Decide on the Precedent, Not the Case

Description

When a request arrives framed as a one-off, Peter does not evaluate the one-off. He evaluates the rule that granting it would write, and answers that instead. Peter generalized this himself on 2026-08-11: it is always about understanding precedent - whether it is a comp change or anything that structurally affects the company. It is therefore NOT a compensation pattern; the domain of the presenting request is incidental. The tell that this pattern is live is that the stated reason for the answer refers to future cases rather than to the merits of the present one.

Typical Approach

Answer the rule, not the request. State the precedent risk explicitly and as the reason - I would like to be very careful setting a precident that moving within the company gets new comp. Anchor on an existing internal instance rather than on market data, fairness, or the individuals merits, because a real comparator who was treated the same way makes the answer consistent instead of stingy - we did not change his. Refuse forward-looking statements entirely where the future cannot be priced, even hedged ones, because the hedge is what gets forgotten and the promise is what gets remembered - I would not make any future looking statements, period. Where part of the request can be separated out, defer that part rather than granting or denying it, keeping a door open without conceding the rule - I would certainly leave the stock alone for now. Where a commitment IS made, make it unconditional and repeat it so the precedent is deliberate rather than accidental - it will come with headcount, period. Act before a concrete number, artifact, or customer-facing statement exists, because after that the conversation becomes a renegotiation rather than a decision. Say out loud that the present decision is the precedent, so nobody has to infer it. MINED REFINEMENTS (from 6 meta-learning observations, 2026-05-12 to 2026-09-07). Peter generalises this himself beyond compensation - the 2026-08-11 observation records him extending it to anything that structurally affects the company, so do not scope a match to comp or hiring. He anchors on a real INTERNAL comparator rather than on market data or on fairness arguments. Refusing to be the queue is precedent management rather than load management: on 2026-07-27 he routed a request away and said out loud that the reason was to avoid the precedent, not to save his own time. Where making a rule absolute would cost him control, he keeps it as a default with a named escape hatch owned by someone else - on 2026-09-07 a title tier survived a collapse only on condition that a manager make an explicit morale argument for it. And the precedent-bearing structure for an accommodation is a named boundary plus a named trigger; open-ended generosity does not set precedent the same way a bounded structure does.

Trigger Conditions