A Jerry Macnamara term
What are the only three outcomes of a commitment?
Once an ask is clear, a commitment has exactly three legitimate outcomes: execute as expected, ask for more time in advance, or ask for more resources in advance. Anything else is narration.
Where it comes from
I teach this inside Creating a Culture of Accountability, the talk I have delivered more than any other, most recently at RockBox in September 2025.
It exists because most leaders who tell me they have an accountability problem actually have a clarity problem wearing an accountability problem’s clothes. Once the ask is genuinely clear, what is left is the contract, and the contract is short.
How to use it
Give your team exactly three moves and name them out loud:
- Execute as expected. The thing gets done, as described, by the date.
- Ask for more time, in advance. Before the deadline, not on it.
- Ask for more resources, in advance. Same rule.
What is missing from that list is the thing that breaks companies: showing up on the due date with an explanation. An explanation after the fact is not accountability, it is narration.
Notice what options two and three do. They make it safe to be honest early. A person who tells you on Tuesday that Friday will not happen has given you three days to act. A person who tells you on Friday has given you a problem and a feeling. If your culture punishes the Tuesday conversation, you have trained everyone to save it for Friday.
And the line that decides whether any of it works: accountability rests on the person who accepts responsibility, not the person who assigns it.
Questions people ask
Is asking for more time just an excuse with better timing?
No, and the difference is the timing itself. In advance, it is a decision you get to make together while you still have options. After the fact, it is a report on a decision that already happened to you.
What if someone uses options two and three constantly?
Then you have a different and much clearer problem, and you can see it early instead of discovering it at quarter end. Repeated renegotiation is data about capacity, scope, or fit. Silence followed by a miss is data about nothing.
Where does this fit with the rest of accountability?
It is the contract. Upstream of it is clarity: what exactly, who specifically, by when to the hour, and shared out loud. Miss any of those and there was never a commitment to have an outcome.
The full argument is in the essay Accountability Is a Learned Skill. I teach it on stage in Creating a Culture of Accountability. If your room needs it, start at speaking.