Keep Promises Visible

The week's commitments live where everyone can see them, and kept-or-not is recorded without shame — because the gap between said and did is not a fault, it is the field of play.

Almost everything a body does together is carried by promises: I will have this by Thursday, I will call her, I will bring the thing. Promises that live only in someone's head are not commitments, they are intentions, and intentions decay silently. Writing them where all can see does one simple thing — it converts a private hope into a public fact that can be checked. That is the whole move.

The second half is what makes it survivable. The record is kept without shame. A commitment that was not kept is written down as not kept, plainly, and then looked at for what it says about the work rather than about the person. Almost always it says something useful: the task was bigger than it looked, or it depended on something nobody named, or the week was never going to hold it. That information is what improves a body's ability to promise, and it is only available if people are willing to write down the misses — which they will only do where the miss costs no standing (Zero Blame Environment, Every Defect Is A Gift).

So the gap is not a failure state. It is the readable surface of the work, and a body with no gaps is not a reliable body, it is an under-committed one. Over seasons the point of the practice is not a rising score but a shrinking distance between what a body says and what it does — the thing that makes it possible to plan on one another at all (A word given is a word kept, Networks of Commitments).

In play it is one line each: who, what, by when. It is read at The Turn, where last week's promises are closed before this week's are made, and it is closed at a completion (Complete and Declare). A promise that can no longer be kept is not left to rot; it is returned out loud, before its date, which is a kept word of a different kind (Consciously Breaking Commitments, The states of a commitment).

Also called: promises in the open · said and did Stands on: Commitment · Trust · Zero Blame Environment · The Turn Opens onto: The Commitment Tracker · The states of a commitment · The Life of a Commitment · Consciously Breaking Commitments · Networks of Commitments · Complete and Declare · Last Planner System · A word given is a word kept · Every Defect Is A Gift In play: the table, every week Sources: Play — Keep Promises Visible, in The LIØNSBERG Playbook's Questing Plays (first-season vintage, three lines, no instrument named) · Play — Run the Weekly Turn (first-season vintage) · lionsberg.wiki: The LIØNSBERG Playbook Open: The card names no instrument, while the Field carries several that would serve it; nothing says which a first-season Cell should reach for. · The Playbook's Chart names a Percent Promises Kept measure that no written page defines.