an old site of mine on Friday. They put in their bid and we chatted on the phone for a while and then I awarded the project. I was immediately sent a message saying:

‘We will get a few ideas over to you later today.’

The ideas never came. I don’t know why and there was no message to explain. So my first experience with them is negative. Now, if they had said something like they would get back to me in two business days then that is what I would have expected but they didn’t…my expectations were for last week.

Paul Browning