Each time a rival's project meets its agreed targets, a new criterion appears, so every win becomes a step toward a further bar and the rival always looks short.
An example
Ten thousand active users by June would earn the head of a new tenant-app service a second year of funding at a private-equity-backed property-management company. The app reached twelve thousand in May. At the June review, the chief operating officer, who wanted the budget for a call-center expansion, said they also needed to see revenue per user. In September revenue per user beat the plan, and the bar became integration with the accounting system. In December, a week after integration was declared complete, a new acceptance item appeared: compliance had updated its guidance on tenant data. Each request came with a reasonable reason, and each meant more rework. The app's results were never announced to the company. At the year-end review the chief operating officer described the service as "still not done," and the funding went to the call center.
Why it works
Each new criterion voids the payoff of meeting the last one: the recognition, the budget renewal, the announcement. The rival's project always looks short, so its case looks worse. Backing it gets costlier with every round, since sponsors must argue away a fresh gap and risk looking as if they grade on a curve, while the rival's rework piles up. Four conditions help it: the actor can write or interpret criteria after the fact, the criteria allow step-by-step tightening ("we also need to see..."), the rival has no written charter, and the audience remembers the latest gap more than the chain of moved bars. Laid out in sequence, the pattern is hard to defend.
The thinking behind it
Hal R. Arkes Arkes and Blumer's The Psychology of Sunk Cost (1985) describes a greater tendency to continue an endeavor once money, effort, or time has been invested in it. Each near-finish deepens the rival's investment, so abandoning the project gets harder even as new criteria make the remaining work larger. Seeing the sunk cost for what it is helps the rival decide whether to keep chasing the bar or force a ruling on the original terms.
Robert B. Cialdini Cialdini's Influence (1984) describes commitment and consistency: people who take a public or written position feel pressure to act in line with it. Criteria written down and signed at acceptance commit the sponsor publicly. Presented later as a dated chain, they make each added bar an inconsistency the sponsor has to explain, which is why documentation is the core of the defense.
Warning signs
Each review adds a criterion absent from the bar stated before, usually phrased as "we also need to see..." New items arrive within days of each declared completion, each with a fresh reason, such as a customer request or updated compliance guidance. Nobody refers back to the original targets. The project's wins are never announced. Whoever is adding criteria benefits from the project not finishing.
How to defend yourself
Your best evidence is the chain itself, so build it from the first day.
- Put the original criteria in writing when the project is accepted, and get the sponsor's sign-off.
- Place explicit change control on the criteria: any addition needs a stated reason, an owner, and an adjustment to timeline and budget.
- Keep a dated log of every added bar, and present it as a sequence at each review.
- Announce each criterion met, in writing, to the people who approved the project.
- Ask a neutral party, such as audit or an executive sponsor, to rule against the original terms or to freeze the definition.
How a leader shuts it down
Fix success criteria in a written charter at approval, with change control that requires a reason and budget relief for any addition. Have someone neutral rule on whether a project met its original terms. Announce wins when they happen. Be wary of a reviewer who keeps finding new conditions for a project they did not want funded.