I don’t remember how or why it happened, but a conversation with Rick Hill in the summer of 2016 quickly turned into a marriage advice session.
Rick is the co-founder of Hill Investment Group in St. Louis where I was working as a marketing intern at the time. At 75 years old, he doesn’t plan to retire any time soon. He oozes wisdom and has a contagious energy that people half his age do not.
One afternoon, during one of our post-lunch discussions, Rick chose to pivot away from business and instead share some marriage advice:
“Dominic, if you think you’ll be home from work at five o’clock, tell your wife you’ll be home at 6:30.”
I looked at him, confused.
“Set expectations,” he said. “Tell your spouse you’ll be home 90 minutes past the time you think you’ll get back. When you arrive home early, everyone’s happy. Most people do the opposite. They think, If I hit all the lights, I can get home by 5. But that sets them up for disappointment every time.”
Makes sense, I thought to myself. But later that summer I realized Rick’s lesson could be applied to other aspects of life, not just marriage. By under-promising and over-delivering, everybody wins: completing assignments earlier than expected not only makes you more valuable, it makes your boss’s life easier. And in the early stages of a career, that’s pretty damn important.
An over-eager intern might be tempted to impress the boss with a 24-hour turnaround, but once they realize they’re in over their heads they utter that cringe-worthy sentence: I need an extension. Extensions might work for college essays, but asking for an extension in the real world is career suicide.
Since that summer, I made it a point to over-deliver on every project I was assigned to, and it’s paid off. My supervisors never have to chase me down, call me twice, or send follow-up emails asking for status updates. If they give me a one-week deadline, I finish in three days.
Does operating this way add a little more pressure? Sure. But it’s worth sparing the embarrassment that comes with asking for extensions. It’s the best way I know to establish a reputation of being reliable. What’s more, I know it’s what Rick Hill would want from me.
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I totally agree with tne over-delivering part of the equation, but under-promising can be a slippery slope, especially if your colleagues are fairly competitive or your bosses notice that you always seem to “pad” the timing of your deliverable. It’s a delicate balance, not for the feint of heart.