The only way to create a culture of trust, and to fully leverage the power of teams, is to make sure you keep promises you make.

* Keeping promises is a crucial component of building tight teams.  Everyone pledges, few are truly good to their word

* Use the words ‘promise’ and ‘committments’ in the team room instead of ‘task’ - it tends to carry more weight

* Use the stand up to track these promises - the three questions then become “what promises did you keep yesterday”, "what promises do you make today”, and “what prevents you from keeping your promises”

* Think of improvement items in retrospectices as promises - from team member to team member

* Try using a daily team promise or committment