Clarity Under Pressure
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Decision-making degrades when responsibility and authority diverge.

Eliot JaquesRequisite Organization, 1989

Standards exist for the moments when you are tired, rushed, or politically pressured. In a post-incident debrief where the organization wants closure, they keep improvisation from becoming policy. When they are vague, enforcement becomes personal.

In a post-incident debrief where the organization wants closure, people comply with what is enforced, not what is written. If exceptions are informal, you end up with a standard no one can defend and a process no one trusts. Make the boundary explicit enough that a peer could disagree with it; if no one can disagree, no one can defend it under pressure.

Eliot Jaques is useful here because it forces precision. Make the boundary explicit: the next action, the non-action, and the condition that forces a revisit. Let others hold you to it.

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