One List for Every Promise

The problem in one breath

Your foreman said he'd order the ridge vent. The office said she'd send the homeowner the warranty paper. You told the supplier you'd call back about the short shipment. Three promises, three different heads, not one of them written down. Next week two are done and one is dead — and you find out on the roof, in the rain, when it's too late to fix.

Why it happens

When it's you and two guys in one truck, there's no system to keep — you hear everything. But five or ten or twenty people spread across four jobsites can't overhear each other. A promise made at a jobsite at 7am is gone by lunch unless it lands somewhere everybody can see. Sticky notes, texts, memory — they all leak. What doesn't leak is one list.

The play

Every promise anyone makes goes in one shared place — who, what, by when — and stays there until it's done. That's the promise list.

1. Make the promise list. One shared sheet (the tool below), or one shared text thread — pick ONE, and only one. The columns that matter: the promise, who owns it, when it's due, and its status. If it isn't on the list, it didn't get promised.
2. Capture from the field — one simple way, every time. You won't sit at a desk to log promises, so keep the capture dead simple and pick a single path: anything you or a foreman promises gets texted to the office manager, and she puts it on the list. Back it up two ways — a photo of the tailgate whiteboard when the crew rolls off, and a thirty-second pass at the morning huddle: "What did we promise yesterday? On the list." One path in. Not three apps nobody keeps up.
3. Put your own promises on first — and keep them. This is the part that makes it work. Before you ask a single foreman to log anything, your promises go on the list, where everyone can see them, and you keep them. When the crew watches the owner's own line get marked Done every week, they buy in. If they watch you skip your own list, it's dead on arrival.
4. Read it on a fixed rhythm. One day a week, same time — Monday morning, ten minutes. Go down the list out loud: done, done, still open, stuck. The thirty-second huddle pass in step 2 is how new promises get on; this weekly read is where you work the open ones. A list nobody reads is a list nobody keeps.
5. Nothing comes off until it's closed. A promise stays on the list — open or stuck — until it's actually done or somebody kills it on purpose. "I forgot" is not a way off the list.

Do this this week

Start the list with one line — your own. Write one promise you made this week, your name on it, a due date. Put it where your office manager and at least one foreman can see it. That single visible line, kept, is how the whole thing starts.

The tool

the-promise-list.xlsx — the promise list. One row per promise: what it is, who owns it, when it was made, when it's due, a status you pick from a dropdown (Open / Done / Stuck), and a blocker column where you write what's in the way and the fix you agreed. The sheet flags anything past its due date as OVERDUE and keeps a running count of what's open, stuck, and overdue, so your Monday read takes ten minutes instead of an hour. Two rows are filled in as an example — the owner's own promise first, on purpose. See the sheet notes below for the columns and formulas.

If your crew is 1099

A subcontractor's "promises" are the deliverables in his contract — the tear-off done Thursday, the photos sent, the dumpster gone by Friday. Put those on the list like anyone else's; tracking what was agreed is just running your business. But the follow-up is a different conversation. You're holding one company to an agreement with another company, not correcting an employee. When a sub's promise comes up missed, frame it as "here's what our agreement says we'd do," not "why didn't you do what I told you." Track it the same. Talk about it as contract, not command.