Surface priority tradeoffs explicitly to stakeholders as
Surface priority tradeoffs explicitly to stakeholders as forced-choice questions rather than silently absorbing their requests into your existing commitments.
Why This Is a Principle
This derives from Behavior is a function of both the person and their (behavior is function of person and environment) and Open-Loop Cognitive Cost (Zeigarnik) (unresolved commitments consume working memory). When you silently absorb a request, you're modifying your behavioral environment without updating the stakeholder's understanding of it, creating misalignment. Meaning as Receiver Construction (meaning is constructed by receiver) means the stakeholder cannot understand the tradeoff you're making unless you externalize it. The principle: use forced-choice framing ('I can do X or Y') to make the resource constraint and its implications visible, enabling informed decisions. This is a communication protocol derived from how distributed cognition and meaning-making work.