“I’ll get back to you later.” Do you know this sentence?
And then nothing happens. No follow-up. No update. No “it’s taking longer than expected.” Just silence.
In everyday work, this is often dismissed as a minor issue. Stress. Too much on the plate. “Operational noise.” In practice, it is something else: a slow erosion of trust,and often the beginning of a chain reaction that measurably weakens collaboration.
In a more extensive piece of work, I have looked closely at reliability and at what can be described, in functional terms, as commitment failure: the breaking of explicit or implicit commitments in professional and business relationships. The term sounds academic. The phenomenon is brutally everyday.
Why this is not a “soft topic”
Commitment failure is underestimated in many organizations because it rarely shows up dramatically. There are no big contract breaches, no loud escalations, no headlines. Instead, there are small, unresolved promises.
Yet the economic dimension is anything but abstract.
For Germany alone, the cost of low employee commitment is estimated at around €109 billion per year (Esch, Hartmann & Strödter, 2009). €109 billion, not as an accounting line, but spread across very concrete effects: lost productivity, higher turnover, more coordination, more control, more friction.
The key point: these costs do not primarily arise from lack of competence. They arise from the gradual erosion of reliability in daily work.
Small commitments act like a negative interest rate
Commitment failure rarely acts as a single event. It accumulates.
One missed “I’ll get back to you” is manageable. Repeated experiences change behavior:
People invest less time.
Willingness to show flexibility declines.
Problems are addressed more defensively.
Decisions slow down.
From an economic perspective, transaction costs increase: more alignment, more safeguards, less trust (Volery & Bergmann, 2008). From a leadership perspective, collaboration becomes heavier and more rigid, without anyone openly naming why.
This slow, almost invisible effect is what makes commitment failure so dangerous.
Two types of reliability, and why one is systematically underestimated
In many organizations, reliability is understood almost exclusively in operational terms: deadlines, quality, output.
That view is incomplete.
In practice, it helps to distinguish between two dimensions:
1. Operational reliability Do we deliver what we promised?
2. Communicative reliability Do we communicate early, honestly, and clearly when we cannot deliver as promised?
Many trust breakdowns do not happen because people fail. They happen because no one explains that something is going wrong.
Research shows that perceived reliability can remain stable, or even improve, even when operational metrics temporarily stagnate, if expectation management is done well (Walsh, Deseniss & Kilian, 2020; Reinmuth, 2006).
People accept delays. What they do not accept is uncertainty.
The real leadership problem: wrong attribution
When commitments are broken, people look for causes. These attributions follow fairly stable patterns:
In highly personalized, frequent relationships (e.g. key accounts, consulting, SME banking), unreliability is typically attributed to individuals.
In standardized, process-driven contexts (e.g. procurement, insurance), it is more often attributed to the organization.
These patterns are well documented (Heider, 1958). They are reinforced by the fundamental attribution error: we explain others’ behavior in terms of character, and our own in terms of circumstances (Ross, 1977).
The practical consequence is critical: If leaders misread attribution, they intervene in the wrong place.
People get replaced when capacity is the issue. Processes get redesigned when the real problem is prioritization, discipline, or ownership.
A pragmatic leadership framework to address commitment failure
No new tools. No campaign. Immediately applicable.
1. Person or position?
Ask a simple question:
Does one person break commitments while others in the same role do not? → Look at skills, priorities, discipline.
Do all people in the same role struggle to keep commitments? → Look at the system: capacity, priorities, interfaces, governance.
Organizations lose months because they do not make this distinction clearly.
2. What kind of failure is it?
Separate rigorously:
Operational: delivery, quality, deadlines
Communicative: updates, feedback loops, “silence gaps”
Strategic: long-term commitments (e.g. employment guarantees, partnerships)
In everyday work, communicative failures often damage trust more than operational shortcomings (Walsh et al., 2020).
3. Early warning signals instead of KPI overload
You do not need dashboards. Watch the patterns:
response times increase
“I’ll get back to you” without a clear time
conditional commitments (“if … then …”)
unclear ownership
renegotiations replacing updates
These are not soft signals. They are early indicators of friction.
Minimum viable reliability: leadership under pressure
When things get tight, perfection is not required. Credibility is.
A simple three-step rule:
Acknowledge that things are not going as planned
Name constraints, without excuses
Re-commit clearly: time, outcome, ownership
A sentence like:
“I won’t make it today. I’ll get back to you tomorrow at 2 pm.”
costs little. It protects trust.
90 days to noticeably improve reliability
Days 0–30 – Stabilize
fixed update rhythms
clear ownership
critical commitments documented (owner, deadline, status) (Seifert, Brehmer & Bogedan, 2011)
Days 31–60 – Re-align
make priorities explicit
align commitments with capacity
define a small set of relationship-quality indicators
Days 61–90 – Embed
establish reliability as a leadership dimension
differentiate relationship types: high-touch vs. process-driven
align governance with attribution logic
Final thought
Reliability is not a moral issue. It is architectural work.
The €109 billion figure makes this clear: Broken commitments are not individual annoyances, they are systematic value destruction.
And often, countermeasures do not start with transformation programs, but with a simple standard that leaders live by:
“If I say I’ll get back to you later, I give a time. And I keep it.”
A final question: Which commitment in your area of responsibility is currently open – and no one dares to ask about anymore?
References (selection)
Esch, F., Hartmann, K. & Strödter, K. (2009). Analysis and strengthening of commitment in organizations.
Heider, F. (1958). The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. Wiley.
Reinmuth, M. (2006). Building trust through credible communication. Dissertation.
Ross, L. (1977). Attribution biases. In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology.
Seifert, H., Brehmer, W. & Bogedan, C. (2011). Employment commitments in times of crisis.
Volery, T. & Bergmann, H. (2008). Trust in business relationships.
Walsh, G., Deseniss, A. & Kilian, T. (2020). Communication policy, BVG case study.
