The triangle
Every pressured technical decision rests on three forces:
- Urgency → Drives motion
- Clarity → Defines success
- Consensus → Aligns execution
You rarely get all three. If you try, you stall.
Common failure modes
| Missing | Consequence |
|---|---|
| Urgency | Drift, missed windows |
| Clarity | Rework, incoherent results |
| Consensus | Silent resistance, rollback |
Tension by design
Each vertex resists the others:
- Urgency → clarity loss
- Clarity → urgency delay
- Consensus → both clarity and urgency under pressure
Don’t eliminate the tension. Navigate it.
Tactics
-
Declare trade-offs.
→ “We’ll sacrifice consensus. Clarity and urgency are fixed.” -
Set ‘enough clarity’ thresholds.
→ Define what must be known now. Postpone the rest. -
Pre-wire tie-breaks.
→ Agree in advance who decides when consensus fails. -
Timebox alignment.
→ “We align what we can in 48h. Then we move.”
Operational signals
| Metric | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Decision latency | Urgency drag |
| Rework rate | Clarity too low |
| Alignment decay | Consensus was never real |
Trail
Emergent from:
- postmortems with surprise dissent
- decision hygiene lapses under time stress
- stalled initiatives where “clarity” kept expanding
Bottom line
Every decision lives in the triangle. You choose where to bend, and make that bend explicit.