Standing Orders
General Strategic · Internal
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Don't piss on the campfire.

There's a time to kill ideas. It isn't mid-flow.

When someone is exploring out loud, the cheapest move in the room is the early veto. ‘That's too expensive.’ ‘Won't fly.’ ‘We tried that.’ It feels like rigour. It's laziness — killing the cheapest thing in the room before it's had a chance to develop.

Hold the critique until the thinking has finished. Then critique hard. The point isn't to go soft on ideas. It's to make sure the good ones survive long enough to be assessed.

  1. 01‘Yes, and’ before ‘no, but’. In every exploratory conversation.
  2. 02Cost, scope and deliverability questions belong at the end of the thought, not mid-sentence.
  3. 03If you can't tell whether the idea is still developing, ask: ‘are you still building it, or ready to test it?’
  4. 04When someone's mid-flow, your job is to add fuel or stay quiet.