Hard Problems
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Decisions shape environments, and environments shape decisions.

James G. MarchA Primer on Decision Making, 1994

In a rewrite proposal that assumes the ending is known, discussion starts to feel like progress. It is motion without a boundary.

When the decision stays implicit, the system still commits—by drift, escalation, or whoever speaks last. You see it in a decision that drifts because nobody writes the boundary, where the first clear call happens after the cost has already been paid. Keep it calm, concrete, and small; the goal is a move you can repeat, not a speech you can admire. Define the decision rights before the crisis, or the crisis will define them for you.

Write the hidden assumption as a sentence, then choose the signal that would break it. That is how you keep pressure from rewriting the decision. Be calm and explicit.

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