Booking The Win Early vs. Under Promising and Over Deliver
Every now and then someone will say to me, with pride, that they're under promising and intend to over deliver.
When we interview people at Groq we look for a trait, we call it booking the win early. Suppose I tell you that, "if we do X the chip can be twice as fast." If you're someone who books the win early you don't hear that, what you hear is, "If we don't do X, the chip will lose half of its potential speed!" You book the possibility the moment you hear it, and failure to recognize the win is a loss.
The vast majority of people are afraid to get their hopes up, it hurts when your expectations aren't met. That's the point. Loss hurts more than success feels good. That's called loss bias. People who book the win early do it because loss hurts more than winning, they're psychologically using that bias as motivation. The pain is the point.
Do you know anyone who under promises and over delivers? I don't. I've met people who under promise and under deliver, people who over promise and over deliver, and people who over promise and under deliver. I have never met anyone who under promises and over delivers. Overcommitment is a necessary condition of over achievement.
This isn't just about individuals, it's about teams. The best people want to work with other people who are ambitious - people who are irrationally compelled. In engineering in particular where it's about finding the 10,000 ways that don't work, and then once you find something that sticks you keep doing it, it's especially hard. The great teams over promise, and then use their collective aversion to failure to over deliver.
So here's my advice. Over promise and over deliver. Book the win early. Sign your ego up to the possibility of failure and commit to the possibility of greatness. Surround yourself with others willing to commit to the possibility of greatness. Stop being a coward, and stay away from cowards because they'll turn you into a coward. And if you and I ever meet, don't even think about under promising.