Promise Only What Is Inside CIQ Control

Description

Applies when someone asks CIQ to commit to an outcome whose delivery depends partly on something CIQ does not own - a lead time, a third-party publisher, a customer-provided environment, an unsigned contract. Peter does not accept or refuse the request as posed. He isolates the specific component that sits outside CIQ delivery chain, refuses that component by name, and substitutes an adjacent commitment CIQ can actually keep - then often adds a harder problem worth solving in its place, so the counterparty gets more engagement rather than less.

Typical Approach

Separate the request into the part CIQ controls and the part it does not. Refuse only the uncontrolled part, and say why in terms of the dependency rather than in terms of willingness or cost - the lead time is not ours, the leaderboard is not controlled by the vendor, the contract is not signed, the OS is not ours. Substitute a commitment inside CIQ delivery chain that meets the same underlying need: validate in the partner own lab instead of acquiring hardware, self-report benchmarks instead of waiting on a third party, give a likely range instead of a guarantee, ask instead of commit. Name the precedent cost of the unforced version out loud - a guarantee we did not need to give puts us in a position to lose future business. Where the counterparty may genuinely require the stronger commitment, leave that door explicitly open rather than closing it - if they MUST have a guarantee that is one thing. Convert remaining ambiguity into a data request or a paper trail: the four scoping questions, or the ask in email with Product and the CEO copied. Then hand back a real problem to work on instead, so the refusal reads as engagement rather than retreat.

Trigger Conditions