- "I thought we agreed you would..."
- "I thought you were going to..."
Most managers have had this conversation. I have had it more than once.
In my experience, what is agreed at a review or after a field day fades within a week. On both sides. The rep forgets the action. The manager forgets the promise to call the hospital pharmacist or chase the samples.
The fix is simple, and a little uncomfortable: write it down, in one shared place.
I call it a commitment register. Four columns:
- What was agreed. One clear action, in plain words.
- Who owns it. The rep or the manager. Both names appear on the list.
- By when. A date both people accepted.
- Done, moved or dropped. The honest status, updated together.
Three habits make it work.
- The rep can open it at any time. It is shared, not a file the manager keeps.
- We open it at the start of every one-to-one.
- I go through my own open items first. Nothing builds trust faster than a manager saying "that one is mine, and it is late."
It is not a tool for checking up on people. It is a way of keeping promises visible, so nobody has to rely on memory.
“If nobody wrote it down, it was a conversation, not an agreement.”
Lesson 11 of 13 in Step 2: Targets, forecasts and numbers, with the full guide and a checklist for this week.