Proposals that state in advance the result that would trigger a stop or a review give skeptics a safe way to say yes, because the exit is written down before the work begins.
An example
Eighteen months and $6 million was the ask from the vice president of product development at a medical device company, for a new catheter coating. The chief medical officer and the head of quality had both seen coating programs fail late and expensively. Her proposal named three tripwires up front: if bench durability tests at month six showed less than eighty percent of target, the program would stop; if the first animal results at month eleven showed any adverse tissue response, it would go back to the committee; if unit cost at pilot scale came in above $14, finance could call a review. Each tripwire had an owner outside the project. The committee approved the program at its first hearing. At month six, durability came in at eighty-four percent, and the work continued.
Why it works
Skeptics resist because they fear being locked into a program that keeps spending after it has failed. Stating in advance what result would stop or reopen the work makes the yes easier, because all they have to trust is that the program will honor its own limits. A preset signal also forces a real reconsideration at the moment momentum would otherwise carry the project on. It depends on tripwires that are specific, measurable, owned by someone independent, and honored when they trip.
The thinking behind it
Chip Heath and Dan Heath Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work (2013), by Chip and Dan Heath, recommends tripwires: signals set in advance that prompt a decision to be reconsidered. Without one, a program tends to roll on past the point where it should have been stopped. Writing the stop and review points into the approval gives skeptics a check they can rely on, which is why they find it easier to say yes.
When it fits
Where risk is the main objection, it fits best: new products, large builds, a market entry, a hire into a new role. You need a program that produces measurable signals early, someone outside the team to own each tripwire, and the willingness to stop your own project if one trips.
How to use it well
Find the result that would convince a skeptic the program had failed, and write it down as a tripwire.
- Make each one specific: the measure, the threshold, the date.
- Give each an owner outside the team who reports directly to the decision body.
- Say what happens when it trips: a stop, a review, or a smaller program.
- Put them in the approval document, so they cannot drift later.
Then honor them. One unannounced extension past a tripped wire ends your use of the move for good.
What it costs and where it backfires
You give up some freedom, since a program you believe in can be stopped by a single bad number. Teams sometimes set tripwires too loose to trip, which skeptics will see and discount. If a wire trips and you argue it away, you lose the trust that made the approval possible. The clean form ends when results are shaded to stay above the line; that is falsifying a record.
When it is used on you
Read a rival program's tripwires closely. Ask who measures each one, what counts as tripping it, and who decides what happens next. If the thresholds sit where they will never trip, propose tighter ones in the approval meeting, with reasons, and ask for the owners to report to the committee directly.